Sweethearts at Home

XXVIII

TWICE-TRAVELED PATHS

Then we went to Kirkcudbright, where there is an old castle, very dirty, but where we stayed in the loveliest old inn. It was so "comfy" and home-like at the "Selkirk" that it seemed as if the hostelry had wandered out into the country one fine day and – forgot the way to come back again! We liked it so much because it was kept by a nice jolly man, whose mother had been good to father once when he was ill, and who made the nicest cakes. We were in clover there, I can tell you. Specially because "Mac" (the painter whom, when I was very little, I once named "The Little Brown Bear") came for walks with us, and made us laugh at dinner till we youngsters nearly got sent from the table. Yet it wasn't a bit our fault. He told us a lot of things, and I could see father listening with all his ears, and not even checking Sir Toady when he stole the sugar, though he saw him. I was sure that something would come out of that. You see, I know father's ways. And so it comes about that I don't need to write any of the funny things that we heard that night, or the nights that followed. You have only to read them in the chapters of Little Esson, the part all about Ladas II, and the trip in the caravan. I think that father ought really to have sent some of the money he got to "The Little Brown Bear" – but I don't believe he ever did.

"Mac owes me more than that!" he said, when I asked him about it. "I brought him up by hand!"

I presume he meant the way Hugh John, my brother, brings up Sir Toady – though that is with both hands, sometimes feet too.

There was one Sunday that I remember very well; at Newton Stewart it was. There had been (or was going to be) a kind of circus in the town. Or maybe they were only resting, as even circus folk must do sometimes.

Anyway I looked out at the window in the early morning, and if I had seen a ghost I could not have been more surprised. And so would you – for there, calmly grazing on the field just under my window, as quietly as if it had been a cow, was a huge elephant! I did not see any circus vans, nor the tents, nor anything – save and except this great Indian elephant in the middle of the green field! You may imagine I thought that I was still dreaming. I watched it pad-padding softly about, taking the greatest pleasure in rolling like a donkey when the harness is taken off. It also rubbed the big soft spreads of its feet on the softer grass. I suppose its poor soles were sore with traveling over our hard cycling roads, and now it was keeping Sunday after its kind, doing its best to obey the commandment. And, as father says, what more can any of us do than be fully persuaded in our own minds? One thing I noticed which astonished me, and I think it will most people. The big beast must have weighed a ton, I should think, at the least. And yet, as it went here and there over the field of nice Galloway grass, it walked so softly that the grass "rose elastic from its airy tread." Yes, it actually did. Even Mr. Sherlock Holmes himself could hardly have found a footmark in a quarter of an hour. Why, even the Maid, not to speak of myself, could not get so lightly over the ground as that. We watched the elephant all that day, whenever we could, that is – and thought of him in church, though the minister was a nice man, nice-looking too, and did not preach too long. It was, of course, frightfully wicked of us. Because it was in one of the old "Kirks of the Martyrs" that the service was held. But when the minister came to see us in the evening, we showed him the elephant still grazing away, wig-wagging its long trunk like a supple pendulum, and switching away quite imaginary flies with its tiny tail! The minister was such a very good sort that we thought we ought to own up why we had been restless in church. (He might have seen us, you know.) So I said we were ashamed that we had not attended better to his sermon. And do you know what he answered back, after seeing the elephant take a double donkey roll, with its great sausagey legs in the air? "I'm glad," he said, "that I did not see the elephant do that before sermon. For if I had, I don't believe that I could have preached!"

"A pretty nice sort of a minister, that!" said Hugh John afterwards.

"I should go to his church myself," cried Toady Lion, and then, checking himself suddenly under the gaze of Hugh John, he added, "I mean, when I had to!"

There – that is quite enough to put in my Diary about a circus elephant, though I will admit that it was about the very queerest thing that ever happened to me in all my life – I mean the most unexpected, of course, for when explained it was all perfectly simple.

But I must get on with my Diary of this Galloway journey, and the "Sweethearty" things we saw there. Dear me, I had meant to tell about Gatehouse too (which happened before Newton Stewart, only I forgot). There was a nice minister there too, who went about without his hat, and smoked, and called out nice things across the street to Tom and Dick and Harry. Altogether we were fortunate in the ministers we met all through the trip. And I think the children of Gatehouse must have benefited too, owing to the nice bareheaded minister. For certainly they are not nearly so rude and pesterful as I remember them when father and I stopped there – oh, how many years ago? Ten, at least, or maybe more. Then they rang the bell of the tricycle and said horrid things when father was in the baker's shop. They made me so angry – I can remember it yet – I said I would tell father. I nearly cried. But this time there was no one who was not quite nice to us – except, Oh, yes, one person who wouldn't let us any rooms. But that did not matter. Indeed, it was a blessing. For we went farther down the street till we came to a delightful hotel or inn or something, where Miss Blackett, who kept it, was just as good to us as she could be, and gave us nice things to eat on the sly. Also the "Little Brown Bear" came again, and told us more stories in the evenings. Then, at ten or eleven at night, he got on his cycle and wheeled away into the dark. It was so nice and romantic that I wished I could have gone too. It is splendid in the summer to wheel on and on through the archway of the green and sleeping woods. It is best when you are sure of the policemen, and can ride without a light, which does no good, but makes everything dark as pitch, and as uninteresting as the Queensferry Road.

Then I saw the two boys at Creetown who once on a time were brought in from playing on the street, and tidied up so that they might be ready to kiss me. They both howled at the thought. For which I don't in the least blame them. But all the same they had high collars on, and I don't think that they would have minded nearly as much now.

This, of course, came before the elephant, but then, you see, if things don't go into my Dear Diary just when I think of them, the probability is that they won't go at all.

One long lovesome day, that I won't forget in a hurry, we spent driving through Borgue – sunny, sweet, hawthorny Borgue, where the clover is, and the green honey made by the bees that have never so much as sniffed a heather bloom. It is not Galloway, of course. It has not the qualities of Galloway, I mean. But there is something about it that makes the heart grow fonder the longer one stays there – a kind of green "den" such as the bairns have when playing at "soldiers-and-outlaws" in the wood – a sheltered sanctuary, a Peace on Earth among men of good-will. At least all we saw were that sort, and I hope the others were, just as much. Here, I know, Hugh John would shrug his shoulders. But that does not matter.

We did not linger in Borgue, however, which, with its still and pensive beauty, was like a kirk-yard on Sunday morning. Indeed, there are many of these along the shores – hidden nooks with tombstones, and beneath wave-washed bights of clean sand. For assuredly it was not the right Galloway. Rather it was like a bit of Devonshire that had floated away and got joined on here, wooded and wind-swept, a carpet of flowers all the summer long, one great bee-swarm booming all over it, from Kirk Andrews, which is its Dan, to the Tower of Plunton, which is its Beersheba. At any rate there is nothing like Borgue anywhere else in Scotland. Which its natives declare, perhaps with truth, is the same as to say in the world!

Well, we drove out of Newton Stewart past Palnure, turned sharply up the hill road towards the Loch of the Lilies, past Clatteringshaws – where not a shaw clattered, though in the wagonette there were many "she's" who did – as a very clever lady, a friend of father's, once remarked when her daughters proposed an excursion thither from Kenbank. "Deaved"2 with their tongues, she broke out at last with "Not Clatteringshaws, but 'Clatteringshe's'!" However, on this occasion not a dog barked. We lunched in the midst of the solitude, and then father wandered away to watch his dear hills through his glasses, while the rest of us washed and cleaned up!

But the best of all days was that on the moors about the little house where father was born. I had not been there for more than ten years, and the ground was littered with memories. Father and I got off a little south of the Raider's Bridge. We skirted the water meadows, and looked back to the bulk of Bennan, still rugged and purple with heather, seeing to the right of it Cairnsmore of Carsphairn, a double molehill of palest blue paint. Then came the "Roman Camp," which, however, father told us had been made by the "Levelers" in the early half of the eighteenth century. But the other story of the farm bull which fell into the ditch, was heard roaring for days, and, when found, had eaten every green thing within reach of its hungry mouth – trees, leaves, branches and all – pleased me most.

Then there was the well where once I had drunk from father's palms, and of which there is such a very pretty picture in Sweetheart Travelers– a picture which always used to puzzle me dreadfully. For I knew that there were only father and I there. Besides which, there was not nearly light enough for Mr. Gordon Browne to "take" us, even supposing that he had been hid behind the bushes! At any rate we had a drink at the ancient spring, just for old sake's sake. Some kind person had cleaned it out not long before, and the water in the shade of the woods of the Duchrae Bank was as cool and sweet as ever. Then across the cropped meadows, again ankle-deep in aftermath, to the old stepping-stones! Father carried me on his back to the big central bowlder, which perhaps has been brought down by some forgotten flood, and at any rate had long served for the keystone of the arrangement in stepping-stones – which, even in father's day (so he told me), had been variously named "Davie's Ford," "Auld Miss," "Rab's," and "Elphie's," according to the names of the various dwellers in the pretty cottage in the wood above.

XXIX

HOME-COMING

We brushed our way down through the meadows, and father went straight to the place where the Grass of Parnassus had been growing when he was a boy. It was growing there still – and thriving too. We called on a big bumble-bee, of the kind that has its stinging end very blunt and red. It was not at home, but the hole in the bank which it had occupied thirty years ago was now let to a Rabbit family, the younger members of which scuttled away at our approach, though without too much alarm. We could see their tails bobbing among the ferns and undergrowth. And then we came to the Stepping-Stones. It was ten years since I had seen them, and then I was quite a little girl. But I remembered everything at once, even to the small starry green plants that grew beneath the water, and the sharp stones that get between your toes when you wade too far out. The woods were as green and as solitary as ever – cool too, and all the opposite ground elastic with pine-needles that were not nearly so uncomfortable for the bare feet as you would suppose. We waded for quite a long time, and then sat and ate our lunch on the big middle bowlder, alternately dabbling our feet in the clear olive-green water and drying them in the sunshine. Father told stories. No, I don't mean that he made them up – only that, as is usual at such times, all sorts of funny memories went and came in his head – all of the people about whom he told them as completely passed away as the orange-trousered bee we had gone so vainly out of our way to seek.

Then we went to the little farmhouse up the loaning, where they took us for ordinary tourists, and pointed out to us the sights. More than once I glanced at father, but he had so grave a face that the kind and pretty girl who showed us over evidently took him for a very severe critic of his own books, an enemy of dialect in any form. So, ceasing her legends, she offered us refreshments instead. After that we tramped away over the "Craigs" and the heather by the very little path along which father used to go his three-and-a-half miles along the lochside to school. I saw the Truant's Bathing-Place, the Far-Away-Turn, the Silver Mine (where once on a time father had found half-a-crown, and dreamed of it for years), and the Bogle Thorn, now sadly worn away since the days of the "Little Green Man." After that I kept on asking questions till we got to Laurieston, when I stopped, not because I had finished, but because tea was waiting for us. They called us names, and said that they had eaten up all the good things. But father answered, laughing, that it was written that man should not live by bread alone, and that what he had seen that day ought to suffice any one. But really I did not see that it made any difference to his appetite, and, for all they said, there were plenty of nice things left for us.

Then we came to Castle Douglas, and what I remember best is the big courtyard of the hotel, the noise and rattle of horses' hoofs passing through the narrow entry on to the street, the kind people who welcomed us, and the home-like air of everything about the "Douglas Arms," which I never have seen about an hotel before, though I had been in many.

Our journey was done. So it was quite proper that things should begin to look a bit home-like. We had quite a nice homecoming. Cissy Carter met us at the station in a pretty dark-blue dress, smartly belted in at the waist, but with some flour on her right shoulder. And when I asked her what she had been doing to herself, she answered in a matter-of-course tone, "Oh, only helping Elizabeth!"

"What Elizabeth?" I had the strength to gasp.

"Why, Elizabeth Fortinbras, of course," she answered, quite sharply for her; "whom else?" And this proved to me that the world had not been standing still in Edam while we were whirling through Father's Country at the tails of Jim's spanking chestnuts! I asked how about the pride of all the Davenant Carters, and if her father knew that his only daughter was assisting in a sweet-shop. Cissy held up her rounded chin with a pout that made me at least almost forget our noble family motto: "WE DO NOT KISS AT STATIONS!"

"I did not say that I was in the shop," said Cissy. "I am learning how to make pastry rise till it is flake-light. And even you, Miss Priscilla Picton Smith, could not do that without getting flour on your shoulder!"

Now I would quite well like to stop here, and, indeed, I could easily do so. For a Diary, however dear, is not like any other book. When you finish one year's doings, you just get another ruled book and start with January First again. Only it is explained to me that I must not quite do that. At any rate I must absolutely tell what became of my characters! Now this is awfully funny. For, quite different from all the other story-books I ever read – nothing at all happened to any of them. Cissy is not married. No more is Elizabeth Fortinbras. No more, thank goodness, am I. Hugh John can't be – not for a long time yet. As for Toady Lion, he upholds the honor of his country (and of the Benbow Dormitory) by not being sick on the stormiest seas – a thing which none of the rest of the family would even attempt.

But there is one thing that I must tell. It is just as well that I wrote down all about Torres Vedras, and the woods, and everything. For – sad it is to tell it – strange children dig and play there now. All our old beloved names for places and things and people would soon have been lost if they had not been written down in this book. We have set up a new home on the other side of the Edam Valley, and in some ways it is nicer. But in others it can never have the charm of the "Wampage," the "Scrubbery," the Low Park where the three bridges are, the Feudal Tower, and Picnicville, up among the Sentinel Pines! They make one's heart warm – only just the names of them said low in the heart, but now never spoken out loud by the tongue!

Our new house is on a hill, and not in the howe of a valley. From the front door (and almost from every window) we can see woods and fields, and far-away cows that are no bigger than ants. Then on the hills beyond are sheep that you cannot see at all without one of father's big glasses, such as only the boys can use. Beyond those, again, there are the mountains that run right away down into England in wave after purple wave, each bending over a tiny bit as if it were real water just on the point of breaking. Eastward and southward there are "Pens" and "Muirs" and "Cairns" without number, and out of the window on clear mornings, as I lie in bed, I can watch the tasseled larch and white-stemmed birch sending scaling-parties up every ravine and watercourse, while the big white clouds, hump-backed ones, sail majestically over all.

XXX

SOME DISCLAIMERS

Letter No. 1. Hugh John's Letter.

Dear Mr. Publisher – You won't remember me, though once I came to your office with father to see you. You may recall the circumstance, because it was the first day your son went to college. I was quite a little chap then, and did not know what it was to be the son of an author with the habit of making people believe that he is writing about his own family, when half the time he is just making up. Or, as like as not, it was his own very self that did the things he blames on us. Anyway, a fellow has to be pretty stiff on his pins and pretty handy with his knuckles to be a good author's son in a big school. I came through right-side-up, however, but sometimes it must come hard on the little chaps.

You see, the fellows want to know all the time if you really said or did some fool thing or other that father has stuffed into the books, and of which you are as innocent as Abel was of the murder of Cain. (He was. It's all right – only sounds rum!)

But of course a fellow does not go back on his father at school. He can't afford to let anything like that pass. So of course there's a row – sometimes bigger, sometimes shorter, according to the length of time it takes the other fellow to decide about crying, "Hold, enough!" as they do in plays. Or, as we call it at school, "backing down."

Well, I put my time through at school, and by and by the fellows got to know – that is, after several little difficulties had been adjusted. Not that I like having to fight. It is right to be patient just as long as ever you can. And then, when you can't – why, the best way and the quickest is to let her rip. Finish it good, once and for all. As father says, "Keep the peace, my boy! But if the other fellow won't, why, make him! First have your quarrel just, and then remember to open with your left!"

Yes, of course, at school I back up what father has written, every word. It is what I am there for, and I mean to do it. That's playing the game. But what I did not bargain for was the whole family chipping in, and making a kind of lop-sided, ice-cream-freezer hero of a chap. Sis had no business with what is my business – about Cissy Carter, I mean. At any rate she knows nothing about it really. Girls imagine all sorts of nonsense, of course. You can't stop them imagining, and if you think you can, why, you're a fool. That's all in the day's work, and I am not whining. But with regard to anything or person not "girlie-girl," I, Hugh John Picton Smith, give due notice that the first chap who turns up to me anything that Sis has imagined about Miss Cissy Carter, and especially about Miss Elizabeth Fortinbras, is going to get a calm and peaceful surprise – that may or may not confine him to his room for a day or two, but which, in any case, will afford him matter for reflection.

Oh, I don't in the least want to queer Sis, or to say that she has put down anything not quite true, as far as she understands it. It isn't that I did not do these things. But Sis being a girl, and the safety-valves of her imagination-boiler shut tight, and "Full Steam Ahead" ordered – why, I would rather have father on the job any day. He at least only puts things down (or invents them). He does not try to explain what's going on in a chap's inside. Besides, I don't see that it is anybody's business – and after this, on the whole, it had better not be. That "glacial reserve" (wasn't it?) which Sis yarned about might break up, and somebody who wasn't insured get hurt with the pieces. Please put this at the end, Mr. Publisher, to prevent mistakes. And if ever I write a book you shall publish it, and then at last the world will know the right and the wrong of things. Excuse bad writing. Our chaps played Smasherhampton on Saturday. It was pretty thick in the second half. The Smashers got me down and rolled me about a bit on the hardish ground. My arm is still in a sling, but it will be all right for Saturday fortnight, when we play a return on our own ground. I am going to play a return match too, for I know the fellow that did it.

(Signed) Hugh John Picton Smith.

Letter No. 2. From Cadet George Percival Picton Smith, R. N., Royal Naval Coll., Dartbourne.

Dear Mr. Publisher – You can print any …3 thing you like about me – true or not, it does not matter. Only in the latter case it will come a little dearer. I am called Toady Lion, and I have stood this sort of thing ever since I can remember. Though I must say father has been awfully decent about it, and I got a Rudge-Whitworth "free-wheel" out of him two years running on the strength of what you sent him. But there's no hope of coming that with Sis, who is always "stony," anyway, and won't believe what an awfully expensive place the Coll. is. My "bike" is going to be awfully dangerous this year – that is, if I don't get a new one somehow. It is only my second best, and much too small for me. I might get killed, very likely, and then you couldn't publish any more books about me! I suppose you don't feel as if you could … No? That means "Yes," but don't let on to father. For, you see, last summer, when I had measles or something, I sold my best machine to a poor boy who hadn't any. Just think of that – the cruelty of it! But as I have never let my left hand know what my right hand does, I don't want father to do so either. So you won't give me away.

(Signed) G. P. Picton Smith, R. N.

P. S. – I might get a pretty good one for a tenner, but if it could possibly run to fifteen, I know where I could pick up an awfully swell "two-speed-gear" like what some of the masters have at our Coll. But, dear Mr. Publisher, this is only a suggestion. – T. Lion.

P. S. No. 2. – If you did see your way to the 2-Speed, I tell you what – you could make up any old thing you liked about me – such as that I killed my grand-aunt Jane, and hid the remains in my Black Sea Chest. I've got one, honor bright. Only no grand-aunt Jane. So the crime could never, never be discovered; and I would never deny it a bit, but back you up like fun. Of course it is understood between gentlemen that this last is on the two-speed-basis, as above.