inchkeld was a most pleasant place in which to have one's home—a city set among hills and watered by a broad river; and surely no young and witless couple ever had a kinder and more indulgent congregation than we had.
"the first sunday i appeared in church i was almost dead with fright. i had to walk through the church to reach the manse seat, and every eye seemed to be boring into me like a gimlet. as if that weren't bad enough, i was accosted on my way out by a tall, bland elder, who said he supposed i would want to teach a class in the sabbath school. as a matter of fact, he supposed quite wrong, for it had never entered into my head that such an awful duty would be required of me. think—until a short time before i myself had been a scholar (and a restless, impertinent one at that!), and the very thought of trying to control a class made my brain reel. but i was as clay in the hands of this suave highland potter, who went on to tell me that the last minister's wife had carried on a most successful class for older girls. 'she, of course,' he added, 'was a niece of the late lord clarke,' as if that fact explained any amount of talent for teaching the young. he led me away—i was now in a state of passive despair—and introduced me to a class as their new teacher. there were seven of them, girls about fifteen—always, i think, the worst and a most impudent age (you were a brat at fifteen, ann!), and they fixed me with seven pairs of eyes, round brown eyes, rather like brandy-balls—i suppose they couldn't all have had brown eyes, but the general effect was of brandy-balls—silently taking me in. i heard the elder telling them how honoured they were to have the minister's wife as teacher; then i was left with them. later on, when i got to know the girls, i sometimes laughed at the terror of the first sunday. they were the nicest girls, really, gentle and kind; but that day they seemed to me inhuman little owls. they told me the lesson—one of the parables—but my mind was a blank, and i could think of no comment to make over it. i stumbled and stuttered, every moment getting more hot and ashamed, and finally went home, feeling, in spite of my sealskin coat and prune bonnet, the most miserably inadequate minister's wife that had ever tried to reign in a manse, scourged as with whips by the thought of the late lord clarke's niece. what a comfort your father always was! he made it seem all right in a twinkling, assured me that i needn't teach a class unless i liked, but vowed that if i did no one could teach it half so well; and as for the late lord clarke's niece, he had never seen her, but he was sure she was a long-faced woman, with no sense of humour."
"i know," said ann. "father was always singularly comforting. when we hurt ourselves, you and marget invariably took the gloomiest view, looked up medical books and prophesied dire results. once i got my thumb badly crushed and the nail torn off while swinging on a see-saw. marget at once said 'lock-jaw!' i hadn't a notion what that was, but it had an eerily fatal sound, and i crept away to father's study to try and lose my fears in a book. presently father came in, and i rolled out of the arm-chair i had cuddled into and ran to show him my bandaged hand.
"'oh, father!' i cried, 'will i take lock-jaw and will i die?' i can see him now, all fresh from the cold air, laughing at me, yet sorry for me, lifting me up in his strong arms, saying, 'poor wifie, were they frightening you? lock-jaw? no. let's look at it. yes, i see the nail's off. had we better get a celluloid one till the new one grows? try and keep a cloth on it, like a good lassie, and it will soon be well.' and then peace slid into my soul, and i sat on his knee and he told me a story. i can quite see what a wonderful minister my father was. it was that air of surety, of steadfastness, that gave people such a lift, and that firm, comforting hand that touched things so gently. robbie had the same; so had the little lad.... but to go back to inchkeld and the congregation——"
"yes. it was a very flourishing congregation. every sunday it crammed the little church, and sometimes forms had to be brought in. the goodness of the people was almost destroying. they wanted to share everything they had with us. constantly such things as a hare, or pheasants, or a 'black bun,' or several cakes of shortbread would arrive—and we had so few to eat them. inchkeld was a sociable place, and i had lots of callers and no lack of opportunities for wearing my wedding finery. those weren't the days of afternoon tea. cake and wine were served in the drawing-room with the white and gilt wall-paper and the red rep furniture—neat squares of wedding-cake in the brand new silver cake-basket."
"oooh!" groaned ann. "can't i see those squares of wedding-cake! i hope no hungry children ever came to see you. do you remember taking me as a small child to call on some newly married people in burntisland?—i think i was taken because i was a firebrand at home—and tea came in on a silver tray, all prinked out with ruffly d'oyleys—scones about the size of half-crowns and a frightfully newly married shining cake-basket, holding inches of wedding-cake. i was passionately hungry, and could have eaten the whole show and never known it; but i sat on a stool and nibbled a scone, and tried not to make any crumbs, and then i was handed the cake-basket. we had been taught always to take the bit nearest us, and the bit nearest me—alas!—was the smallest bit in the basket, with only the minutest fragment of almond icing and sugar attached. i would fain have snatched two bits, but my upbringing was too strong for me, and i took the fragment. it was far the most delicious thing i had ever tasted. surely, i thought, this must be what angels eat, and for the first time in my faulty life i wished to be an angel. it was over in a second, though i ate it crumb by crumb and kept the sugar for the last; and then i sat and gazed hungrily for another bit; but no one noticed me, no one brought the shining cake-basket again within my reach. i don't think that newly married wife could ever have come to any good—a woman who hadn't the sense to feed a hungry child! you think i spoil our children, but it's because i remember the awfulness of having a very little of a good thing."
"i remember that visit to burntisland," mrs. douglas said. "i had to take you into a shop on the way home and buy you biscuits. your father wanted some, too—a handed-round tea was no use to him; he liked a breakfast-cup filled several times. i don't think i was ever guilty of starving children of wedding-cake. i got surfeited with it myself, and a big family from across the way used to come in to help us away with all that was left over from our parties. we were glad to get things eaten up in those days. both my own mother and your father's mother constantly sent us boxes of eatables as if we had been on a desert island instead of in a city of shops—great mutton-hams, and haggis, and noble selkirk bannocks; i was afraid of them coming to our little household. how glad i would have been to see them in later years, when i had growing children to feed! but the kind hands that packed them were still.... we could entertain only in a very small way in our very small house, but we were asked to quite a lot of dinner-parties. they were evenings of dread to me. i was so shockingly bad at making conversation. i blushed fiercely when anyone spoke to me, and must have presented an appearance of such callowness that i provoked pity in the hearts of kindly people. one dear old lady said to me, 'my dear, have you cut your wisdom teeth yet?' ... in september mark was born. it was prayer-meeting night, and maggie ann carelessly let the cat eat my canary. they didn't tell me about it until i asked why i wasn't hearing him singing. mark was a tiny, delicate baby, but he was perfect in our eyes. we looked with distaste at large fat children, who made poor little mark look so puny and fragile, and told each other that they were 'coarse,' and that we were glad our baby wasn't like that. when i was able to travel we set off with our precious new possession to etterick. agatha had been with us most of the summer, but my mother didn't come; she liked to stay in her own house and welcome us there."
"a most detached woman, my grandmother," said ann.
"you are rather like her, ann," said mrs. douglas.
"yes, i have the same aversion to staying in other people's houses, and i share her dislike to the casual kissing that so many people indulge in—people who are mere acquaintances. you should only kiss really great friends at really serious times, and then it means something."
mrs. douglas laughed. "nobody ever took a liberty with your grandmother. my father was utterly different, the most approachable of men. people were always asking favours from him; he liked them to. he didn't care how much he went out of his way to help anyone, and his hand was never out of his pocket."
"you must be exactly like grandfather. i think you are one of the very few people left living in the world who do take trouble about their fellow-mortals. the rest of us are too selfish to bother."
"i like to be kind," said mrs. douglas, "but i don't take any credit for being kind. it's just my nature to want to give. the people who hate to give and yet make themselves do it are the ones who ought to be commended. it has always been my great desire to add a little to the happiness of the world, and i would never forgive myself if i thought i had added by one jot or tittle to the pain."
"i am very sure you haven't done that," ann assured her. "you are the very kindest of funny little bodies, and when i call you 'ella wheeler wilcox' i don't really mean it. but you must admit that it is often very vicarious kindness, and the burden of it falls on your family. oh, the deplorable people who have come to us 'for a stop' because you thought they were lonely and neglected! of course, they were, but it was because it almost killed people to entertain them; there's a reason for everything in this world. but what a shame to laugh at your efforts! never mind. there are those
'who, passing through baca's vale,
therein do dig up wells,'
and you are one of them. but to go on with your life. didn't you leave inchkeld quite soon after mark was born? i know robbie and jim and i thought it very hard lines that he should have been born in a lovely old historic city, while the rest of us had to see the light first amid coalpits and linoleum factories. mark never let us forget it, either."
"mark was two months old when we left inchkeld. when the kirkcaple congregation called your father he felt he ought to go. oh! but we were a thoughtless couple. it never gave me a thought to leave the people who had been so good to us. i just took everybody's kindness as a matter of course. i was too young to realise how rare such kindness is, and their interest in the baby, and their desire to have us stay in inchkeld seemed to me no more than natural. i was amused and pleased at the thought of going to a new place and a new house. you can hardly get changes enough when you are eighteen. in middle life one's most constant prayer is that god will let things remain as they are. what was that you were reading me the other night? i think it was from charles lamb."
ann leant back in her chair and pulled a little green book from a bookshelf. "this, i think it was," she said, and read:
"'i am content to stand still at the age to which i am arrived; i, and my friends, to be no younger, no richer, no handsomer. i do not want to be wearied by age, or drop like mellow fruit, as they say, into the grave....'"
"poor charles lamb!" said mrs. douglas, shaking her head. "there are times when one would like to stand still, where we seem to reach a pleasant, rich plain and are at our ease, and friends are many, and life is full of zest.... i don't know whether it was wise to leave inchkeld. your grandfather douglas always regretted it. when he visited us at kirkcaple one remark he always made was: 'a great pity mark ever left inchkeld.' we used to wait for it and the funny way he had of clearing his throat after every sentence."
