Complete Works. Anna Buchan
I was sorry for her, too, for no woman ever worked harder, both in the shop and in the house, and her husband and family took it all for granted. She did kind things in an ungracious way, and was vexed when people failed to appreciate her kindness. Across the road from Mrs. Beaton lived another elder's wife, Mrs. Lister, who, Mrs. Beaton thought, got from life the very things she had missed.
"'Never toil yourself to death,' she used to tell me, 'for your man and your bairns; they'll no thank you for it. Look at the Listers over there. Willie Lister goes about with holes like half-crowns in his heels, but he thinks the world of his Aggie.' And it was quite true. I knew that gentle little Mrs. Lister was everybody's favourite, for she contradicted no one, ruffled no one's feelings, while rough-tongued, honest, impudent Mrs. Beaton was both feared and disliked. And yet there was no doubt which of the two women one would have chosen to ride the ford with. Had a tea-meeting to be arranged, a sale of work to be organised, or a Christmas-tree to be provided for Sunday school, Mrs. Beaton was in it—purse and person.
"Mrs. Lister always took 'the bile' when anything was expected of her. Once a year we were invited to tea at the Listers' house, and as sure as we found ourselves seated before a table groaning with bake-meats and were being pressed by Mr. Lister to partake of them because they were all baked by 'Mamaw,' Mrs. Lister would say, 'Ay, and I had a job baking them—for I was bad with "the bile" all morning.' As Marget says, 'The mistress is awfu' easy scunnered,' and after hearing that my tea was a pretence. It was worse when Agatha was there, for then we were apt to wait for the announcement, and when it came give way to painful, secret laughter. Agatha always laughed, too, when Mrs. Lister capped her husband's sayings with 'Ay, that's it, Paw.' She was a most agreeable wife, but she was a mother before everything. She would have talked all day about her children, bursting out with odd little disjointed confidences about them in the middle of a conversation about something else. 'He's an awful nice boy, Johnnie; he's got a fine voice,' would occur in a conversation about the Sustentation Fund, and in the middle of a discussion about a series of lectures she would whisper, 'He's a queer laddie, our Tommy. When Nettie was born he put his head round my bedroom door and said, "Is she a richt ane, Maw?" He meant not deaf or dumb or anything, you know.' She sometimes irritated her husband by her overanxiety about the health of her children. If one coughed in the night she always heard and, fearful of waking Mr. Lister, she would creep out of bed and jump from mat to mat (I can see her doing it—a sort of anxious little antelope), and listen to their breathing, and hap them up with extra bedclothes. Nettie was the youngest, and the delicate one, and had to be tempted to eat. 'Oh, ma Nettie,' she would say, 'could you take a taste of haddie to your tea or a new-laid egg?'
"She was afraid of nearly everything—mice, and wind, and thunder, and she hated the sea. One morning I met her almost distraught because her boys had all gone out in a boat. 'Is their father with them?' I asked. 'No, no,' she said, 'I didna let him go; it was just the more to drown.' Poor, anxious little body! God took her first, and she never had the anguish of parting with her children.... What an opportunity ministers and ministers' wives have of getting to know people as they are—their very hearts!"
"Yes," said Ann; "but it isn't every minister or every minister's wife who can make anything of the opportunity. Just think of some we know—sticks. Can you think of any poor stricken soul going to them to be comforted 'as one whom his mother comforteth'? What would they say? 'Oh, indeed! How sad!' or 'Really! I'm very sorry.' Some little stilted sentence that would freeze the very fount of tears. You, Mother, I don't think you would say anything. To speak to those who weep is no use; you must be able in all sincerity to weep with them. As for Father, his voice was enough. Isn't it in one of the Elizabeth books that someone talking of the futility of long, dull sermons, says, 'If only a man with a voice of gold would stand up and say, "Children, Christ died for you," I would lay down my head and cry and cry...' Oh, it's a great life if a minister and his wife are any good at their job, and, above all, if they have a sense of humour!"
"Well, I don't know about the sense of humour," Mrs. Douglas said doubtfully. "I have often envied the people who never seem overcome by the ludicrous side of things, who don't even seem aware that it is there. Do you remember Mrs. Daw? I dare say not. My first meeting with her was in the Path on a hot summer's day. I saw an enormously stout woman toiling in front of me with a heavy basket, and as I passed her she laid down her load, and turning to me a red, perspiring, but surprisingly bland countenance, said, 'Hech! but it's a sair world for stout folk.' There was something so Falstaffian and jocund about the great figure, and the way she took me into her confidence, that I simply stood still and laughed, and she laughed with me. We shared the basket between us the rest of the way, and after that I often visited her. But I could never let your father come with me; Mrs. Daw was too much for us together. Only once we tried it, and she told us that the doctor had advised her to take 'sheriff-wine and Van Houtong's cocoah,' and her genteel pronunciation was too much for us. She was never at her best when your father was there; she didn't care for the clergy.
"'A lazy lot,' she called them. 'No wan o' them does a decent day's work. If it was me I wad mak' a' the ministers pollismen as weel, and that wad save some o' the country's siller.' She condescended to say that she rather liked your father's preaching, though her reason for liking it was not very flattering. 'I like him because he's no what ye ca' a scholarly preacher. I dinna like thae scholars, they're michty dull. I like the kind o' minister that misca's the deevil for aboot twenty meenits and then stops.'
"Mrs. Daw had me bogged at once when we started on theological discussions. She would ask questions and answer them herself as she knelt before the kitchen fire, engaged in what she called 'ringein' the ribs.'
"'Ay,' she would say, 'I'm verra fond o' a clear fire. Mercy me, it'll be an awfu' want in heaven—a guid fire. Ye read aboot golden streets and pearly gates, but it's cauld comfort to an auld body wha likes her ain fireside. Of coorse we'll a' be speerits.' (It needed a tremendous effort of imagination to picture Mrs. Daw as a spirit!) 'Wull speerit ken speerit?' and then, as if in scorn at her own question, 'I daur say no! It wad be little use if they did. I could get sma' enjoyment frae crackin' wi' a neebor, if a' the time I was lookin' through her, and her through me. An' what wad we crack aboot? Nae couthy bits o' gossip up there—juist harps an' angels fleein' aboot....'
"I would suggest diffidently that when we had gone on to another and higher life we wouldn't feel the want of the homely things so necessary to us here, and Mrs. Daw, shaking her head, would say, 'I dinna ken,' and then with her great laugh (your father used to quote something about a thousand beeves at pasture when he heard it) she would finish the profitless discussion with 'Weel, sit ye doun by ma guid fire and I'll mak' ye a cup o' tea in ma granny's cheeny teapot. We'll tak' our comforts so long as we hae them, for think as ye like the next warld's a queer turn-up onyway....'"
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