The House That is Our Own. O. Douglas
and Isobel, who knew her in these moods, turned her back and looked out of the window.
It was not an inspiriting outlook, a sort of court, into which the rain was falling in the peculiarly stark way March rain often falls. A van was being unloaded down below, and a quantity of damp straw lay about, a small dog snuffling amongst it. A message-boy relieved the tedium by shrill whistling, while a street-singer with a blatantly black eye bawled:
I am so lonely, years are so long,
I want you only, you and your song.
“Isobel!”
The girl turned round.
“I didn’t mean to grumble and be ungrateful,” Kitty said. “I haven’t forgotten how thankful I was for this refuge when I came back to England last October. All I asked then was to be allowed to lean back and do nothing. I didn’t even think. I could read and I could listen, that was about all; I went about in a sort of dream.”
“You had had such a long time of strain,” said Isobel’s quiet voice.
“Two years,” said Kitty. “Two years watching my dear Rob suffer and die; wandering from hotel to hotel, from one cure to another. The only comfort was that Rob kept hopeful to the end, always sure that the next place, the next doctor, would cure him. He never knew how difficult it all was. Those foreign hotels are terrified of having a death on the premises, and when they saw Rob they sometimes would hardly let us in. And you couldn’t blame them, they had to look after their own interests. Anyway, it didn’t matter, for I managed to keep it from Rob: he had enough to bear without that.”
“You didn’t think of bringing him home when you found he was getting no better?”
Kitty shook her head.
“He didn’t want to come. It was easier for him being ill among strangers. I quite understood that. He had been rather a figure in his own set, good to look at, good at everything he tried, one of those buoyantly happy and successful people—how could he go creeping back to the pity of his friends? ‘Poor Rob! Have you seen him? Isn’t it tragic?’ Banishment was better than that. He clung to me, poor darling, and that stiffened my back. Before, he had always been the one who did things. I followed, squaw-like, behind. Now I had to stand in front and wrestle with hotel-managers and foreign doctors; worst of all, I had to manage the money. If I had had a brother—but both Rob and I were only children, and almost relationless. But I managed somehow, though not well, and anyway, I never worried Rob with my difficulties. And the only really horrible hotel-manager was the last. Rob had finished with it all by that time, thank God, and that meant that I was past caring much what happened to me. But the little French doctor was all that was kind, helped me with the formalities, arranged everything, and started me on my way home.”
Isobel remembered that October evening when, coming in from some party or mild junketing, she had noticed in the entrance-hall a forlorn-looking little black-clad figure.
Kitty went on. “And you were the first person I met when I got here. You came in behind me, your face rosy with the frosty air, and looking so large and golden that it was if the sun had suddenly risen! It had been a miserable crossing; I was chilled to the bone, tired, and sad beyond measure, but when you crinkled up your eyes and smiled at me, I felt, for the first time in months, a slight lifting of the heart. No-one had smiled at me for so long. Nothing but looks of pity and commiseration had come my way. And how I resented them! I tried so hard not to be sorry for myself, for self-pity is a loathsome thing. Rob never pitied himself—or me either. He and I were one in a way few married people, I imagine, are, and we were fighting together to win through. Even that last day, when all the strength he had seemed to go quite suddenly, when he could hardly speak above a whisper, and every breath was an effort, he tried to say something to me, I couldn’t catch what, about what we’d do when he was better—and smiled.”
“Kitty dear”—Isobel went over and stood beside her friend—“it’s too painful for you to remember.”
“I’m remembering all the time, and it’s a relief to tell it to someone, and you’ve been so good, never asking any questions. But there’s not much to tell. I had dreaded a struggle at the end, a dreadful insufficiency of breath, but there was none: he just stopped breathing. It was a lovely night, full of stars, and the windows were wide open. I knelt beside him, and looked at the lake and the mountains and felt almost happy. It lasted, that exultant feeling, through the painful, crowded days that followed, and through the journey to England—as if I were rejoicing in his escape—and it wasn’t till I reached London and drove through the streets to this hotel that I realised my loneliness. Rob and I had had such happy years in our little house in Hampstead, and the memory of them rushed over me like a flood. We always took our holiday late, in September or even October, for Rob liked the autumn in Scotland, and I had recollections of driving out from Euston on just such a frosty evening, eager, now that our holiday was over, for our own home. And when the taxi-man rang the bell in the wall, and the green door was opened by our Skye housemaid, Katie, so douce in her long skirt and white cap and apron, she’d say—‘Och, Mem, ye’re back then, and it’s glad we are to see you. It’s time you were home, for the leaves are all down.’ And through the open door we could see Maggie, the cook, hovering. The curtains would be drawn in our living-room, and we’d take just a glance round at our books and pictures, and our chairs drawn up to the fire, before we rushed up to change into something very cosy and shabby, and come down to our little Georgian dining-room and Maggie’s dinner, which tasted so good after the more aspiring cooking we had been having.”
She stopped speaking, and Isobel said, “If you’ve sad things to remember, you’ve very nice things too. Thank you for telling me.”
The van had finished unloading, and was departing, pursued by the excited barking of the small dog. The street-singer, discouraged, had left, and his place had been taken by another, a musician of sorts.
As Isobel stood watching her friend, a rollicking tune came up from the court.
Kitty looked up. “Someone’s playing a penny whistle—let me see—I knew it. Listen! D’you know what he’s playing?” And she repeated some lines of the song.
An ye had been where I hae been,
Ye wadna be sae canty-o,
An ye had seen what I hae seen
On the banks o’ Killiecrankie-o.
“Rob used sometimes to shout that—he couldn’t sing—when he was shaving in the morning. That man must be a Scot. Where’s my purse?” And, throwing up the window, she dropped a shilling on the player, who promptly stopped playing to grovel for the coin.
Then Kitty said rather apologetically, “To me there is something about a penny whistle. . . . Was it R. L. S. who described himself as a mighty performer before the Lord on a penny whistle? And that tune. Do you know, all this time I’ve practically forgotten, or, at least, completely lost touch with, what really means so much to me—my native land. I don’t know how I could, except that my one effort has been not to think of anything that recalled the past. Living in an hotel helped me. I could watch the people come and go, and talk to one and another—or rather listen. It does astonish me how people can pour out all their private affairs to strangers, but in a way it eased one to hear of others’ troubles.”
“What helped you most,” said Isobel, “was your love of reading. I never saw anyone devour books as you do.”
“Reading,” said Kitty, “has been a sort of dope to me. I’ve simply read and read through these months. My particular girl in The Times gives a resigned sigh at the sight of me. As you know, I visit her almost daily, and demand every new book as it comes out. Novels, biography, travel, history, exploration, all are grist to my mill. She must wonder what sort of life I lead, always with my nose in a book. And indeed I am a selfish wretch, doing nothing for any human creature.”
“No more selfish than the most of us,” Isobel protested, but Kitty shook her head, saying:
“Why, you, my dear, give hours every day to other people—doing