People Like Ourselves (Scottish Historical Novels). Anna Buchan
or the heathen, or the hospitals … Oh, it's peetifu'!"
Mawson nodded wisely. "There's plenty Mrs. Duff-Whalleys about; you be thankful you've only one in the place. Priorsford is a very charitable place, I think. The poor people here don't know they're born after London, and the clergy seem very active too."
"Oh, they are that. I daur say they're as guid as is gaun. Mr. Morrison is a fine man if marriage disna ruin him."
"Oh, surely not!"
"There's no sayin'," said Bella gloomily. "She's young and flighty, but there's wan thing, she has no money. I kent a minister—he was a kinda cousin o' ma father's—an' he mairret a heiress and they had late denner. I tell ye that late denner was the ruin o' that man. It fair got between him an' his jidgment. He couldna veesit his folk at a wise-like hour in the evening because he was gaun to hev his denner, and he couldna get oot late because his leddy-wife wanted him to be at hame efter denner. There's mony a thing to cause a minister to stumble, for they're juist human beings after a', but his rich mairrage was John Allison's undoing."
"Marriage," sighed Mawson, "is a great risk. It's often as well to be single, but I sometimes think Providence must ha' meant me to 'ave an 'usband—I'm such a clingin' creature."
Such sentiments were most distasteful to Miss Bathgate, that self-reliant spinster, and she said bitterly:
"Ma wumman, ye're ill off for something to cling to! I never saw the man yet that I wud be pitten up wi'."
"Ho! I shouldn't say that, but I must say I couldn't fancy a h'undertaker. Just imagine 'im 'andlin' the dead and then 'andlin' me!"
"Eh, ye nesty cratur," said Bella, much disgusted "But I suppose ye're meaning English undertakers—men that does naething but work wi' funerals—a fearsome ill job. Here it's the jiner that does a' thing, so it's faur mair homely."
"Speakin' about marriages," said Mawson, who preferred cheerful subjects, "I do enjoy a nice weddin'. The motors and the bridesmaids and the flowers. Is there no chance of a weddin' 'ere?"
Miss Bathgate shook her head.
"Why not Miss Jean?" Mawson suggested.
Again Miss Bathgate shook her head.
"Nae siller," she said briefly.
"What! No money, you mean? But h'every gentleman ain't after money." Mawson's expression grew softly sentimental as she added, "Many a one marries for love, like the King and the beggar-maid."
"Mebbe," said Bella, "but the auld rhyme's oftener true:
"'Be a lassie ne'er sae black,
Gie her but the name o' siller,
Set her up on Tintock tap
An' the wind'll blaw a man till her.
Be a lassie ne'er sae fair,
Gin she hinna penny-siller,
A flea may fell her in the air
Ere a man be evened till her.'
"I would like fine to see Miss Jean get a guid man, for she's no' a bad lassie, but I doot she'll never manage't."
"Oh, Beller, you do take an 'opeless view of things. I think it's because you wear black so much. Now I must say I like a bit o' bright colour. I think it gives one bright thoughts."
"I aye wear black," said Bella firmly, as she carried the supper dishes to the scullery, "and then, as the auld wifie said, 'Come daith, come sacrament, I'm ready!'"
CHAPTER XIV
"Pray you, sir, how much carnation ribbon may a man buy for a remuneration?"—Comedy of Errors.
The living-room at The Rigs was the stage of many plays. Its uses ranged from the tent of a ménagerie or the wigwam of an Indian brave to the Forest of Arden.
This December night it was a "wood near Athens," and to Mhor, if to no one else, it faithfully represented the original. That true Elizabethan needed no aids to his imagination. "This is a wood," said Mhor, and a wood it was. "Is all our company here?" and to him the wood was peopled by Quince and Snug, by Bottom the weaver, by Puck and Oberon. Titania and her court he reluctantly admitted were necessary to the play, but he did not try to visualise them, regarding them privately as blots. The love-scenes between Hermia and Lysander, Helena and Demetrius, were omitted, because Jock said they were "awful silly."
It was Friday evening, so Jock had put off learning his lessons till the next day, and, as Bully Bottom, was calling over the names of his cast.
"Are we all met?"
"Pat, pat," said Mhor, who combined in his person all the other parts, "and here's a marvellous convenient place for our rehearsal; this green plot shall be our stage, this hawthorn brake our tiring-house; and we will do it in action as we will do it before the duke."
Pamela Reston, in her usual place, the corner of the sofa beside the fire, threaded her needle with a bright silk thread, and watched the players amusedly.
"Did you ever think," she asked Jean, who sat on a footstool beside her—a glowing figure in a Chinese coat given her by Pamela, engaged rather incongruously in darning one of Jock's stockings—"did you ever think what it must have been like to see a Shakespeare play for the first time? Was the Globe filled, I wonder, with a quite unexpectant first night audience? And did they realise that the words they heard were deathless words? Imagine hearing for the first time:
"'When daisies pied and violets blue
And lady-smocks all silver white….'
and then—'The words of Mercury are harsh after the songs of Apollo.' Did you ever try to write, Jean?"
"Pamela," said Jean, "if you drop from Shakespeare to me in that sudden way you'll be dizzy. I have thought of writing and trying to give a truthful picture of Scottish life—a cross between Drumtochty and The House with the Green Shutters—but I'm sure I shall never do it. And if by any chance I did accomplish it, it would probably be reviewed as a 'feebly written story of life in a Scots provincial town,' and then I would beat my pen into a hatpin and retire from the literary arena. I wonder how critics can bear to do it. I couldn't sleep at nights for thinking of my victims——"
"You sentimental little absurdity! It wouldn't be honest to praise poor work."
Jean shook her head. "They could always be a little kind … Pamela, I love myself in this coat. You can't think what a delight colours are to me." She stopped, and then said shyly, "You have brought colour into all our lives. I can see now how drab they were before you came."
"Oh dear, no, Jean, your life was never drab. It could never be drab whatever your circumstances, you have so much happiness within yourself. I don't think anything in life could ever quite down you, and even death—what of death, Jean?"
Jean looked up from her stocking. "As Boswell said to Dr. Johnson, 'What of death, Sir?' and the great man was so angry that the little twittering genius should ask lightly of such a terrifying thing that he barked at him and frightened him out of the room! I suppose the ordinary thing is never to think about death at all, to keep the thought pushed away. But that makes people so afraid of it. It's such a bogey to them. The Puritans went to the other extreme and dressed themselves in their grave-clothes every day. Wasn't it Samuel Rutherford who advised people to 'forefancy their latter end'? I think that's where Great-aunt Alison got the idea; she certainly made us 'forefancy' ours! But apart from what death may mean to each of us—life itself gets all its meaning from death. If we didn't know that we had all to die we could hardly go on living, could we?"
"Well," said Pamela, "it would certainly be difficult to bear with people if their presence and our own were not utterly uncertain. And if we knew with surety when we rose in the morning that for another forty years we would