The Setons Part 40

"I'm an idiot, Marget, but somehow to-night it all seemed to come back.

You and I have seen--changes.... You're a kind old dear, anyway; it's a good thing we always have you."

"It is that," Marget agreed. "What aboot the men's breakfasts the morn's morning? I doot we hevna left dishes to gang roond." She stood and talked until she had seen Elizabeth drink the tea and eat the toast, and then herded her upstairs to bed.

One day in the end of June, Elizabeth fulfilled her promise to Thomas, and wrote to Mrs. Kirke asking if her two sons could be dispatched on a certain date by a certain train, and arrangements would be made for meeting them at the junction.

It was a hot shining afternoon, and the Setons were having tea by the burnside.

Mr. Jamieson (the lame Sunday-school teacher from the church in Glasgow) was staying with them for a fortnight, and he sat in a comfortable deck-chair with a book in his lap; but he read little, the book of Nature was more fascinating than even Sir Walter. His delight in his surroundings touched Elizabeth. "To think," she said to her father, "that we never thought of asking Mr. Jamieson to Etterick before! Lumps of selfishness, that's what we are."

Mr. Seton suggested that it was more want of thought.

"It amounts to the same thing," said his daughter. "I wonder if it would be possible to have Bob Scott out here? You know, my little waif with the drunken father? Of course he would corrupt the whole neighbourhood in about two days and be a horribly bad influence with Buff--but I don't believe the poor little chap has ever been in the real country. We must try to plan."

Mr. Seton sat reading _The Times_. He was greatly worried about Ulster, and frequently said "_Tut-tut_" as he read.

Buff had helped Ellen to carry everything out for tea, and was now in the burn, splashing about, building stones into a dam. Buff was very happy. Presently, Mr. Hamilton, the new minister at Langhope, was going to take him in hand and prepare him for school, but in the meantime he attended the village school--a haunt that his soul loved. He modelled his appearances and manners on the friends he made there, acquired a rich Border accent, and was in no way to be distinguished from the other scholars. At luncheon that day, he had informed his family that Wullie Veitch (the ploughman's son) had said, after a scuffle in the playground, "Seton's trampit ma piece fair useless"; and the same youth had summed up the new-comer in a sentence: "Everything Seton says is aither rideeclous or confounded," a judgment which, instead of annoying, amused and delighted both the new-comer and his family.

Things had worked out amazingly well, Elizabeth thought, as she sat with her writing-pad on her knee and looking at her family. Her father seemed better, and was most contented with his life. Buff was growing every day browner and stronger. The house was all in order after the improvements they had made, and was even more charming than she had hoped it would be. The garden was a riot of colour and scent, and a never-ending delight. To her great relief, Marget and Ellen had settled down with Watty Laidlaw and his wife in peace and quiet accord, and had even been heard to say that they _preferred_ the country.

After getting Etterick into order, Elizabeth had worked hard at Langhope Manse.

The wedding had taken place a week before, and tomorrow Andrew Hamilton would bring home his bride.

Elizabeth, with her gift of throwing her whole self into her friends'

interests, was as eager and excited as if she were the bride and hers the new home. True, much of it was not to her liking. She hated a dining-room "suite" covered in Utrecht velvet, and she thought Kirsty's friends had been singularly ill-advised in their choice of wedding presents.

Kirsty had refused to think of looking for old things for her drawing-room. She said in her sensible way that things got old soon enough without starting with them old; and she just hated old faded rugs, there was nothing to beat a good Axminster.

She was very pleased, however, to accept the Seton's spare furniture.

It was solid mid-Victorian, polished and cared-for, and as good as the day it was made. The drawers in the wardrobes and dressing-tables moved with a fluency foreign to the showy present-day "Sheraton" and "Chippendale" suites, and Kirsty appreciated this.

Elizabeth had done her best to make the rooms pretty, and only that morning she had put the finishing touches, and looked round the rooms brave in their fresh chintzes and curtains, sniffed the mingled odours of new paint and sweet-peas, and thought how Kirsty would love it all.

The store-room she had taken especial pains with, and had even wrested treasures in the way of pots and jars from the store-room at Etterick (to Marget's wrath and disgust), and carried them in the pony-cart to help to fill the rather empty shelves at Langhope.

So this sunny afternoon, as Elizabeth rose from her writing and began to pour out the tea, she felt at peace with all mankind.

She arranged Mr. Jamieson's teacup on a little table by his side, and made it all comfortable for him. "Put away the paper, Father," she cried, "and come and have your tea, and help me to count our blessings.

Let's forget Ulster for half an hour."

Mr. Seton obediently laid down the paper and came to the table.

"Dear me," he said, "this is very pleasant."

The bees drowsed among the heather, white b.u.t.terflies fluttered over the wild thyme and the little yellow and white violas that starred the turf, and the sound of the burn and the gentle crying of sheep made a wonderful peace in the afternoon air. Marget's scones and new-made b.u.t.ter and jam seemed more than usually delicious, and--"Aren't we well off?" asked Elizabeth.

Mr. Jamieson looked round him with a sigh of utter content, and Mr.

Seton said, "I wish I thought that the rest of the world was as peaceful as this little glen." He helped himself to jam. "The situation in Ireland seems to grow more hopeless every day; and by the way, Jamieson, did you see that the Emperor of Austria's heir has been a.s.sa.s.sinated along with his wife?"

"I saw that," said Mr. Jamieson. "I hope it won't mean trouble."

"It seems a pointless crime," said Elizabeth.

"Buff, come out of the burn, you water-kelpie, and take your tea."

Buff was trying to drag a large stone from the bed of the stream, and was addressing it as he had heard the stable-boy address the pony--"Stan' up, ye brit! Wud ye, though?"--but at his sister's command he ceased his efforts and crawled up the bank to have his hands dried in his father's handkerchief.

It never took Buff long to eat a meal, and in a very few minutes he had eaten three scones and drunk two cups of milk, and laid himself face down-wards in the heather to ruminate.

"Mr. Jamieson," he said suddenly, "if a robber stole your money and went in a ship to South Africa, how would you get at him?"

Mr. Jamieson, unversed in the ways of criminals, was at a loss.

"I doubt I would just need to lose it," he said.

This was feeble. Buff turned to his father and asked what course he would follow.

"I think," said Mr. Seton, "that I would cable to the police to board the ship at the first port."

Buff rejected this method as tame and unspectacular.

"What would you do, Lizbeth?"

"It depends," said Elizabeth, "on how much money I had. If it was a lot, I would send a detective to recover it. But sending a detective would cost a lot."

Buff thought deeply for a few seconds.

"I know what I would do," he said. "I would send a _bloodhound_--_steerage_."

_CHAPTER XIX_

"How wilt thou do in the swelling of Jordan?"

"As dying, and behold we live."

You know, of course, Gentle Reader, that there can be no end to this little chronicle?

You know that when a story begins in 1913, 1914 will follow, and that in that year certainty came to an end, plans ceased to come to fruition--that, in fact, the lives of all of us cracked across.

Personally, I detest tales that end in the air. I like all the strings gathered up tidily in the last chapter and tied neatly into nuptial knots; so I should have liked to be able to tell you that Elizabeth became a "grateful" wife, and that she and Arthur Townshend lived happily and, in fairy-tale parlance, never drank out of an empty cup; and that Stewart Stevenson ceased to think of Elizabeth (whom he never really approved of) and fell in love with Jessie Thomson, and married her one fine day in "Seton's kirk," and that all Jessie's aspirations after refinement and late dinner were amply fulfilled.

But, alas! as I write (May 1917) the guns still boom continuously out there in France, and there is scarce a rift to be seen in the war-clouds that obscure the day.