Читать книгу The House That is Our Own - O. Douglas - Страница 11

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It was warm, with a latent shiver in the air that made

the warmth only the more welcome.

Weir of Hermiston

Isobel slept so deeply that night that when she woke all recollection of the events of the day before had passed from her mind, and she was surprised to hear unfamiliar sounds.

Starting up she found herself looking, not at her net-curtained window in the Queen’s Court Hotel, but—the window being wide open—straight out to the miniature glen, with the burn and the rowan-trees. Some calves were looking through the fence at a black-and-white collie, and it, in turn, was watching a yellow cat on the prowl. Two lambs gambolled absurdly; a cock was crowing, someone was whistling; a new day was well begun.

Isobel looked at her watch. Half-past six. Two hours before she could go downstairs. Mrs. Bruce, she knew, would have enough to do getting the room and breakfast ready for the time appointed, without her lodger getting in the way; so, reaching for her writing-pad, she began a letter to Kitty Baillie.

“Dearest K.,” she began. “It is 6.30 a.m., and I have just woken up. I long to dress and go out, for there are all sorts of exciting things to see—calves and pet-lambs (at least I think they must be pet), a collie-dog, a burn with rowan-trees, and a hillside, but the hour is too ridiculous, so, instead, I am starting a letter to you.

“I’ll tell you later what I think of Glenbucho as a place, meantime, know that the rooms are all one could desire, clean—such pure white sheets I never encountered before; it must be the soft water and clear air—a comfortable bed, and—luxury!—a bathroom to myself. I had an idea that in Scotland they hadn’t even water in the house, and was bracing myself to wash in a tin basin, so the shining new bathroom came as a delightful surprise. It is quite palatial in size, having once been a small bedroom, and has a lovely view. I remember once, at Stratford-on-Avon, having a bathroom from which one saw the Avon and the spire of Shakespeare’s church; this one looks out to the hillside. From the sitting-room you see the garden and the stackyard, with the main road (not very ‘main’) and the hills beyond.

“My landlady, Mrs. Bruce, is fifty-ish, I should think, with a long, stern face and a most uncompromising manner. She only began to keep lodgers last summer, and she has still the air of not being quite sure how it is going to work, but whether it is herself or me she distrusts I can’t tell. Certainly I have no complaint to make. Last night she gave me an excellent meal, high tea, or supper, whatever you like to call it: bacon and eggs, scones and pancakes, honey and gingerbread. After hotel food it tasted like nectar. My obvious enjoyment of her cooking seemed to thaw Mrs. Bruce slightly, and she stopped to talk for a little about Glenbucho Place. Her husband was born on the place, and it seems to be a real grief to both of them to see its decline. There is only the home-farm left, and the old house. It was very wise, I think, of Gideon Veitch to go to Canada to make his own way.

“The Bruces are left to look after things as best they can. There is very little money for the upkeep of the place, and they are trying to make a little extra by taking in summer lodgers. I thought all this feudal feeling, this love for a family and a place, had died out. It is interesting to come across it here.

“3 p.m.

“I didn’t write much this morning after all, and as I find letters leave at 4.30, I’ll finish this now.

“It seems a long time since this morning. Then I was a stranger in Glenbucho, now I almost feel as if I belonged.

“After breakfast I sauntered out and made the acquaintance of the collie (he is called Yarrow), and the lambs (they are pet), and met Mr. Bruce, who is a slow-spoken, gentle creature, like so many men with managing wives.

“I am interested in the accent here. I find they say ‘efternin’ for afternoon, ‘perk’ for park, ‘gress’ for grass, but some of their words are very broad, ‘paurlour’ and ‘ma-an’—never ‘mon’ as some writers spell it. The effect is soft and beautiful, and I can understand wonderfully well, better than they can understand me. I speak too fast and slur my words.

“To continue. I set out to see the village of Glenbucho, and found that it is in three parts: the post-office, two churches, and a few villa-ish looking houses make one part; the station, a shop, the school, and school-house make another; the third is the real village, a row of houses on either side of the road, a shop, a burn with a bridge over it, and, round a corner, the churchyard. This scattered village lies cradled among solemn, round-backed hills, and this May morning the beauty of it made my heart leap. The hawthorn is out, and the broom and everything seems white and gold and green: the air is so tonic you feel as if you could walk for miles.

“First I looked for Miss Agnes Home, Merchant. Her shop is the one near the station. It is built on the top of a sharp slope, and the garden runs down to a stream called Glenbucho Water. It’s a real village shop, with a startlingly loud bell as you open the door, and a smell compounded of almost everything under the sun—oatmeal, onions, paraffin oil, soap, brown paper, apples, acid-drops—a most satisfying smell.

“Didn’t you imagine Miss Agnes Home as a gentle creature with a quiet brow? I did. But she isn’t. She is large and broad and rosy, with a friendly, forthcoming manner, a loud laugh, and a most hearty interest in everything that happens, and in everyone who enters her door.

“She greeted me with a wide smile, and a ‘What can I do for you?’ and after I had made a few purchases I thanked her for her kindness in telling me about the rooms at Glenbucho Place.

“ ‘Oh, ho,’ she said, standing back a little to have a good look at me, ‘so you’re at Mrs. Bruce’s. I saw you pass in Jardine’s car from the six train last night, and I just thought ye’d be going there. And are you comfortable? Ay, I thought ye would be. Mrs. Bruce hasn’t long begun taking lodgers, and she’s not very sure of herself yet, but I said to her, “Ma woman the folk that come to you’ll be in clover.” ’

“Then she put both her hands on the counter and began to confide in me that she and Mrs. Bruce (‘Beenie Forrest she was then’) had been at the school together, and had walked four miles there and four miles back, and what a struggle they’d had on stormy days.

“ ‘Eh, my,’ she said (you would have enjoyed her soft Border speech), ‘when I think of the bairns nowadays, jumping into motor-cars, fetched down and sent home again, I take a good laugh to myself. They’ll entirely lose the use of their legs, the poor creatures.’

“I pointed out that a four-mile walk in rain or snow was a bad beginning to a school day, but she refused to believe it, and said it made the children strong and self-reliant. I daresay it did if they survived it!

“Another customer coming in, I had to leave, but I look forward to many more talks with Miss Agnes Home.

“The walk home was lovely, and I walked slowly, enjoying every step of the way. Going to the village I’d been looking south, to the Drumelzier Hills—I got Mrs. Bruce to tell me some of the names of the places up Tweed, Mossfennan, Stanhope, Crook, Hearthstanes, The Bield, Talla—aren’t they nice?—but coming home the scene was different, a wider strath, the hills lower and greener, except where Cardon raised its head. Glenbucho Place stands at the entrance of a lovely green glen which I mean to explore very soon.

“I was back just in time for my midday meal, which was what Mrs. Bruce described as ‘broth and meat,’ which meant an excellent thick vegetable soup, then the beef that made it served with potatoes. This was followed by an apple-dumpling with cream from the cool milk-house, and I feel as if I’d had enough nourishment to last me all day! Now I’m going to sit in the garden, a pleasant place, both sunny and sheltered, and read The Scotsman, which I bought this morning at the shop, and after tea I am going with Mrs. Bruce to see ‘the big hoose.’ This is the day she airs and dusts it, and she asked if I’d care to go with her while she shuts the windows and saw that it was all right for another week. I’ll tell you about it in my next letter.

“You are often in my thoughts, and I long to hear how you are getting on.

“Ever yours,

“Isobel.”

As Mrs. Bruce and her lodger took their way through the garden to the road, Isobel, by way of making conversation, said that she had visited the Glenbucho shop that morning.

“Ye mean,” said Mrs. Bruce, “Agnes Homes’s? There’s another shop, further up the road, in the village, but mebbe ye werena that length.”

“Oh yes, I saw it, and a very nice-looking shop it is, but I particularly wanted to see Miss Agnes Home. It was she who told me of your rooms.”

“Oh, aye, Agnes is ay willing to do a body a good turn.”

“She certainly did me a good turn,” Isobel said politely, but a sniff was her companion’s only response, so she went on, “Miss Home seems very pleased with life.”

“Oh, she’s that. A shop’s the very place for her, for she fair lives for news. A’body rins to Agnes. Whiles ye can hardly get into her shop for folk—lassies telling about their lads, mothers about their bairns. I wonder she can be bothered, but she says if a lone woman doesna take an interest in everybody she turns cankered and thrawn, and she doesna stop at Glenbucho, it’s the whole world she’s interested in. She got that excited about thae Abyssinians, and ye’d think the Spanish war was gaun on in her ain kailyaird the way she vexes hersel’ about it. If it’s oor ain folk that’s fightin’ I’m interested enough, but I canna be bothered readin’ about foreigners. For one thing I can never mind their names.”

Isobel laughed and agreed that that was a difficulty, then said, “You and Miss Home were at school together, weren’t you?”

“Was she telling you that? Agnes is awful fond of crackin’ about old days. She sits and laughs and laughs about things that happened forty years syne, and asks me if I mind o’ this and that. She was ay lauchin’ as a lassie.”

By this time they had come to the old gate-posts, with a carved-stone bear on top of each, and entered the short drive that led through a paddock to the house known as Glenbucho Place. A tall, narrow house, with crow-step gables, built in the shape of an L, it was harled pale grey, and the mortar peeling off in patches gave it a weather-worn, shabby look.

Mrs. Bruce hustled up to the front door, and unlocking it stood aside, and Isobel found herself in a small square hall, facing a long window that opened into the garden. The westering sun was flooding in, lighting up the dark portraits on the walls, and the worn tapestry on a settee. On the left was the dining-room—a room that had windows both to the garden and the courtyard. Bare and unused-looking as it was, there was something home-like about it; the thickness of the walls, the old panelling, the wide hearth and low ceiling gave a sense of comfort. On the right hand was a small room looking to the garden.

Mrs. Bruce started briskly to shut and fasten the windows, and Isobel followed her as she went through the house. It was not large and it was very shabby, but the furniture, what there was of it, was old and good, and Isobel felt she could have settled down in it just as it was.

At the top of a short winding stair they entered a small turret-room, containing a narrow bed, a bookcase—obviously home-made—a writing-desk, a cabinet of birds’ eggs; on the wall many school and college groups. A boy’s room evidently.

“This is Maister Gideon’s wee room,” Mrs. Bruce said. “He wouldna change it for a bigger one, though he used to say that he had to put one arm up the chimney when he was putting on his coat. He ay said his room had the bonniest view.”

“It has,” Isobel agreed.

“I daresay, but what aboot it?”

As they went downstairs Isobel asked how old the house was, but Mrs. Bruce was uncertain about it.

“I’ve heard tell that it’s gey auld, more than two hunner years. Ye ken about Prince Charlie coming to Scotland?”

“D’you mean the Jacobite Rising in 1745?”

“Aye, the ’45. Well, it was built afore that, for it was here, in this verra house, that the soldiers catch’t one of the Jacobites, Murray of Broughton he was called. If ye come here ye can see where his place was—right ower yon hill. There’s no house now, I think it was burned doun, but the avenue’s there that led up to it. His aunt lived here, in Glenbucho Place. I canna tell ye right aboot it, but we’ve got it all in a book.”

“But that’s frightfully interesting,” said Isobel. “Will you let me read the story?”

“You’re welcome. Mr. Gideon gave us the book in a present. He was daft about old tales.”

“That’s hardly to be wondered at living in this countryside, and in this house. What a delightful old place it is!”

“I doubt,” said Mrs. Bruce, “it’ll have to be sold. We canna keep it up.” (Isobel liked the “we”: it was as much the Bruce’s affair as the laird’s.) “And, forbye, Mr. Gideon needs money for the job he’s got in Canada. If he could get mebbe £1,500 for the house and the garden, it would be a big help, and there would ay be the bit farm to let him keep the name of Veitch of Glenbucho.”

Isobel stopped and looked back at the old house. Lonely now, and deserted, there was yet nothing desolate about it. It had been full of life, with a hospitable open door; it would be so again. Meantime, it dreamed contentedly in the evening sunshine.

“The lawyer’s going to advertise it, but we’ve had two or three folk here already who’ve heard it might be for sale. Bruce canna bear the sight of them, he’s that sweir’t to let the house go, but I tell him it’s silly. It takes us workin’ hard to make the farm pay. There’s no money to keep up the Place, a house is ay needing something. Some family from Glasgow or Edinburgh might tak’ it and come in summer, and they might be nice folk; anyway, they wouldna fash us, and Mr. Gideon awa’ in Canada’ll no’ be vex’t by the sight o’ them. If he can let the house go, surely Bruce can. And it’s no’ as if we were the only ones. Near all the old families have left the district, there are new names everywhere, so we needna complain. Well here we are, I must awa’ to the milkin’, the kye’ll be in.”

Mrs. Bruce vanished to change her black dress for the “short gown and petticoat” that she wore when milking, and Isobel walked slowly through the garden. Her mind was full of the old house she had just left; it had taken a grip of her from the moment she had entered the gates and seen its crow-step gables and many-paned windows. Grey, scarred, weather-beaten but beautiful, it basked in the May sunshine, but she could imagine it more in its element in the fierce winter blasts that must often sweep down the glen. It looked, above everything, a home, a place that had sheltered many generations, seen them play as children, work, fight, love, hate, weep as men and women, and, the day’s task done, sleep.

It had seen many campaigns of this world’s life and death. To own such a house and to see it go to strangers must be bitter. Much better, Isobel thought, to have nothing of one’s own but a few thousands in gilt-edged securities, to be free to live where one pleased, with no beloved old house to tear one’s heart.

“That love of a house which those who live in hired houses and look upon Heaven as their home know nothing of.” Where had she read that? But one might be born not knowing what it was to love a thing of stone, and one might learn. It wouldn’t be difficult, she told herself, as she looked across the tree-tops to the grey roofs of the Place.

When Mrs. Bruce brought in the lamp that evening she also brought a book, and explained, “It’s the one I was speakin’ to ye aboot. Mebbe ye’d like to read aboot the Place, though I daresay it’s just a lee.”

Isobel assured her that she was most anxious to read anything about Glenbucho Place, and the moment the door closed, began North and South of the Tweed, by Jean Lang. Why, she knew the name. Kitty Baillie had talked of Jean Lang and her books. This was interesting, and she turned to the contents to find the special tale she wanted to read.

This must be the one. The Lady of the White Cockade, and, with her arms encircling the book on the red chenille table-cover, she read of the beautiful wife of Mr. Secretary Murray, who so ardently supported the cause of the young Prince who came over the seas to trust his fortunes to his people. It was a tragic story. Her husband, fleeing from the massacre at Culloden dressed as a drover, managed to get over the hills to Tweeddale, but his own house was full of King George’s soldiers, and he had to make his way to Polmood in Tweedsmuir where his sister lived. He was tired out and hungry, as was his horse, the evening was cold and wet, and he could not resist turning in at the gates of Glenbucho Place, the home of his aunt, Mrs. Dickson.

Unfortunately the master of the house was away, and his aunt, kindly, stupid woman that she was, could not be got to understand that he was in danger if recognised. A drink in the kitchen with the servants? Whoever heard of such a thing?

“Na, na, you’ll have your broth and your saumon, and gigot, and your wine wi’ your aunt and cousins,” and matters were not improved by the good woman chiding her daughter before the waiting servant for calling her cousin by his name.

There were soldiers hanging about the kitchen when the servant went “ben” and reported. “Queer-like drover! Dining and drinking claret wi’ the mistress,” and that pricked their ears and watched. So it happened that the tired fugitive had hardly fallen asleep in his sister’s house thinking, good easy man, that he was safe, when there came a loud knocking on the door, “In the King’s name!” and he was dragged away to Edinburgh, a prisoner.

Isobel could see it all. A weary man on a jaded horse stumbling into the courtyard; would Mrs. Dickson speak a minute to a drover who had a message for her? The shocked exclamations of the lady when she recognised him, her ill-advised hospitality, the misery of that dinner with its good food and its comforts, and the suspicious looks of the serving-man. Then, feverishly anxious to be gone, Murray mounting his horse, the clatter on the cobble-stones, the beat of hooves as he rode into the night.

It was night, indeed, that he rode into, poor Mr. Evidence Murray! How could he ever again lift up his head to the sun, when to save that head he had betrayed his Prince and his Cause? Isobel sat in the lamplight, with the moon coming over Ratchell Hill, and thought about this unhappy story, so far off and yet so oddly near to her. What sort of man was this John Murray of Broughton? Was he so in love with living that to save his life he was willing to send men who had been his friends to the scaffold? Did life mean so much to him that in the scales it weighed down his love, his loyalty, his honour? One could imagine a man in a moment of panic doing some irreparable wrong, but having done it could he go on living with himself? But this man had lived for years, and must have slept o’ nights. Surely the Place had felt that evening that something momentous was happening within its walls. Did it ever hear an echo of the clatter on the cobble-stones, as a decent man rode away to become a traitor? No wonder Gideon Veitch was interested in the old tale: they were his kin, these Dicksons and Murrays.

Isobel blew out the lamp, and went upstairs to bed.