The Setons Part 33

Elizabeth replied suitably; and Mr. Christie continued:

"Quite so. A fine fellow--cultured, ye know, cultured and a purfect gentleman, but a little lacking in push. Congregations like a man who knows his way about, Miss Seton. You can't do much in this world without push."

"I dare say not. What shall I sing? Will you play for me, Kirsty?"

At nine o'clock the company went down to supper.

Mrs. Christie, to whom as to Chuchundra the musk-rat, every step seemed fraught with danger, said she would not venture downstairs again, but would slip away to bed.

At supper Arthur Townshend found himself between the other Miss Christie, who was much engrossed with the man on her right, and an anaemic-looking young woman, the wife of one of the ministers present, who when conversed with said "Ya-as" and turned away her head.

This proved so discouraging that presently he gave up the attempt, and tried to listen to the conversation that was going on between Elizabeth and Mr. M'Cann.

"Let me see," Mr. M'Cann was saying, "where is your father's church? Oh ay, down there, is it? A big, half-empty kirk. I know it fine. Ay, gey stony ground, and if you'll excuse me saying it, your father's not the man for the job. What they want is a man who will start a P.S.A. and a band and give them a good rousing sermon. A man with a sense of humour.

A man who can say strikin' things in the pulpit." (He sketched the ideal man, and his companion had no difficulty in recognising the portrait of Mr. M'Cann himself.) "With the right man that church might be full. Not, mind you, that I'm saying anything against your father, he does his best; but he's not advanced enough, he belongs to the old evangelicals--congregations like something brighter."

Presently he drifted into politics, and lived over again his meetings in Ayrs.h.i.+re, likening himself to Alexander Peden and Richard Cameron, until Elizabeth, whose heart within her was hot with hate, turned the flood of his conversation into another channel by asking some question about his family.

Four children he said he had, all very young; but he seemed to take less interest in them than in the fact that Lizzie, his wife, found it quite impossible to keep a "girrl." It was surprising to hear how bitterly this apostle of Freedom spoke of the "bit servant la.s.ses" on whose woes he loved to dilate from the pulpit when he was inveighing against the idle, selfish rich.

Two imps of mischief woke in Elizabeth's grey eyes as she listened.

"Yes," she agreed, as her companion paused for a second in his indictment. "Servants are a nuisance. What a relief it would be to have slaves!"

"Whit's that?" said Mr. M'Cann, evidently not believing he had heard aright.

Elizabeth leaned towards him, her face earnest and sympathetic, her voice, when she spoke, honey-sweet, "like doves taboring upon their b.r.e.a.s.t.s."

"I said wouldn't it be delightful if we had slaves--nice fat slaves?"

Mr. M'Cann's eyes goggled in his head. He was quite incapable of making any reply, so he took out a day-before-yesterday's handkerchief and blew his nose; while Elizabeth continued: "Of course we wouldn't be cruel to them--not like Legree in _Uncle Tom's Cabin_. But just imagine the joy of not having to tremble before them! To be able to make a fuss when the work wasn't well done, to be able to grumble when the soup was watery and the pudding burnt--imagine, Mr. M'Cann, imagine having _the power of life and death over the cook_!"

Arthur Townshend, listening, laughed to himself; but Mr. M'Cann did not laugh. This impudent female had dared to make fun of him! With a snort of wrath he turned to his other neighbour and began to thunder plat.i.tudes at her which she had done nothing to deserve, and which she received with an indifferent "Is that so?" which further enraged him.

Elizabeth, having offended one man, turned her attention to the one on her other side, who happened to be Kirsty's fiance, and enjoyed s.n.a.t.c.hes of talk with him between Mr. Christie's stories, that gentleman being incorrigibly humorous all through supper.

When they got up to go away, Kirsty went with Elizabeth into the bedroom for her cloak.

"Kirsty, dear, I'm so glad," Elizabeth said.

Kirsty sat solidly down on a chair beside the dressing-table.

"So am I," she said. "I had almost given up hope. Oh! I know it's not a nice thing to say, but I don't care. You don't know what it means never to be first with anyone, to know you don't matter, that no one needs you. At home--well, Father has his church, and Mother has her bronchitis, and Kate has her Girl's Club, and Archie has his office, and they don't seem to feel the need of anything else. And you, Lizbeth, you never cared for me as I cared for you. You have so many friends; but I have no pretty ways, and I've a sharp tongue, and I can't help seeing through people, so I don't make friends.... And oh!

how I have wanted a house of my own! That's not the proper thing to say either, but I have--a place of my own to polish and clean and keep cosy. I pictured it so often--specially, somehow, the storeroom. I knew where I would put every can on the shelves."

She rubbed with her handkerchief along the smooth surface of the dressing-table. "Every spring when I polished the furniture I thought, 'Next spring, perhaps, I'll polish my own best bedroom furniture'; but n.o.body looked the road I was on. Then Andrew came, and--I couldn't believe it at first--he liked me, he wanted to talk to me, he looked at me first when he came into the room.... He's three years younger than me, and he's not at all good-looking, but he's mine, and when he looks at me I feel like a queen crowned."

Elizabeth swallowed an awkward lump in her throat, and stood fingering the crochet edge of the toilet-cover without saying anything.

Then Kirsty jumped up, her own bustling little self again, rather ashamed of her long speech.

"Here I am keeping you, and Mr. Townshend standing waiting in the lobby. Poor man! He seems nice, Lizbeth, but he's _awfully_ English."

Elizabeth followed her friend to the door, and stooping down, kissed her. "Bless you, Kirsty," she said.

She was rather silent on the way home. She said Mr. Christie's jocularity had depressed her.

"I suppose _I_ may not laugh," Mr. Townshend remarked, "but I think Fish would have 'lawffed.' That's a good idea of yours about slaves."

"Were you listening?" she smiled ruefully. "It was wretched of me, when you think of that faithful couple, Marget and Ellen. That's the worst of this world, you can't score off one person without hurting someone quite innocent."

They found Mr. Seton sitting by the drawing-room fire. He had had a hara.s.sed day, waging warfare against sin and want (a war that to us seems to have no end and no victory, for still sin flaunts in the slums or walks our streets with mincing feet, and Lazarus still sits at our gates, "an abiding mystery," receiving his evil things), and he was taking the taste of it out of his mind with a chapter from _Guy Mannering_.

So far away was he under the Wizard's spell that he hardly looked up when the revellers entered the room, merely remarking, "Just listen to this." He read:

"'I remember the tune well,' he said. He took the flageolet from his pocket and played a simple melody.... She immediately took up the song:

'Are these the links of Forth, she said; Or are they the crooks of Dee, Or the bonny woods of Warrock Head That I so plainly see?'

"'By Heaven!' said Bertram, 'it is the very ballad.'"

Mr. Seton closed the book with a sigh of pleasure, and asked them where they had been.

Elizabeth told him, and "Oh, yes, I remember now," he said. "Well, I hope you had a pleasant evening?"

"I think Mr. Christie had, anyway. That man's life is one long soiree-speech. And I wouldn't mind if he were really gay and jolly and carefree; but I know that at heart he is shrewd and calculating and un-simple as he can be. But, Father, the nicest thing has happened.

Kirsty has got engaged to a man called Andrew Hamilton, a minister, a real jewel. You would like him, I know. But he hasn't got a church yet, although he is worth a dozen of the people who do get churches, and I was wondering what about Langhope? It's the nearest village to Etterick," she explained to Arthur. "It's high time Mr. Smillie retired. He is quite old, and he has money of his own, and could go and live in Edinburgh and attend all the Committees. It is such a good manse, and I can see Kirsty keeping it so spotless, and Mr. Hamilton working in the garden--and hens, perhaps--and everything so cosy.

There's a specially good storeroom, too. I know, because we used to steal raisins and things out of it when we visited Mr. Smillie."

Mr. Seton laughed and called her an absurd creature, and Arthur asked if a good store-room was necessary to married happiness; but she heeded them not.

"You know, Father, it would be doing Langhope a really good turn to recommend Mr. Hamilton as their minister. How do I know, Arthur? I just know. His father was a Free Kirk minister, so he has been well brought up, and I know exactly the kind of sermons he will preach--solid well-reasoned discourses, with now and again an anecdote about the 'great Dr. Chalmers,' and with here and there a reference to 'the sainted Dr. Andrew Bonar' or 'Dr. Wilson of the Barclay.' Fine Free Kirk discourses. Such as you and I love, Father."

Her father shook his head at her; and Arthur, as he lit a cigarette, remarked that it was all Chinese to him. Elizabeth sat down on the arm of her father's chair.

"You had quite a success to-night, Arthur," she said kindly. "Mr.

Christie called you a 'gentlemanly fellow,' and Mrs. Christie said, speaking for herself, she had no objection to the c.o.c.kney accent, she rather liked it! And oh! Father, your friend Mr. M'Cann was there. You know who I mean? He talked to me quite a lot. He has been politic-ing down in Ayrs.h.i.+re, and he told me that he rather reminds himself of the Covenanters at their best--Alexander Peden I think was the one he named."

Mr. Seton was carrying Guy Mannering to its place, but he stopped and said, "_The wretched fellow!_"

The utter wrath and disgust in his tone made his listeners shout with laughter, and Elizabeth said:

"Father, I love you. 'Cos why?"

Mr. Seton, still sore at this defiling of his idols, only grunted in reply.

"Because you are not too much of a saint after all. Oh! _don't turn out the lights!_"