The Setons Part 30

"Have you any more tea?" asked Mr. Seton. "I don't think I've had more than three cups."

"Four, I'm afraid," said Elizabeth; "but there's lots here."

"These are very small cups," said Mr. Seton, as he handed his to be filled again. "You will have to add that to your list of the faults of the clergy--a feminine fondness for tea."

The conversation drifted back, led by Mr. Stevenson, to the great and radical differences between England and Scotland. To emphasize these differences seemed to give him much satisfaction. He reminded them that Robert Louis Stevenson had said that never had he felt himself so much in a foreign country as on his first visit to England.

"It's quite true," he added. "I know myself I'm far more at home in France. And I don't mind my French being laughed at, I know it's bad, but it's galling to be told that my English is full of Scotticisms.

They laughed at me in London when I talked about 'snibbing' the windows."

"They would," said Elizabeth, and she laughed too. "They 'fasten' their windows, or do something feeble like that. We're being very rude, Arthur; stand up for your country."

"I only wish to remark that you Scots settle down very comfortably among us alien English. Perhaps getting all the best jobs consoles you for your absence from Scotland."

"Not a bit of it," Elizabeth a.s.sured him. "We're home-sick all the time: 'My feet they traivel England, but I'm _deein'_ for the North.'

But I'm afraid Mr. Stevenson will look on me coldly when I confess to a great affection for England. Leafy Warwick lanes, lush meadowlands, the lilied reaches of the Cherwell: I love the mellow beauty of it all.

It's not my land, not my wet moorlands and wind-swept hills, but I'm bound to admit that it is a good land."

"Yes," said Mr. Stevenson, "England's a beautiful rich country, but----"

"But," Elizabeth finished for him, "it's just the 'wearifu' South' to you?"

"That's so."

"You see," said Elizabeth, nodding at Arthur Townshend; "we're hopeless."

"Do you know what you remind me of?" he asked.

"Something disgusting, I can guess by your face."

"You remind me of a St. Andrew's Day dinner somewhere in the Colonies.... By the way, where's Buff?"

"Having tea alone in the nursery, at his own request."

"Oh! the poor old chap," said Arthur. "May I go and talk to him?"

Buff, it must be explained, was in disgrace--he said unjustly. The fault was not his, he contended. It was first of all the fault of Elizabeth, who had once climbed the Matterhorn and who had fired him with a desire to be a mountaineer; and secondly, it was the fault of Aunt Alice, who had given him on his birthday a mountaineering outfit, complete with felt hat with feather, rucksack, ice-axe, and scarlet-threaded Alpine rope. Having climbed walls and trees and out-houses until they palled, he had looked about for something more difficult, and one frosty morning, when sitting on the Kirkes' ash-pit roof, Thomas drew his attention to the snowy glimmer of a conservatory three gardens away; it had a conical roof and had been freshly painted.

Thomas suggested that it looked like a snow mountain. Buff, never having seen a snow mountain, agreed, adding that it was very much the shape of the Matterhorn. They decided to make the ascent that very day.

Buff said that as it was the first ascent of the season the thing to do was to take a priest with them to bless it. He had seen a picture of a priest blessing the real Matterhorn. Billy, he said, had better be the priest.

Thomas objected, "I don't think Mamma would like Billy to be a priest and bless things;" but he gave in when Buff pointed out the n.o.bility of the life.

They climbed three garden-walls, and wriggled Indian-fashion across three back-gardens; then, roping themselves securely together, they began the ascent. All went well. They reached the giddy summit, and, perilously poised, Buff was explaining to Billy his duties as a priest, when a shout came from below--an angry shout. Buff tried to look down, slipped, and clutched at the nearest support, which happened to be Billy, and the next instant, with an anguished yell, the priest fell through the mountain, dragging his companions with him.

By rights, to use the favourite phrase of Thomas, they should have been killed, but except for sc.r.a.pes and bruises they were little the worse.

Great, however, was the damage done to gla.s.s and plants, and loud and bitter were the complaints of the owner.

The three culprits were forbidden to visit each other for a week, their pocket-money was stopped, and various other privileges were curtailed.

Buff, seeing in the devastation wrought by his mountaineering ambitions no shadow of blame to himself, but only the mysterious working of Providence, was indignant, and had told his sister that he would prefer to take tea alone, indicating by his manner that the company of his elders in their present att.i.tude of mind was far from congenial to him.

"May I go and talk to him?" Arthur Townshend asked, and was on his feet to go when the drawing-room door was kicked from outside, the handle turned noisily, and Buff entered.

In one day Buff played so many parts that it was difficult for his family to keep in touch with him. Sometimes he was grave and n.o.ble as befitted a knight of the Round Table, sometimes furtive and sly as a detective; again he was a highwayman, dauntless and debonair. To-night he was none of these things; to-night, in the rebound from a day's brooding on wrongs, he was frankly comic. He stood poised on one leg, in his mouth some sort of a whistle on which he performed piercingly until his father implored him to desist, when he removed the thing, and smiling widely on the company said, "But I must whistle. I'm 'the Wee Bird that cam'.'"

Elizabeth and her father laughed, and Arthur asked, "_What_ does he say he is?"

"It's a Jacobite song," Mr. Seton explained,--"'A wee bird cam' tae oor ha' door.' He's an absurd child."

"Lessons done, Buff?" his sister asked him.

"Surely the fowls of the air are exempt from lessons," Arthur protested; but Buff, remembering that although he had allowed himself to unbend for the moment, his wrongs were still there, said in a dignified way that he had learned his lessons, and having abstracted a cheese-cake from the tea-table, he withdrew to a table in a corner with his paint-box. As he mixed colours boldly he listened, in an idle way, to the conversation that engaged his elders. It sounded to him dull, and he wondered, as he had wondered many times before, why people chose the subjects they did when there was a whole world of wonders to talk about and marvel at.

"Popularity!" Elizabeth was saying. "It's the easiest thing in the world to be popular. It only needs what Marget calls 'tack.' Appear always slightly more stupid than the person you are speaking to; always ask for information; never try to teach anybody anything; remember that when people ask for criticism they really only want praise. And of course you must never, never make personal remarks unless you have something pleasant to say. 'How tired you look!' simply means 'How plain you look!' It is so un-understanding of people to say things like that. If, instead of their silly, rude remarks, they would say, 'What a successful hat!' or 'That blue is delicious with your eyes!' and watch how even the most wilted people brighten and freshen, they wouldn't be such fools again. I don't want them to tell lies, but there is always _something_ they can praise truthfully."

Her father nodded approval, and Arthur said, "Yes, but a popular man or woman needs more than tact. To be agreeable and to flatter is not enough--you must be tremendously _worth while_, so that people feel honoured by your interest. I think there is a great deal more in popularity than you allow. Watch a really popular woman in a roomful of people, and see how much of herself she gives to each one she talks to, and what generous manners she has. Counterfeit sympathy won't do, it is easily detected. It is all a question really of manners, but one must be born with good manners; they aren't acquired."

"Generous manners!" said Mr. Seton. "I like the phrase. There are people who give one the impression of having to be sparing of their affection and sympathy because their goods are all, so to speak, in the shop-window, and if they use them up there is nothing to fall back upon. Others can offer one a largesse because their life is very rich within. But, again, there are people who have the wealth within but lack the power of expression. It is the fortunate people who have been given the generous manners--Friday's bairns, born loving and giving--others have the warm instincts but they are 'unwinged from birth.'"

Stewart Stevenson nodded his head to show his approval of the sentiment, and said, "That is so."

Elizabeth laughed. "There was a great deal of feeling in the way you said that, Mr. Stevenson."

"Well," he said, with rather a rueful smile, "I've only just realized it--I'm one of the people with shabby manners."

"You have not got shabby manners," said Elizabeth indignantly. "Arthur, when I offer a few light reflections on life and manners there is no need to delve--you and Father--into the subject and make us uncomfortable imagining we haven't got things. Personally, I don't aspire to such heights, and I flatter myself I'm rather a popular person."

"An ideal minister's daughter, I'm told," said Arthur.

"Pouf! I'm certainly not that. I'm sizes too large for the part. I have positively to uncoil myself like a serpent when I sit at bedsides. I'm as long as a day without bread, as they say in Spain. But I do try very hard to be nice to the church folk. My face is positively stiff with grinning when I come home from socials and such like. An old woman said to me one day, 'A kirk is rale like a shop. In baith o' them ye've to humour yer customers!'"

"A very discerning old woman," said her father. "But you must admit, Elizabeth, that our 'customers' are worth the humouring."

"Oh! they are--except for one or two fellows of the baser sort--and I do think they appreciate our efforts."

This smug satisfaction on his sister's part was too much for Buff in his state of revolt against society. He finished laying a carmine cloud across a deeply azure sky, and said:

"It's a queer thing that _all_ the Elizabeths in the world have been nasty--Queen Elizabeth and--and"--failing to find another historical instance, he concluded rather lamely, pointing with his paint-brush at his sister--"you!"

"This," Mr. Townshend remarked, "is a most unprovoked attack!"

"Little toad," said Elizabeth, looking kindly at her young brother.

"Ah, well, Buff, when you are old and grey and full of years and meet with ingrat.i.tude----"

"When I'm old," said Buff callously, "you'll very likely be dead!"

She laughed. "I dare say. Anyway, I hope I don't live to be _very_ old."

"Why?" Mr. Stevenson asked her. "Do you dread old age? I suppose all women do."