Penny Plain Part 5

"Here, see, there's yin for yerself, an' the broken bits are for Peter.

Here he comes snowkin'," as Peter ambled into the kitchen followed by Pamela. That lady stood in the doorway.

"Do forgive me coming, but I love a kitchen. It is always the nicest place in the house, I think; the shining tins are so cheerful, and the red fire." She smiled in an engaging way at Bella, who, after a second, and, as it were, reluctantly, smiled back.

"I see you have given the raider some biscuits," Pamela said.

"He's an ill laddie." Bella Bathgate looked at the Mhor standing obediently on the bit of carpet, munching his biscuit, and her face softened. "He has neither father nor mother, puir lamb, but I must say Miss Jean never lets him ken the want o' them."

"Miss Jean?"

"He bides at The Rigs wi' the Jardines--juist next door here. She's no a bad la.s.sie, Miss Jean, and wonderfu' sensible considerin'.... Are ye finished, Mhor? Weel, wipe yer feet and gang ben to the room an' let me get on wi' ma work."

Pamela, feeling herself dismissed, took her guest back to the sitting-room, where Mhor at once began to examine the books piled on the table, while Peter sat himself on the rug to await developments.

"You've a lot of books," said Mhor. "I've a lot of books too--as many as a hundred, perhaps. Jean teaches me poetry. Would you like me to say some?"

"Please," said Pamela, expecting to hear some childish rhymes. Mhor took a long breath and began:

"'O take me to the Mountain O, Past the great pines and through the wood, Up where the lean hounds softly go, A whine for wild things' blood, And madly flies the dappled roe.

O G.o.d, to shout and speed them there An arrow by my chestnut hair Drawn tight, and one keen glittering spear-- Ah, if I could!'"

For some reason best known to himself Mhor was very sparing of breath when he repeated poetry, making one breath last so long that the end of the verse was reached in a breathless whisper--in this instance very effective.

"So that is what 'Jean' teaches you," said Pamela. "I should like to see Jean."

"Well," said Mhor, "come in with me now and see her. I should be doing my lessons anyway, and you can tell her where I've been."

"Won't she think me rather pushing?" Pamela asked.

"Oh, I don't know," said Mhor carelessly. "Jean's kind to everybody--tramps and people who sing in the street and little cats with no homes. Hadn't you better put on your hat?"

So Pamela obediently put on her hat and coat and went with her new friends down the road a few steps and up the flagged path to the front door of the funny little house that kept its back turned to its parvenu neighbours, and its eyes lifted to the hills.

In Mhor led her, Peter following hard behind, through a square, low-roofed entrance-hall with a polished floor, into a long room with one end coming to a point in an odd-shaped window, rather like the bow of a ship.

A girl was sitting in the window with a large basket of darning beside her.

"Jean," cried Mhor as he burst in, "here's the Honourable. I asked her to come in and see you. She's afraid of Bella Bathgate."

"Oh, do come in," said Jean, standing up with the stocking she was darning over one hand. "Take this chair; it's the most comfortable. I do hope Mhor hasn't been worrying you?"

"Indeed he hasn't," said Pamela; "I was delighted to see him. But please don't let me interrupt your work."

"The boys make such big holes," said Jean, picking up a damp handkerchief that lay beside her; and then with a tremble in her voice, "I've been crying," she added.

"So I see," said Pamela. "I'm sorry. Is anything wrong?"

"Nothing in the least wrong," Jean said, swallowing hard, "only that I'm so silly." And presently she found herself pouring out her troubled thoughts about David, about the lions that she feared stood in his path at Oxford, about the hole his going made in the little household at The Rigs. It was a comfort to tell it all to this delightful-looking stranger who seemed to understand in the most wonderful way.

"I remember when my brother Biddy went to Oxford," Pamela told her. "I felt just as you do. Our parents were dead, and I was five years older than my brother, and took care of him just as you do of your David. I was afraid for him, for he had too much money, and that is much worse than having too little--but he didn't get changed or spoiled, and to this day he is the same, my own old Biddy."

Jean dried her eyes and went on with her darning, and Pamela walked about looking at the books and talking, taking in every detail of this girl and her so individual room, the golden-brown hair, thick and wavy, the golden-brown eyes, "like a trout-stream in Connemara," that sparkled and lit and saddened as she talked, the mobile, humorous mouth, the short, straight nose and pointed chin, the straight-up-and-down belted brown frock, the whole toning so perfectly with the room with its polished floor and old Persian rugs, the pale yellow walls (even on the dullest day they seemed to hold some sunshine) hung with coloured prints in old rosewood frames--"Sat.u.r.day Morning," engraved (with many flourishes) by T. Burke, engraver to His Serene Highness the Reigning Landgrave of Hesse Darmstadt; "The Cut Finger," by David Wilkie--those and many others. The furniture was old and good, well kept and well polished, so that the shabby, friendly room had that comfortable air of well-being that only careful housekeeping can give. Books were everywhere: a few precious ones behind gla.s.s doors, hundreds in low bookcases round the room.

"I needn't ask you if you are fond of reading," Pamela said.

"Much too fond," Jean confessed. "I'm a 'rake at reading.'"

"You know the people," said Pamela, "who say, 'Of course I _love_ reading, but I've no time, alas!' as if everyone who loves reading doesn't make time."

As they talked, Pamela realised that this girl who lived year in and year out in a small country town was in no way provincial, for all her life she had been free of the company of the immortals. The Elizabethans she knew by heart, poetry was as daily bread. Rosalind in Arden, Viola in Illyria, were as real to her as Bella Bathgate next door. She had taken to herself as friends (being herself all the daughters of her father's house) Maggie Tulliver, Ethel Newcome, Beatrix Esmond, Clara Middleton, Elizabeth Bennet----

The sound of the gong startled Pamela to her feet.

"You don't mean to say it's luncheon time already? I've taken up your whole morning."

"It has been perfectly delightful," Jean a.s.sured her. "Do stay a long time at Hillview and come in every day. Don't let Bella Bathgate frighten you away. She isn't used to letting her rooms, and her manners are bad, and her long upper lip very quelling; but she's really the kindest soul on earth.... Would you come in to tea this afternoon? Mrs.

M'Cosh--that's our retainer--bakes rather good scones. I would ask you to stay to luncheon, but I'm afraid there mightn't be enough to go round."

Pamela gratefully accepted the invitation to tea, and said as to luncheon she was sure Miss Bathgate would be awaiting her with a large dish of stewed steak and carrots saved from the night before--so she departed.

Later in the day, as Miss Bathgate sat for ten minutes in Mrs. M'Cosh's shining kitchen and drank a dish of tea, she gave her opinion of the lodger.

"Awfu' English an' wi' a' the queer daft ways o' gentry. 'Oh, Miss Bathgate,' a' the time. They tell me Miss Reston's considered a beauty in London. It's no' ma idea o' beauty--a terrible lang neck an' a wee shilpit bit face, an' sic a height! I'm fair feared for ma gasaliers.

An' forty if she's a day. But verra pleasant, ye ken. I aye think there maun be something wrang wi' folk that's as pleasant as a' that--owre sweet to be wholesome, like a frost.i.t tattie! ... The maid's ca'ed Miss Mawson. She speaks even on. The wumman's a fair clatter-vengeance, an' I dinna ken the one-hauf she says. I think the puir thing's _defeecient_!"

CHAPTER IV

" ... Ruth, all heart and tenderness Who wept, like Chaucer's Prioress, When Dash was smitten: Who blushed before the mildest men, Yet waxed a very Corday when You teased the kitten."

AUSTIN DOBSON.

Before seeking her stony couch at the end of her first day at Priorsford, Pamela finished the letter begun in the morning to her brother.

" ... I began this letter in the morning and now it is bedtime. Robinson Crusoe is no longer solitary: the island is inhabited. My first visitors arrived about 11 a.m.--a small boy and a dog--an extremely good-looking little boy and a well-bred fox-terrier. They sat on the garden wall until I invited them in, when they ate chocolates and biscuits, and the boy offered to repeat poetry. I expected 'Casabianca' or the modern equivalent, but instead I got the song from Hippolytus, 'O take me to the Mountains, O.' It was rather surprising, but when he invited me to go with him to his home, which is next door, it was more surprising still. Instead of finding another small villa like Hillview with a breakneck stair and poky little rooms, I found a real old cottage. The room I was taken into was about the nicest I ever saw. I think it would have fulfilled all your conditions as to the proper furnishing of a room; indeed, now that I think of it, it was quite a man's room.

"It had a polished floor and some good rugs, and creamy yellow walls with delicious coloured prints. There were no ornaments except some fine old bra.s.s: solid chairs and a low, wide-seated sofa, and books everywhere.

"The shape of the room is delightfully unusual. It is long and rather low-ceilinged, and one end comes almost to a point like the bow of a ship. There is a window with a window-seat in the bow, and as the house stands high on a slope and faces west, you look straight across the river to the hills, and almost have the feeling that you are sailing into the sunset.

"In this room a girl sat, darning stockings and crying quietly to herself--crying because her brother David had gone to Oxford the day before, and she was afraid he would find it hard work to live on his scholarship with the small help she could give him, afraid that he might find himself shabby and feel it bitter, afraid that he might not come back to her the kind, clear-eyed boy he had gone away.