The Setons Part 29

"Yes, it is our small inheritance. Father's people have had it for a long time. We can only be there for about two months in the summer, but we often send our run-down or getting-better people for a week or two.

The air is wonderful, but it is dull for them, lacking the attractions of Millport or Rothesay--the contempt of your town-bred for the country-dwellers is intense, and laughable. I was going to tell you about the old man who along with his wife keeps it for us. He has the softest, most delicious Border voice, and he remarked to me once, 'A' I ask in the way o' Heaven is juist Etterick--at a raisonable rent.' I thought the 'raisonable rent' rather nice. Nothing wanted for nothing, even in the Better Country."

Arthur laughed, and said the idea carried too far might turn Heaven into a collection of Small Holdings.

"But tell me one thing more. What do you do it for? I mean visiting the sick, teaching Sunday schools, handing people tracts. Is it because you think it is your duty as a parson's daughter?"

Elizabeth turned to look at her companion's face to see if he were laughing; but he was looking quite serious, and anxious for an answer.

"Do you know," she asked him, "what the Scots girl said to the c.o.c.kney tourist when he asked her if all Scots girls went barefoot? No? Then I'll tell you. She said, 'Pairtly, and pairtly they mind their ain business.'"

"I deserve it," said Arthur. "I brought it on myself."

"I'm not proud, like the barefoot girl," said Elizabeth. "I'll answer your questions as well as I can. I think I do it 'pairtly' from duty and 'pairtly' from love of it. But oh! isn't it best to leave motives alone? When I go to see Peggy it is a pure labour of love, but when I go to see fretful people who whine and don't wash I am very self-conscious about myself. I mean to say, I can't help saying to myself, 'How nice of you, my dear, to come into this stuffy room and spend your money on fresh eggs and calf's-foot jelly for this unpleasant old thing.' Then I walk home on my heels. You've read _Valerie Upton_? Do you remember the loathly Imogen and her 'radiant goodness,' and how she stood 'forth in the light'? I sometimes have a horrid thought that I am rather like that."

"Oh no," said Arthur consolingly. "You will never become a prig. If your own sense of humour didn't save you I know what would--the knowledge that _Fish would lawff_."

Their walk was nearly over: they had come to the end of the road where the Setons' house stood.

"It is nice," said Elizabeth, with a happy sigh, "to think that we are going in to Father and Buff and tea. Have you got the paint-box all right? Let me be there when you give it to him."

They walked along in contented silence, until Elizabeth suddenly laughed, and explained that she had remembered a dream Buff once had about Heaven.

"He was sleeping in a little bed in my room, and he suddenly sprang up and said, 'It's a good thing that's not true, anyway.' I asked what was the matter, and he told me. He was, it seems, in a beautiful golden s.h.i.+p with silver sails, sailing away to Heaven, when suddenly he met another s.h.i.+p--a black, wicked-looking s.h.i.+p--bound for what Marget calls 'the Ill Place,' and to his horror he recognized all his family on board. 'What did you do, Buff?' I asked, and poor old Buff gave a great gulp and said, _'I came on beside you.'_"

"Sound fellow!" said Arthur.

_CHAPTER XIII_

"'O tell me what was on yer road, ye roarin' norland wind, As ye cam' blowin' frae the land that's never frae my mind?

My feet they traivel England, but I'm deein' for the North--'

'My man, I heard the siller tides rin up the Firth o' Forth.'"

_Songs of Angus._

Since the afternoon when Mr. Stewart Stevenson had called and talked ballads with Mr. Seton he had been a frequent visitor at the Setons'

house. Something about it, an atmosphere homely and welcoming and pleasant, made it to him a very attractive place.

One afternoon (the Thursday of the week of Arthur Townshend's visit) he stood in a discouraged mood looking at his work. As a rule moods troubled Stewart Stevenson but little; he was an artist without the artistic temperament. He had his light to follow and he followed it, feeling no need for eccentricity in the way of hair or collars or conduct. He was as placid and regular as one of his father's "time-pieces" which ticked off the flying minutes in the decorous, well-dusted rooms of "Lochnagar." His mother summed him up very well when she confessed to strangers her son's profession. "Stewart's a Nartist," she would say half proud, half deprecating, "but you'd niver know it." Poor lady, she had a horror of artist-life as it was revealed to her in the pages of the Heart's Ease Library. Sometimes dreadful qualms would seize her in the night watches, and she would waken her husband to ask if he thought there was any fear of Stewart being Led Away, and was only partially rea.s.sured by his sleepy grunts in the negative. "What's Art?" she often asked herself, with a nightmare vision in her mind of ladies lightly clad capering with masked gentlemen at some studio orgy--"What's Art compared with Respectability?" though anyone more morbidly respectable and less likely to caper with females than her son Stewart could hardly be imagined, and her mind might have been in a state of perfect peace concerning him. He went to his studio as regularly as his father went to the Ham and b.u.t.ter place, and both worked solidly through the hours.

But, as I have said, this particular afternoon found Stewart Stevenson out of conceit with himself and his work. It had been a day of small vexations, and the little work he had been able to do he knew to be bad. Finally, about four o'clock, he impatiently (but very neatly) put everything away and made up his mind to take Elizabeth Seton the book-plate he had designed for her. This decision made, he became very cheerful, and whistled as he brushed his hair and put his tie straight.

The thought of the Setons' drawing-room at tea-time was very alluring.

He hoped there would be no other callers and that he would get the big chair, where he could best look at the picture of Elizabeth's mother above the fireplace. It was so wonderfully painted, and the eyes were the eyes of Elizabeth.

He was not quite sure that he approved of Elizabeth. His little mother, with her admiring "Ay, that's it, Pa," to all her husband's truisms, had given him an ideal of meek womanhood which Elizabeth was far from attaining to. She showed no deference to people, unless they were poor or very old. She laughed at most things, and he was afraid she was shallow. He distrusted, too, her power of charming. That she should be greatly interested in his work and ambitions was not surprising, but that her grey eyes should be just as s.h.i.+ning and eager over the small success of a youth in the church was merely absurd. It was her way, he told himself, to make each person she spoke to feel he was the one person who mattered. It was her job to be charming. For himself, he preferred more sincerity, and yet--what a la.s.s to go gipsying through the world with!

When he was shown into the drawing-room a cosy scene met his eyes. The fire was at its best, the tea-table drawn up before it; Mr. Seton was laughing and shaking his head over some remark made by Elizabeth, who was pouring out tea; his particular big chair stood as if waiting for him. Everything was just as he had wished it to be, except that, leaning against the mantelpiece, stood a tall man in a grey tweed suit, a man so obviously at home that Mr. Stevenson disliked him on the spot.

"Mr. Townshend," said Elizabeth, introducing him. "Sit here, Mr.

Stevenson. This is very nice. You will help me to teach Mr. Townshend something of Scots manners and customs. His ignorance is _intense_."

"Is that so?" said Mr. Stevenson, accepting a cup of tea and eyeing the serpent in his Eden (he had not known it was his Eden until he realized the presence of the serpent) with disfavour.

The serpent's smile, however, as he handed him some scones was very disarming, and he seemed to see no reason why he should not be popular with the new-comer. "My great desire," he confided to him over the table, "is to know what a 'U.P.' is?"

"Dear sir," said Elizabeth, "'tis a foolish ambition. Unless you are born knowing what a U.P. is you can never hope to learn. Besides, there aren't any U.P.'s now."

"Extinct?" asked Arthur.

"Well--merged," said Elizabeth.

"It's very obscure," complained Arthur. "But it is absurd to pretend that I know nothing of Scotland. I once stayed nearly three weeks in Skye."

"And," put in Mr. Seton, "the man who knows his Scott knows much of Scotland. I only wish Elizabeth knew him as you do. I believe that girl has never read one novel of Sir Walter's to the end."

"Dear Father," said Elizabeth, "I adore Sir Walter, but he shouldn't have written in such small print. Besides, thanks to you, I know heaps of quotations, so I can always make quite a fair show of knowledge."

Mr. Seton groaned.

"You're a frivolous creature," he said, "and extraordinarily ignorant."

"Yes," said his daughter, "I'm just, as someone said, 'a little brightly-lit stall in Vanity Fair'--all my goods in the shop-window. I suppose," turning to Mr. Stevenson, "you have read all Scott?"

"Not quite all, perhaps, but a lot," said that gentleman.

"Yes, I had no real hope that you hadn't. But I maintain that the knowledge you gain about people from books is a very queer knowledge.

In books and in plays about Scotland you get the idea that we 'pech'

and we 'hoast,' and talk constantly about ministers, and h.o.a.rd our pennies. Now we are not hard as a nation----"

"Pardon me," broke in Arthur, "the one Scots story known to all Englishmen seems to point to a certain carefulness----"

"You mean," cried Elizabeth, interrupting in her turn, "that stupid tale, 'Bang gaed sixpence'? But you know the end of the tale? I thought not. _'Bang gaed sixpence, maistly on wines and cigars.'_ The honest fellow was treating his friends."

Arthur shouted with laughter, but presently returned to the charge.

"But you can't deny your fondness for ministers, or at least for theological discussion, Elizabeth?"

"Lizbeth!" said her father, "fond of ministers? This is surely a sign of grace."

"Father," said Elizabeth earnestly, "I'm not. You know I'm not.

Ministers! I know all kinds of them, and I don't know which I like least. There are the smug complacent ones with sermons like prize essays, and the jovial, back-slapping ones who talk slang and hope thus to win the young men. Then there is a genteel kind with long, thin fingers and literary leanings who read the Revised Version and talk about 'a Larger Hope'; and the kind who have damp hands and theological doubts--the two always seem to go together, and----"

"That will do, Lizbeth," broke in Mr. Seton. "It's a deplorable thing to hear a person so far from perfect dealing out criticism so freely."

"Oh," said his daughter, "I am only talking about _young_ ministers.

Old, wise padres, full of sincerity and simplicity and all the crystal virtues, I adore."