The Collected Novels. Anna Buchan
"The day was just a day to my mind,
All sunny before and sunny behind,
Over the heather,"
and myself in a stiffly starched frock, accompanied by three brothers with polished faces and spotless collars setting out to drink tea with our friends Miss Aitken and Miss Elspeth. There was always honey for tea, I remember,—honey made by the bees that buzzed through laborious days in their thatched houses in a corner of the sunny garden,—and little round scones, and crisp shortbread; and, as we ate and chattered, through the open windows the roses nodded in, giving greeting to their friends, the roses of past summers dried and entombed in great vases; and the scent of mignonette so mixed itself with the sound of gentle old voices and childish trebles, the fragrant tea in the fragile china cups, the prancing dragons in the cabinet, that now, over the years, it brings them all back to me as surely, as potently, as if it had been indeed a sprig of Oberon's wild thyme or Ophelia's rosemary for remembrance. As I have told you, we were naughty children, sometimes even wicked children, but our conduct at this house was, "humanly speaking, perfect." The old ladies listened so sympathetically to our tales of how many trout we had that day guddled in the burn; of the colt we had managed to catch and mount—as a family—by the aid of the dyke, and of the few delirious moments spent on its slippery back before it threw us—as a family; of the ins and outs of why Boggley's nose was swelling visibly and his right eye disappearing. They would look at each other, nodding wisely at intervals while they murmured, "Interestin' bit bairnies." Boggley, when young, was of a peculiarly fiery temper. At times one could hardly look at him without being confronted with squared fists and being invited to "come on"; but when Miss Elspeth, holding one of his pugnacious paws in her kind, soft hands, assured him he was the flower of the flock, and her boy, he was a Samson shorn for mildness.
Speaking pure Lowland Scots, which was a delight to listen to; full of a gracious hospitality embracing everyone in the district from the highest to the lowest; fiery politicians and ardent supporters of their beloved Free Kirk, to the upkeep of which I believe they would cheerfully have given their last copper, Miss Aitken and Miss Elspeth were of a type now unhappily almost extinct.
Miss Elspeth was the plain, clever one. "In my youth", she loved to quote, "in my youth I wasna what you would ca' bonnie, but I was pale, penetratin', and interestin'."
Miss Aitken had been a beauty, and liked to tell us of the balls she had danced at, when, dressed in white muslin with heelless slippers and a wreath in her hair, she had been called "a sylph," Why she had never married was a puzzle to many. I remember she used to tell us of a wonderful visit to London, and of how she came home sick at heart about leaving all the "ferlies," as she called them. On her first evening at home Miss Elspeth had said, to cheer her, "Come and see the wee pigs." "Me!" said poor Miss Aitken. "What did I care about the wee pigs!" It was, perhaps, more than the "ferlies" she missed, but I don't know. She was no sylph when I knew her, my dear Miss Aitken, but she had a most comfortable lap, and a cap with cherry ribbons, and the kindest heart in all the world. Once, John, who thirsted always for information, and mindful of a point that had struck him in the chapter at morning prayers, said:
"Miss Aitken, are you any relation to Achan-in-the-Camp?"
Miss Elspeth, looking quizzically at her sister, answered for her: "Dod! Marget, I wouldna wonder but what ye micht hae been tempted by the Babylonish garment!"
They were very old when we knew them, these dear ladies, and they have been dead many years, but their simple, kindly lives have left a fragrance to sweeten this workaday world even as the mignonette in bygone summers scented their old-world garden.
How I do reminisce! It is entirely your fault for saying you liked it. You know it is a trait in the Douglas family. Our way of entertaining guests is to sit close together and recall happenings, and delightedly remind each other of childish escapades, shouting hilariously, while our guests sit in a bored and puzzled silence. Pleasant family the Douglases!
Well, as I said, Rika is a pleasant place and the Royles Irish, therefore charming. Mrs. Royle is a most purpose-like person. I like to go with her in the morning on her rounds. Through the gardens we go to see the bananas and pine-apples and tomatoes ripening in the sun, and make sure that the malis are doing their work; then on to the wash-house, where the dhobi is finishing the weekly wash; to the kitchens, to see that the cooking-pots are clean; finally, to stand on the verandah while the syces bring the ponies and feed them before our suspicious eyes. I forgot the henhouse. As we live almost entirely on fowls in the Mofussil, the moorghy-khana is a most important feature of the establishment; but just now, I regret to say, owing to a moorghy famine in the district, the stock is at a somewhat low ebb. Men have been scouring the country for fowls, but when we went to look at the result this morning we found about a dozen miserable chickens, almost featherless, standing dejectedly in corners, and Mrs. Royle wailed, "We can't kill these: it would be a sheer slaughter of the innocents!" It isn't easy to get beef or mutton in this part of the world, and when a sheep is brought to Rika it has to be carefully concealed, or Kittiwake ties a ribbon round its neck and claims it as her own, and terrible is the outcry if anyone dares to make away with her pet.
There are two Royle children—Kittiwake and Hilda. Kittiwake (christened, I believe, Kathleen Helen) is fat and broad and beaming, and very religious. Hilda is inclined to love the gay world, and finds Rika too quiet—the baby aged six! They are both thorough little sportsmen and mounted on their ponies go with their father almost everywhere.
Yesterday I went for a ride with them, along dusty brown roads between rice-fields, and they gave me a wonderful lot of information about the place and the people. As we passed a little village temple Kittiwake stopped. "That," she said solemnly, pointing with her whip, "is where they worship false gods."
I told Mr. Royle about Peter being so anxious for a mongoose, and to-day when the children came running to beg me to come quickly and see what the fisherman had caught for me, my mind leapt at once to mongooses. When I saw, confined under a wicker basket, two animals with yellow fur and flat heads that moved ceaselessly, my heart sank. If they had been caught for me how could I be so ungracious as to refuse them, and yet how was it possible for me to carry these most terrifying creatures about with me, and perhaps, on the voyage home, have to share my cabin with them?
I looked round wildly. The fisherman was grinning delightedly at his own cleverness. Our two chuprassis, Autolycus, and a syce stood round with the children, all waiting for my approval.
"They're rather nice, aren't they?" I stammered feebly.
"Oh—sweet!" said Hilda rapturously.
"Sweet!" I echoed. "But aren't they big ones?"
"Big!" cried Kittiwake. "Why, they're only butchas;" and she lifted the edge of the basket to get a better view, at which one of the butchas made a rush for the opening and made straight at me. With a yell I snatched up my skirts, knocked over Hilda, leapt "like a haarse" on to the verandah straight into the astonished Mr. Royle, while the weird beast disappeared like a yellow streak.
"Whatever is the matter?" he asked as I sank to the floor.
"Olivia's afraid of the butcha otter!" squealed Hilda, while she scampered about looking for the truant.
"Otter?" said I.
"Yes," said Mr. Royle; "they are baby otters that the fisherman found at the side of the lake. I thought of sending them to the Calcutta Zoo. They aren't very common in India."
"I'm so glad!" I gasped; and Mr. Royle looked mystified. It didn't seem exactly a reason for fervent gladness, but suppose they had been mongooses? My life, so to speak, was ruined.
Staying in the house with Mr. Royle is rather like being with Colonel Newcome in the flesh. He is such a very "perfect gentil Knight"—as courteous to a native woman as to the L.-G.'s wife. The people round about adore him and his wife; they are a kind of father and mother to the whole district. There would be little heard of disloyalty to the British if all the Sahibs were like Mr. Royle, He is so good—I'd be almost afraid to be so good in case I died—but not the least in a sickly way. He is a