The Setons Part 42

The days drew in, and the Setons settled down for the winter. James Seton occupied himself for several hours in the day writing a history of the district, and found it a great interest. He said little about the war, and told his daughter he had prayed for grace to hold his peace; but he was a comforter to the people round when the war touched their homes.

Elizabeth was determined that she would have busy days. She became the Visitor for the district for the Soldiers' and Sailors' Families a.s.sociation; she sang at war-concerts; she amused her father and Buff; she knitted socks and wrote letters. She went to Glasgow as often as she could be spared to visit her friends in the Gorbals, and came back laden with tales for her father--tales that made him laugh with tears in his eyes, for it was "tragical mirth."

To mothers who lost their sons she was a welcome visitor. They never felt her out of place, or an embarra.s.sment, this tall golden-haired creature, as she sat on a wooden chair by the kitchen fire and listened and understood and cried with them. They brought out their pitiful treasures for her--the half-finished letter that had been found in "Jimmy's" pocket when death overtook him, the few French coins, the picture-postcard of his wee sister--and she held them tenderly and reverently while they told the tale of their grief.

"Oh! ma wee Jimmie," one poor mother lamented to her. "Little did I think I wud never see him again. The nicht he gaed awa' he had to be at the station at nine o'clock, and he said nane o' us were to gang wi'

him. I hed an awfu' guid supper for him, for I thinks to masel', 'It's no' likely the laddie'll ever see a dacent meal in France,' an' he likit it rare weel. An' syne he lookit at the time, an' he says, 'I'll awa' then,' an' I juist turned kinda seeck-like when he said it. He said guid-bye to the la.s.ses an' wee John, but he never said guid-bye to me. Na. He was a sic a man, ye ken, an' he didna want to greet--eighteen he was, ma wee bairn. I tell't the ithers to keep back, an' I gaed oot efter him to the stair-heid. He stood on the top step, an' he lookit at me, 'S'long, then, Mither,' he says. An' he gaed doon twa-three steps, an' he stoppit again, an' 'S'long, Mither,' he says.

Syne he got to the turn o' the stair, an' he stood an' lookit as if he juist cudna gang--I can see him noo, wi' his Glengarry bunnet c.o.c.kit that gallant on his heid--and he cried, 'S'long, Mither,' an' he ran doon the stair--ma wee laddie."

It was astonishing to Elizabeth how quickly the women became quite at home with those foreign places with the strange outlandish names that swallowed up their men.

"Ay," one woman told her (this was later), "I sent oot a plum-puddin'

in a cloth to ma son Jake--I sent twa o' them, an' I said to him that wan o' them was for Dan'l Scott--his mither was a neebor o' mine an' a dacent wumman an' she's deid--an' Jake wasna near Dan'l at the time, but the first chance he got he tuk the puddin' an' he rum'led a' roond Gally Polly until he fand him--and then they made a nicht o't."

Evidently, in her mind "Gally Polly" was a jovial sort of place, rather like Argyle Street on a Sat.u.r.day night. As Elizabeth told her father, Glasgow people gave a homely, cosy feeling to any part of the world they went to--even to the blasted, sh.e.l.l-strewn fields of Flanders and Gallipoli.

The winter wore on, and Arthur Townshend got his commission and went to France.

Elizabeth sent him a parcel every week, and the whole household contributed to it. Marget baked cakes, Mrs. Laidlaw made treacle-toffee, Mr. Seton sent books, Buff painted pictures, and Elizabeth put in everything she could think of. But much though he appreciated the parcels he liked the letters more.

In November she wrote to him: "We have heard this morning that Alan's regiment has landed in France. He thinks he may get a few days' leave, perhaps next month. It would be joyful if he were home for Christmas.

"Poor old Walter, hung up in the Secretariat, comforts himself that his leave is due next year, and hopes--hopes, the wicked one!--that the war will still be going on then. Your letters are a tremendous interest. I read parts of them to Father and Buff, and last night your tale of the wild Highlander who was 'King of Ypres' so excited them that Father got up to shut the door--you know how he does when he is moved over anything--and Buff spun round the room like a teetotum, telling it all over again, with himself as hero. That child gives himself the most rich and varied existence spinning romances in which he is the central figure. He means to be a Hero when he grows up (an improbable profession!) but I expect school will teach him to be an ordinary sensible boy. And what a pity that will be! By the way, you won't get any more Bible pictures from him. Father had to forbid them. Buff was allowing his fancy to play too freely among sacred subjects, poor old pet!

"The war is turning everything topsy-turvy. You never thought to acquire the dignity of a second lieutenant, and I hardly expected to come down the social scale with a rattle, but so it is. I am a housemaid. Our invaluable Ellen has gone to make munitions and I am trying to take her place. You see, I can't go and make munitions, because I must stay with Father and Buff, but it seemed a pity to keep an able-bodied woman to sweep and dust our rooms for us when I could quite well do it. Marget waits the table now, and Mrs. Laidlaw helps her with the kitchen work.

"Ellen was most unwilling to go--she had been five years with us, and she clings like ivy to people she is accustomed to--but when her sister wrote about the opportunity for clever hands and that a place was open for her if she would take it, I unclung her, and now she writes to me so contentedly that I am sure that she is clinging round munitions. We miss her dreadfully, not only for her work but for her nice gentle self; but I flatter myself that I am acting understudy quite well. And I enjoy it. The daily round, the common task don't bore me one bit.

True, it is always the same old work and the same old dust, but _I_ am different every day--some days on the heights, some days in the _howes_. I try to be very methodical, and I 'turn out' the rooms as regularly as even Mrs. Thomson, that cleanest of women, could desire.

And there is no tonic like it. No matter how anxious and depressed I may be when I begin to clean a bedroom, by the time I have got the furniture back in its place, the floor polished with beeswax and turpentine, and clean covers on the toilet-table, my spirits simply won't keep from soaring. You will be startled to hear that I rise at 6 a.m. I like to get as much done as possible before breakfast, and I find that when I have done 'the nastiest thing in the day' and get my feet on to the floor, it doesn't matter whether it is six o'clock or eight. Only, my cold bath is very cold at that early hour--but I think of you people in France and pour contempt on my shivering self. To lighten our labours, we have got a vacuum cleaner, one of the kind you stand on and work from side to side. Buff delights to help with this thing, and he and I see-saw together. Sometimes we sing 'A life on the ocean wave,' which adds greatly to the hilarity of the occasion. By the time the war is over I expect to be so healthy and wealthy and wise that I shall want to continue to be a housemaid....

"I don't suppose life at the Front is just all you would have our fancy paint? In fact, it must be ghastly beyond all words, and how you all stand it I know not. I simply can't bear to be comfortable by the fireside--but that is silly, for I know the only thing that keeps you all going is the thought that we are safe and warm at home. The war has come very near to us these last few days. A boy whom we knew very well--Tommy Elliot--has fallen. They have a place near here. His father was killed in the Boer War and Tommy was his mother's only child. He was nineteen and just got his commission before war broke out. The pride of him! And how Buff and Billy and Thomas lay at his feet! He was the nicest boy imaginable--never thought it beneath his dignity to play with little boys, or be sweet to his mother. I never heard anyone with such a hearty laugh. It made you laugh to hear it. Thank G.o.d he found so much to laugh at, and so little reason for tears.

"I went over to see Mrs. Elliot. I hardly dared to go, but I couldn't stay away. She was sitting in the room they call the 'summer parlour.'

It is a room I love in summer, full of dark oak and coolness and sweet-smelling flowers, but cold and rather dark in winter. She is a woman of many friends, and the writing-table was heaped with letters and telegrams--very few of them opened. She seemed glad to see me, and was calm and smiling; but the stricken look in her eyes made me behave like an utter idiot. When I could speak I suggested that I had better go away, but she began to speak about him, and I thought it might help her to have a listener who cared too. She told me why she was sitting in the summer parlour. She had used it a great deal for writing, and he had always come in that way, so that he would find her just at once.

'Sometimes,' she said, 'I didn't turn my head, for I knew he liked to "pounce"--a relic from the little-boy days when he was a black puma.'

Her smile when she said it broke one's heart. 'If I didn't happen to be here, he went from room to room, walking warily with his nailed boots on the polished floors, saying "Mother! Mother!" until he found me.'

"_How are the dead raised up? and with what bodies do they come?_ I suppose that is the most important question in the world to us all, and we seek for the answer as they who dig for hid treasure. But all the sermons preached and all the books written about it help not at all, for the preachers and the writers are as ignorant as everybody else. My own firm belief is that G.o.d, who made us with the power of loving, who thought of the spring and gave young things their darling funny ways, will not fail us here. He will know that to Tommy's mother the light of heaven, which is neither of the sun nor the moon but a light most precious, even like a jasper stone clear as crystal, will matter nothing unless it shows her Tommy in his old homespun coat, with his laughing face, ready to 'pounce'; and that she will bid the harpers harping on their harps of gold still their noise while she listens for the sound of boyish footsteps and a voice that says 'Mother!

Mother!' ...

"We read some of the many letters together. They were all so kind and full of real sympathy, but I noticed that she pushed carelessly aside those that talked of her own feelings and kept those that talked of what a splendid person Tommy was.

"There was one rather smudged-looking envelope without a stamp, and we wondered where it had come from. It was from Buff! He had written it without asking anyone's advice, and had walked the three miles to deliver it. I think that grimy little letter did Mrs. Elliot good. We had read so many letters, all saying the same thing, all saying it more or less beautifully, one had the feeling that one was being sluiced all over with sympathy. Buff's was different. It ran:

"'I am sorry that Tommy is killed for he had a cheery face and I liked him. But it can't be helped. He will be quite comfortable with G.o.d and I hope that someone is being kind to old Pepper for he liked him too.--Your aff. friend

David Stuart Seton.

"'P.S.--I'm not allowed to draw riligus pictures now or I would have shown you G.o.d being very glad to see Tommy.'

"'Old Pepper' is a mongrel that Tommy rescued and was kind to, and it was so like Buff to think of the feelings of the dumb animal.

"Tommy's mother held the letter in her hand very tenderly, and the only tears I saw her shed dropped on it. Then 'Let us go out and look for old Pepper,' she said, 'for "he liked him too."'

"I came home very heavy-hearted, trying to comfort myself concerning those splendid boys.

"To die for one's country is a great privilege--G.o.d knows I don't say that lightly, for any day I may hear that you or Alan have died that death--and to those boys the honour has been given in the very springtime of their days.

"Most of us part from our lives reluctantly: they are taken from us, and we go with shivering, shrinking feet down to the brink of the River, but those sons of the morning throw their lives from them and _spring_ across. I think G.o.d will look very kindly at our little boys.

"And smug, middle-aged people say, 'Poor lads!' They dare to pity the rich dead. Oh! the dull people dragging out their span of years without ever finding out what living means!

"But it breaks one's heart, the thought of the buried hopes. I have been thinking of the father, the man in business who was keeping things going until his boy would be through and ready to help him. There are so many of them in Glasgow, and I used to like to listen to them talking to each other in the car coming out from business. They boasted so innocently of their boys, of this one's skill at cricket, that one's prowess in the football field.

"And now this cheery business man has no boy, only a room with a little bed in the corner, a bookshelf full of adventure--stories and battered school-books, a cricket bat and a bag of golf clubs; a wardrobe full of clothes, and a most vivid selection of ties and socks, for the boy who lies in France was very smart in his nice boyish way, and brushed his hair until it shone. Oh! I wonder had anybody time to stroke just once that shining head before it was laid away in the earth? remembering that over the water hearts would break with yearning to see it again.

"It isn't so bad when doleful people get sorrow, they at least have the miserable satisfaction of saying they had always known it would come, but when happy hearts are broken, when blythe people fall silent--the sadness of it haunts one.

"To talk of cheerier subjects. Aunt Alice is a heroine. Who would have thought of her giving up her house for a hospital! Of course we always knew, didn't we? that she was the most golden-hearted person in existence, but it has taken a European war to make her practical. Now she writes me long letters of advice about saving, and food values, and is determined that she at least won't be a drag on her country in winning the war.

"Talk about saving, I asked one of my women the other day if she had ever tried margarine. 'No,' she said earnestly, 'I niver touch it; an'

if I'm oot at ma tea an' no' verra sure if it's b.u.t.ter, I juist tak'

jeely.' I said no more.

"And now, my very dear, it is perilously near midnight, and there is not the slightest sound in this rather frightening old house, and not the slightest sound on the moor outside, and I am getting rather scared sitting up all alone. Besides, six o'clock comes very soon after midnight! I am so sleepy, with all my housework, that, like the herd laddie, I get no good out of my bed.--Goodnight, E."

A more contented woman than Kirsty Hamilton _nee_ Christie it would have been difficult to find. Andrew Hamilton and Langhope Manse made to her "Paradise enow." The little hard lines had gone from her face, and she bustled about, a most efficient mistress, encouraging the small maid to do her best work, and helping with her own capable hands. She planned and cooked most savoury, thrifty dinners, and made every shilling do the work of two; it was all sheer delight to her.

House-proud and husband-proud, she envied no one, and in fact sincerely pitied every other woman because she could not have her Andrew.

July, August, and September were three wonderful months to the Hamiltons. They spent them settling into the new house (daily finding new delights in it), working in the garden, and getting acquainted with the congregation.

After their one o'clock dinner, on good afternoons, they mounted their bicycles and visited outlying members. Often they were asked to wait for tea, such a fine farmhouse tea as town-bred Kirsty had never dreamed of; and then they cycled home in the gloaming, talking, talking all the time, until they came to their own gate--how good that sounded, _their own gate_--and having wheeled their bicycles to the shed, they would walk round the garden hand in hand, like happy children.

Andrew had generally something to show Kirsty, some small improvement, for he was a man of his hands; or if there was nothing new to see, they would always go and again admire his chief treasures--a mossy bank that in spring would be covered with violets, a stone d.y.k.e in which rock plants had been encouraged to grow, and a little humpbacked bridge hung with ferns.

The war did not trouble Kirsty much. She was rather provoked that it should have happened, for it hurt the church attendance and sadly thinned the choir, and when Andrew had finished reading the papers he would sometimes sit quite silent, looking before him, which made her vaguely uneasy.

Her own family were untouched by it. Archie had no thought of going to train, the notion seemed to him ludicrous in the extreme, but he saw his way to making some money fishing in the troubled waters. The Rev.

Johnston Christie confined his usefulness to violent denunciations of the Kaiser from the pulpit every Sunday. He had been much impressed by a phrase used by a prominent Anglican bishop about the Nailed Hand beating the Mailed Fist--neat and telling he considered it, and used it on every possible occasion.

One afternoon in late October the Hamiltons were walking in their garden. They had been lunching at Etterick, and were going in shortly to have tea cosily by the study fire. It was a still day, with a touch of winter in the air--_back end_, the village people called it, but the stackyards were stocked, the potatoes and turnips were in pits, the byres were full of feeding cattle, so they were ready for what winter would bring them.

To Andrew Hamilton, country-born and bred, every day was a delight.