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Betty Grier
CHAPTER I
When I look round my little bedroom and note the various familiar items that make up its furnishings, when my eye lights on much that I associate with the days o' Auld Langsyne, I am conscious of a feeling of homeliness, a sense of chumship with my surroundings, and I can scarcely realise that fourteen years have come and gone since last I laid my head on the pillow of this small truckle-bed.
So far as I can recall the arrangement of its old-fashioned, ordinary-looking plenishings, everything remains exactly as I left it. My trout and salmon rods, all tied together—each cased in its own particular-coloured canvas—stand there in the corner beside an old out-of-date gaff and a capacious landing-net which that king of fishers, Clogger Eskdale, gifted to me when the 'rheumatics' prevented his ever again participating in his favourite sport. My worn leather school-bag, filled with the last batch of books I used, is still suspended from a four-inch nail driven into a 'dook' at the cheek of the mantelpiece. It is a long time ago, but it seems only yesterday since I stood in the middle of this room, unstrapping that bag from my shoulders for the last time. My schooldays were over; with eager, anxious feet I was standing on the threshold of a new life, and to satchel and lesson-book I was bidding farewell.
I well remember Deacon Webster, at my mother's request, inserting that dook and driving home that nail; and he laughed unfeelingly when she explained to him the purpose it was to serve. The deacon could not understand the sentiment which prompted her to assign the bag a place upon the wall; and when, after the nail was secure, he made to hang my 'boy's burden' upon it in much the same callous spirit in which he would screw the last nail in a coffin-lid, my mother stepped forward.
'One moment, Webster,' she said. 'Allow me.' With her own hands she placed the bag where it hangs now. My old nurse, Betty Grier, straightened it and wiped it with her duster; and the deacon took a pinch of snuff, blew his nose in a big spotted handkerchief, and muttered sotto voce, as his nostrils quivered, 'Well, I'm d–!'
Against the back wall, in the centre, between the door and the corner, stands the old black oak chest of drawers which for sixteen years held the whole outfit of my boyhood's days; while the mahogany looking-glass, with the grooved square standards and the swivel mirror, monopolises still, as it always has done, the whole top shelf thereof.
To the left is a framed photograph of my father and mother, and to the right a rosewood-framed sampler, worked long ago by my grandmother, on which, in faded green, against a dull drab background, are still decipherable the words of Our Lord's Prayer. And there, between the fireplace and the window, is my book-rack, and from its shelves old friends look down upon me. The gilt titles are tarnished and worn, but I know each book by the place it occupies, and I feel that, even after the long, long years that have separated us, Tom Brown, Robinson Crusoe, and David Copperfield will speak to me again, laugh with me, cry with me, as they did in days of yore.
Often has Betty, I know, swept and tidied this little room. Every article has been lifted, dusted, and carefully returned to its place. I know with what feelings of reverence the dear old soul has fingered every ornament. I am conscious of the loving care she has exercised on all my old belongings, and somehow I feel consoled and comforted, my physical weakness depresses me less, my mother's presence seems nearer me, and unbidden tears of thankfulness come to my eyes and trickle from my cheek to my pillow.
This has been to me a day of great events. I have travelled by rail from Edinburgh to Elvanfoot, thence by horse-carriage to Thornhill—during the last stage driven by Charlie Walker, the 'bus Jehu I envied in my schoolboy years, and tended by my fail-me-never Betty. To her also this has been a memorable day, for when we were driving down the Dalveen Pass she told me that never before had she seen a Caledonian train, and that her last memory of Traloss dated back to a Sabbath-school trip about the year 1868. Such a long ride in a well-sprung, well-upholstered carriage was also a novelty to her, a new experience which only with great difficulty I could persuade her to enjoy to the full. She insisted on sitting forward on the extreme edge of the seat, and it was only after I had told her that her uncomfortable-looking position made me uneasy and unhappy that she sat well back, till her shoulders rested on the cushion behind.
Contrary to my expectations, I am suffering neither pain nor inconvenience from my long journey; and as I lie here in my little bed, looking through the curtained window to the long, low range of the Lowther Hills, and listening to the familiar sounds in the village street below, a blissful peace which I cannot express in words possesses me, my physical and my mental organisation seem to have undergone a change, my experience of city life is blotted out and forgotten, and, strangely enough, I feel myself, as of old, a unit of the village community. Queerer still, this placid acceptance of altered circumstances, this dovetailing into a different condition of life and living, seems to me so natural as to be hardly worth noting; and without a pang of regret I leave behind me urban pleasures and duties, and contemplate with equanimity retirement to this rural retreat, a twelvemonth's sojourn midst scenes to me for ever dear.
Nor does the fact that this rustication is compulsory distress or annoy me. My physical weakness has reduced me to a state of indifference towards former pursuits. A long illness, following a deplorable accident, has impaired my appetite for social joys; so much so, indeed, that when my doctors—rather apologetically, I thought—informed me that if ever I wished to be well again I must give up my profession and town residence for twelve months at least, and live quietly somewhere in the country, I hailed their verdict with delight, and my yearning heart at once went out to my native village and the home of my old nurse, Betty Grier.
Dear old Betty! To whom else could I turn? She is all—of the human element at least—I have left to me of my home life of long ago. My memories of my father are vague and hazy. I was only five when he died; and, through the misty veil of long-gone years, two pictures only of him are impressed upon my mind. In one I see him standing in the narrow whitewashed pantry, his head 'screeving' the ceiling, and his broad shoulders almost excluding the waning western light that glimmered through the small four-paned window. Betty, white-capped and white-aproned, is there also, with a large ashet in her hands, on which lies a long, thick silver fish—a salmon, as I afterwards learned—one of the many he lured from the depths of Mattha's Pool. My mother's arm is lovingly linked in his, and there is a pleased and happy expression on her face, which somehow is transmitted to me, because, with her, I feel proud of the great big man I call my daddy, who has battled so successfully with the strong-looking monster now lying so quiet, with gaping mouth, on Betty's ashet.
Then there is a long, dark blank before the next picture appears, and I see him sitting in a big arm-chair at the dining-room fire. His back is cushioned, and a shepherd-tartan plaid is round his shoulders, the ends folded across his knees. My mother is writing letters to his dictation on a small bureau, which has been placed near his chair. I am playing with a Noah's Ark, marshalling the animals in pairs on the rug; and when my mother goes out of the room to the little office adjoining, I leave my toys and stand at his knee, looking up to a face which to me seems very white and pinched. A long, thin hand is placed on my curly head, and with difficulty he bends down and kisses me. I wonder who has been unkind to him, for I see a tear trickling down his cheek, and it falls unheeded on his plaid.
I cannot focus him in my mind's eye in any subsequent event, though I remember perfectly the old doctor with the foxskin cap and the clattering clogs, and the smell of 'Kendal brown' he always left behind. Then a day came when the window-blinds were pulled down and all the rooms were darkened; when Betty's voice was, even to my childish ears, low and husky; when my mother cuddled me in a tight embrace, and a wet, wet cheek was laid against mine. Oh, how she trembled and sobbed! I felt bewildered and unhappy, and I remember putting my wee, helpless arms round her neck and asking her why she was crying. She told me that daddy had gone away—away to heaven; and when I asked if he wouldn't come back to us again, she said, 'No, no,' and her embrace tightened, and she wept afresh. In a short time the door was hesitatingly opened, and Betty came noiselessly in with a book in her hand which I had often seen her read. She stood behind my mother's chair with her tear-stained face turned away, and her red hand on my mother's shoulder; but she didn't speak. Then she came round, and, 'hunkering' down beside us, opened her book and in a low voice