Penny Plain Part 35

"The soul's dark cottage, batter'd and decay'd, Lets in the light through c.h.i.n.ks that time has made: Stronger by weakness wiser men become As they draw near to their eternal home: Leaving the old, both worlds at once they view That stand upon the threshold of the new."

EDMUND WALLER.

One day Pamela walked down to Hopetoun to lunch with Mrs. Hope. Augusta had gone away on a short visit and Pamela had promised to spend as much time as possible with her mother.

"You won't be here much longer," Mrs. Hope had said, "so spend as much time with me as you can spare, and we'll talk books and quote poetry, and," she had finished defiantly, "I'll miscall my neighbours if I feel inclined."

It was February now, and there was a hint of spring in the air. The sun was s.h.i.+ning as if trying to make up for the days it had missed, the green shoots were pus.h.i.+ng daringly forth, and a mavis in a holly-bush was chirping loudly and cheerfully. To-morrow they might be plunged back into winter, the green things nipped and discouraged, the birds silent--but to-day it was spring.

Pamela lingered by Tweedside listening to the mavis, looking back at the bridge spanning the river, the church steeple high against the pale blue sky, the little town pouring its houses down to the water's edge.

Hopetoun Woods were still bare and brown, but soon the larches would get their pencils, the beeches would unfurl tiny leaves of living green, and the celandines begin to poke their yellow heads through the carpet of last year's leaves.

Mrs. Hope was sitting close to the window that looked out on the Hopetoun Woods. The spring suns.h.i.+ne and the notes of the mavis had brought to her a rush of memories.

"For what can spring renew More fiercely for us than the need of you."

Her knitting lay on her lap, a pile of new books stood on the table beside her, but her hands were idly folded, and she did not look at the books, did not even notice the suns.h.i.+ne; her eyes were with her heart, and that was far away across the black dividing sea in the last resting-places of her three sons. Wild laddies they had been, never at rest, never out of mischief, and now--"a' quait.i.t noo in the grave."

She turned to greet her visitor with her usual whimsical smile. She had grown very fond of Pamela; they were absolutely at ease with each other, and could enjoy talking, or sitting together in silence.

To-day the conversation was brisk between the two at luncheon. Pamela had been with Jean to Edinburgh and Glasgow on shopping expeditions, and Mrs. Hope was keen to hear all about them.

"I could hardly persuade her to go," Pamela said. "Her argument was, 'Why get clothes from Paris if you can get them in Priorsford?' She only gave in to please me, but she enjoyed herself mightily. We went first to Edinburgh--my first visit except just waiting a train."

"And weren't you charmed? Edinburgh is our own town, and we are inordinately proud of it. It's full of steep streets and east winds and high houses, and you can't move a step without treading on a W.S., but it's a fine place for all that."

"It's a fairy-tale place to see," Pamela said. "The castle at sunset, the sudden glimpses of the Forth, Holyrood dreaming in the mist--these are pictures that will remain with one always. But Glasgow--"

"I know almost nothing of Glasgow," said Mrs. Hope, "but I like the people that come from it. They are not so devoured by gentility as our Edinburgh friends; they are more living, more human...."

"Are Edinburgh people very refined?"

"Oh, some of them can hardly see out of their eyes for gentility. I delight in it myself, though I've never attained to it. I'm told you see it in its finest flower in the suburbs. A friend of mine was going out by train to Colinton, and she overheard two girls talking. One said, 'I was at a dence lest night.' The other, rather condescendingly, replied, 'Oh, really! And who do you dence with out at Colinton?' 'It depends,'

said the first girl. 'Lest night, for instance, I was up to my neck in advocates.' ... Priorsford's pretty genteel too. You know the really genteel by the way they say 'Good-bai.' The rest of us who pride ourselves on not being provincial say--you may have noticed--'Good-ba--a.'"

Pamela laughed, and said she had noticed the superior accent of Priorsford.

"Jean and I were much interested in the difference between Edinburgh and Glasgow shops. Not in the things they sell--the shops in both places are most excellent--but in the manner of selling. The girls in the Edinburgh shops are nice and obliging--the war-time manner doesn't seem to have reached shop-a.s.sistants in Scotland, luckily--but quite Londonish with their manners and their 'Moddom.' In Glasgow, they give one such a feeling of personal interest. You would really think it mattered to them what you chose. They delighted Jean by remarking as she tried on a hat, 'My, you look a treat in that!' We bought a great deal more than we needed, for we hadn't the heart to refuse what was brought with such enthusiasm. 'I don't know what it is about that hat, but it's awful nice somehow Distinctive, if you know what I mean. I think when you get it home you'll like it awful well--' Who would refuse a hat after such a recommendation?"

"Who indeed! Oh, they're a hearty people. Has Jean got the fur coat she coveted?"

"She hasn't. It was a great disappointment, poor child. She was so excited when she saw them being brought in rich profusion, but when she tried them on all desire to possess one left her: they became her so ill. They buried her, somehow. She said herself she looked like 'a mouse under a divot,' whatever that may be, and they really did make her look like five out of any six women one meets in the street. Fur coats are very levelling things. Later on when I get her to London we'll see what can be done. Jean needs careful dressing to bring out that very real but elusive beauty of hers. I persuaded her in the meantime to get a soft cloth coat made with a skunk collar and cuffs.... She was so funny about under-things. I wanted her to get some sets of _crepe-de-Chine_ things, but she was adamant. She didn't at all approve of them, and said she liked under-things that would _boil_. She has always had very dainty things made by herself; Great-aunt Alison taught her to do beautiful fine sewing.... Jean is a delightful person to do things with; she brings such a freshness to everything is never bored, never blase. I was glad to see her so deeply interested in new clothes. I confess to having a deep distrust of a woman who is above trying to make herself attractive. She is an insufferable thing."

"I quite agree, my dear. A woman deliberately careless of her appearance is an offence. But, on the other hand, the opposite can be carried too far. Look at Mrs. Jowett!"

"Oh, dear Mrs. Jowett, with her lace and her delicate, faded tints; and her tears of sentiment and her marvellous maids!"

"A good woman," said Mrs. Hope, "but silly. She fears a draught more than she does the devil. I'm always reminded of her when I read _Weir of Hermiston._ She has many points in common with Mrs. Weir--'a dwaibly body.' Of the two, I really prefer Mrs. Duff-Whalley. _Her_ great misfortune was being born a woman. With all that energy and perfect health, that keen brain and the indomitable strain that never knows when it is beaten, she might have done almost anything. She might have been a Lipton or a Coats, or even gone out and discovered the South Pole, or contested Lloyd George's Welsh seat in the Conservative interest. As a woman she is cribbed and cabined. What she has set herself to do is to force what she calls 'The County' to recognise her, and marry off her girl as well as possible. She has accomplished the first part through sheer perseverance, and I've no doubt she will accomplish the second; the girl is pretty and well dowered. I have a liking for the woman, especially if I haven't seen her for a little. There is some bite in her conversation. Mrs. Jowett is a sweet woman, but to me she is like a vacuum cleaner. When I've talked to her for ten minutes my head feels like a cus.h.i.+on that has been cleaned--a sort of empty, yet swollen feeling. I never can understand how Mr. Jowett has gone through life with her and kept his reason. But there's no doubt men like sweet, sentimental women, and I suppose they are restful in a house.... Shall we have coffee in the drawing-room? It's cosier."

In the drawing-room they settled down before the fire very contentedly silent. Pamela idly reached out for a book and read a little here and there as she sipped her coffee, while her hostess looked into the fire.

The room seemed to dream in the spring suns.h.i.+ne. Generations of Hopes had lived in it, and each mistress had set her mark on the room.

Beautiful old cabinets stood against the white walls, while beaded ottomans worked in the early days of Victoria jostled slender Chippendale chairs and tables. A large comfortable Chesterfield and down-cus.h.i.+oned arm-chairs gave the comfort moderns ask for. Nothing looked out of place, for the room with its gracious proportions took all the incongruities--the family Raeburns, the Queen Anne cabinets, the miniatures, the Victorian atrocities, the weak water-colour sketches, the framed photographs of whiskered gentlemen and ladies with bustles, and made them into one pleasing whole. There is no charm in a room furnished from showrooms, though it be correct in every detail to the period chosen. Much more human is the room that is full of things, ugly, perhaps, in themselves but which link one generation to another. The ottoman worked so laboriously by a ringleted great-aunt stood with its ugly mahogany legs beside a Queen Anne chair, over whose faded wool-work seat a far-off beauty had p.r.i.c.ked her dainty fingers--and both of the workers were Hopes: while by Pamela's side stood a fire-screen st.i.tched by Augusta, the last of the Hopes. "I wonder," said Mrs. Hope, breaking the silence, "what has become of Lewis Elliot? I haven't heard from him since he went away. Do you know where he is just now?"

Pamela shook her head.

"Why don't you marry him, Pamela?"

"For a very good reason--he hasn't asked me."

"Hoots!" said Mrs. Hope, "as if that mattered!"

Pamela lifted her eyebrows. "It is generally considered rather necessary, isn't it?" she asked mildly.

"You know quite well that he would ask you to-morrow if you gave him the slightest encouragement The man's afraid of you, that's what's wrong."

Pamela nodded.

"Is that why you have remained Pamela Reston? My dear, men are fools, and blind. And Lewis is modest as well. But ...forgive me blundering.

I've a long tongue, but you would think at my age I might keep it still."

"No, I don't mind your knowing. I don't think anyone else ever had a suspicion of it. And I thought myself I had long since got over it.

Indeed when I came here I was contemplating marrying someone else."

"Tell me, did you know Lewis was here when you came to Priorsford?"

"No--I'd completely lost trace of him. I was too proud ever to inquire after him when he suddenly gave up coming near us. Priorsford suggested itself to me as a place to come to for a rest, chiefly, I suppose, because I had heard of it from Lewis, but I had no thought of seeing him. Indeed, I had no notion that he had still a connection with the place. And then Jean suddenly said his name. I knew then I hadn't forgotten; my heart leapt up in the old unreasonable way. I met him--and thought he cared for Jean."

"Yes. I used sometimes to wonder why Lewis didn't fall in love with Jean. Of course he was too old for her, but it would have been quite a feasible match. Now I know that he cared for you all the time. Oh, I'm not surprised that he looked at no one else. But that you should have waited.... There must have been so many suitors...."

"A few. But some people are born faithful. Anyway, I'm so glad that when I thought he cared for Jean it made no difference in my feelings to her.

I should have felt so humiliated if I had been petty enough to hate her for what she couldn't help. My brother Biddy wants to marry Jean, and I've great hopes that it may work out all right."

Mrs. Hope sat forward in her chair.

"I had my suspicions. Jean has changed lately; nothing to take hold of, but I have felt a difference. It wasn't the money--that's an external thing--the change was in Jean herself, a certain reticence where there had been utter frankness; a laugh more frequent, but not quite so gay and light-hearted. Has he spoken to her?"

"Yes, but Jean wouldn't hear of it."

"Dear me! I could have sworn she cared."

"I think she does, but Jean is proud. What a silly thing pride is!

However, Biddy is very tenacious, and he isn't at all down-hearted about his rebuff. He's quite sure that Jean and he were meant for each other, and he has great hopes of convincing Jean. I've never mentioned the subject to her, she is so tremendously reticent and shy about such things. I talk about Biddy in a casual way, but if I hadn't known from Biddy I would have learned from Jean's averted eyes that something had happened. The child gives herself away every time."

"This, I suppose, happened before the fortune came. What effect will the money have, I wonder?"

"I wonder too," said Pamela. "Now that Jean feels she has something to give it may make a difference. I wish she would speak to me about it, but I can't force her confidence."