The Setons Part 44

"Well," said Buff in a relieved tone, "I'll keep it for you;" and he departed with his treasure, in case Alan changed his mind.

"I'm glad you didn't take it," said Elizabeth. "He would be very lonely without that book. It lies down with him at night and rises with him in the morning."

"Rum little chap!" Alan said. "I've wanted him badly all the time in India.... Lizbeth, is Father pretty seedy? You didn't say much in your letters about why he retired, but I can see a big difference in him."

"Oh! but he's better, Alan," Elizabeth a.s.sured him--"much better than when he left Glasgow; then he did look frail."

"Well, it is good to be home and see all you funny folk again," Alan said contentedly, as he lay back in a most downy and capacious arm-chair. "We don't get chairs like this in dug-outs."

It was a wonderful four days, for everything that had been planned came to pa.s.s in the most perfect way, and there was no hitch anywhere.

Alan was in his highest spirits, full of stories of his men and of the life out there. "You don't seem to realize, you people," he kept telling them, "what tremendous luck it is for me coming in for this jolly old war."

He looked so well that Elizabeth's anxious heart was easier than it had been for months. Things couldn't be so bad out there, she told herself, if Alan could come back a picture of rude health and in such gay spirits. On the last night Alan went up with Elizabeth to her room to see, he said, if the fire were cosy, and sitting together on the fender-stool they talked--talked of their father ("Take care of him, Lizbeth," Alan said. "Father is a bit extra, you know. I've yet to find a better man"), of how things had worked out, of Walter in India, of the small Buff asleep next door--one of those fireside family talks which are about the most comfortable things in the world. "I'm glad you came to Etterick, I like to think of you here," Alan said. "Well--I'm off to-morrow again."

"Alan," said Elizabeth, "is it very awful?"

"Well, it isn't a picnic, you know. It's pretty grim sometimes. But I wouldn't be out of it for anything."

"I'll tell you what I wish," said his sister. "I wish you could get a bullet in your arm that would keep you from using it for a long time.

And we would get you home to nurse. Oh! wouldn't that be heavenly?"

Alan laughed.

"Nice patriotic creature you are! But seriously, Lizbeth, if I do get knocked out--it does happen now and again, and there is no reason why I should escape--I want you to know that I don't mind. I've had a thoroughly good life. We've had our sad times--and the queer thing is that out there it isn't sad to think about Mother and Sandy: it's comforting, you would wonder!--but when we are happy we are much happier than most people. I haven't got any premonition, you know, or anything like that; indeed, I hope to come bounding home again in spring, but just in case--remember, I was glad to go."

He put his hand gently on his sister's bowed golden head. Sandy had had just such gentle ways. Elizabeth caught his hand and held it to her face, and her tears fell on it.

"Oh! Lizbeth, are you giving way to sentiment? Just think how Fish would lawff!" and Alan patted her shoulder in an embarra.s.sed way.

Elizabeth laughed through her tears.

"Imagine you remembering Fish all these years! We were very unsentimental children, weren't we? And do you remember how Sandy stopped kissing by law?"

They talked themselves back on to the level, and then Alan got up to go.

"Good-night, Lizbeth," he said, and then "_Wee_ Lizbeth"; and his sister replied as she had done when they were little children cuddling down in their beds without a care in the world:

"Good-night, Alan. _Wee_ Alan!"

The next morning he was off early to catch the London express.

It was a lovely springlike morning such as sometimes comes in mid-winter, and he stood on the doorstep and looked over the country-side. All the family, including Marget and Watty Laidlaw and his wife, stood around him. They were loth to let him go.

"When will you be back, my boy?" his father asked him.

"April, if I can work it," Alan replied. "After two hot weathers in India I simply pine to see the larches out at Etterick, and hear the blackbirds shouting. Scotland owes it to me. Don't you think so, Father?"

The motor was at the door, the luggage was in, and the partings said--those wordless partings. Alan jumped into the car and grinned cheerily at them.

"Till April," he said. "Remember--Toujours Smiley-face, as we Parisians say----" and he was gone.

They turned to go in, and Marget said fiercely:

"Eh, I wull tak' it ill oot if thae Germans kill that bonnie laddie."

"I almost wish," said Buff, sitting before his porridge with _The Frontiersman's Pocket-Book_ clutched close to comfort his sad heart--"I almost wish that he hadn't come home. I had forgotten how nice he was!"

It was in April that he fell, and at Etterick the blackbirds were "shouting" as the telegraph boy--innocent messenger of woe--wheeled his way among the larches.

_CHAPTER XX_

"The Poet says dear City of Cecrops, wilt thou not say dear City of G.o.d?" Marcus Aurelius.

Our story ends where it began, in the Thomsons' parlour in Jeanieville, Polloks.h.i.+elds.

It was November then, now it is May, and light long after tea, and in happier circ.u.mstances Mr. Thomson would have been out in his s.h.i.+rt-sleeves in the garden, putting in plants and sowing seeds, with Mrs. Thomson (a white shawl round her shoulders) standing beside him admiring, and Alick running the mower, and Jessie offering advice, and Robert sitting with his books by an open window exchanging a remark with them now and again. They had enjoyed many such spring evenings.

But this remorseless war had drawn the little Thomsons into the net, and they sat huddled in the parlour, with no thought for the gay green world outside.

This was Robert's last evening at home. He had been training ever since the war broke out, and was now about to sail for the East. They feared that Gallipoli was his destination, that ill-omened place on whose alien sh.o.r.es thousands and thousands of our best and bravest were to "drink death like wine," while their country looked on in anguished pride.

Mr. Chalmers, their new minister, had been in to tea. He had clapped Robert on the back and told him he was proud of him, and proud of the great Cause he was going to fight for. "I envy you, my boy," he said.

Robert had said nothing, but his face wore the expression "_Huch!

Away!_" and when the well-meaning parson had gone he expressed a desire to know what the man thought he was talking about.

"But, man Rubbert," his father said anxiously, "surely you're glad to fight for the Right?"

"If Mr. Chalmers thinks it such a fine thing to fight," said Robert, "why doesn't he go and do it? He's not much more than thirty."

"He's married, Robert," his mother reminded him, "and three wee ones.

You could hardly expect it. Besides, he was telling me that if many more ministers go away to be chaplains they'll have to shut some of the churches."

"And high time, too," said Robert.

"Aw, Rubbert," wailed poor Mrs. Thomson, "what harm do the churches do you?"

"Never heed him, Mamma," Mr. Thomson said. "He's just sayin' it."

Mrs. Thomson sat on her low chair by the fireside--the nursing chair where she had sat and played with her babies in the long past happy days, her kind face disfigured by much crying, her hands idle in her lap, looking at her first-born as if she grudged every moment her eyes were away from him. It seemed as if she were learning every line of his face by heart to help her in a future that would hold no Robert.

Jessie, freed for the night from her nursing, sat silently doing a last bit of sewing for her brother.