The House That is Our Own. O. Douglas
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