hospital, began to tell her the arrangements made for looking after her. ‘A nice body that had been a nurse, nae ane o’ the hospital kind, ye ken −’ ‘Nurse!’ quoth Miss Josephine; and with that she perked up and there was no more word of dying. Never a nurse would Aunt Josephine have, no, nor any hired woman. A pretty pass things were come to, if she had to take a hired woman under her roof, she who had relished her jaunty independence through so many years. Oh, she knew there were unpleasant necessities, her wound to dress and so forth, but the district nurse was coming in about every morning to do that; and for the rest −
‘There’s Matty there,’ she said, ‘’ll bide wi’ me. That would be mair wiselike nor a stranger body, surely. She can easy get ower to the Slack on her bicycle. An’ it’s little that a craitur like me’ll want an’ brief time that I’ll want it.’
Aunt Jean approved the suggestion. Quite right for Matty to make herself useful.
Martha was undergoing at the moment one of her fierce revulsions from a bout of passion. She wanted to dash up out of the waters that had engulfed her, to stand high and dry on common ground; and it seemed to her that the more hard work she had to perform, plain and ordinary tasks that would use her up, the freer she would become. ‘Even more than I’ve strength for,’ she thought, ‘so that I’ll be tired out always and never have time to think.’ There would be an astringent quality in days that included an eight miles’ cycle run night and morning through all weathers, the tending of an old woman stricken with cancer and the keeping of her house, in addition to the day’s teaching in school: something antiseptic to draw out from her what at the moment she felt as poison. An ounce of civet, good apothecary.
‘Of course I will stay with you,’ she said; and to her father, who demurred a little at the arrangement, though conceding, ‘Ye’ll hae to pleesure her. It canna be for lang,’ she repeated, ‘Of course I’ll stay with her. I can easily manage.’
Later, when the sharpest of her revulsion had worn off and she no longer thirsted to scourge herself, she had a sagging of the heart over what she had undertaken. ‘Shall I be able?’ she queried: and with the insidious creeping in again of desire she thought, ‘I shan’t have time enough for Luke.’ To gather her forces and pour them out on him seemed just then the only worthy use in life: though in her heart she knew that the outpouring would turn, as it always did, to grasping. She wanted time too. … But it had never been in her nature to step aside from necessary labour and she held steadily to her task, stifling the impulses that sometines she counted madness and sometimes the noblest sanity she knew.
Aunt Josephine made an astonishing patient. As Peter the postie said, ‘I never saw her in twa minds. She’s aye grand pleased wi’ hersel’.’ Pain, sickness, comfort, the kindliest of attentions, the most wearisome of waiting, a clean house or a dirty, won from her the same divine acquiescence. On her worst days of pain she said, ‘Weel, weel, ye canna mak a better o’t. There’s fowk waur nor me.’ ‘If you knew where to find them,’ Martha said once. She was humbled by Aunt Josephine’s shining gratitude for attentions that were often, tired as she was by the time she arrived back at evening, scanted and hasty. ‘That’s richt, ma dear,’ Aunt Josephine would say, when Martha had not time to shake the mats or lift the ornaments and dust behind them. ‘They’ll wait fine till the morn. A lick an’ a promise, that’ll dae grand.’
‘A dicht an’ a promise − it’ll serve my day,’ she often said. Yet as the weeks slipped by and summer came in, she seemed far indeed from dying. Every day she took a firmer grip again of life. She left her bed, sat most of the day in her chair; then moved about the room doing odd jobs herself; by and by could take a turn in the garden.
‘I’m a bittie better ilka day,’ she proclaimed delightedly. ‘I’ll seen be tae the road again at this rate.’ And jubilation shining from her countenance, ‘I’ll nae keep sorrow langer nor sorrow keeps me,’ she said.
Did she really think she was recovering, Martha queried of herself. If she still talked of what would serve her day, in the tone of resignation that suggested a brief day and a bounded, it was only, Martha noted, in phrases where to speak so had become a habit. When she was not simply making use of a phrase, Miss Leggatt’s talk was all of life. No worms, nor graves, nor epitaphs had entry there. She had turned her back on the incredible folly of dying and was setting again about the excellent business of living with all the astuteness she could muster. ‘Does she understand?’ Martha thought. A few months at the most, the doctors had said. And she pondered whether she ought not to recall the old lady’s galloping ideas. Was it kind to let her deceive herself, build false hopes that could have no foundation?
Miss Leggat understood well enough. She knew that she was dying: but she was not going to smirch what was left of her life by any graveyard considerations. And she said to Martha, ‘It’s high time the kail was planted out.’
‘Kail!’ Martha thought, with a queer contraction of the heart. ‘Where will she be by winter? − But if it makes her any happier, where’s the harm?’ And she planted out the kail.
The old woman’s gallant endurance of pain astounded her. ‘But it’s less awful than spiritual pain,’ she said to herself hastily, ashamed a little of her own cowardice in face of her black nights of craving; and ashamed a little farther at the self-excusing, she would turn to Aunt Josephine with some tender ministration. She was not always tender. Passion, that seeks self very abundantly, left her at times a poor leisure for the concerns of other folk. When the crave was on her, it was dull companionship she gave Miss Leggatt. Luckily, however, Miss Leggatt had other companions. Peter Mennie, whether he had a letter for her or not (and Miss Josephine had no great correspondence), put his head every day round the cheek of the door and cried her good morning. Clem, from Drochety Farm, the rough country lass who since the death of Mrs. Glennie had been mistress in all but name of Drochety’s establishment, and held her empire with an audacious hand, ran in on any pretext, or none at all, and bandied high jests with Miss Josephine.
‘Ye’re a great case,’ Miss Josephine would say, gleaming in spite of her nauseating pain at some of Clemmie’s audacities. Clem was a thorough-paced clown. She had an adaptable body. She could squint at will and her limbs were double-jointed. She would descend rapturously upon Miss Josephine with ‘eyes that werena neebors an’ feet at a quarter to three,’ and take off again ‘bow-hoched,’ her tongue lolling; while the old lady sat in her chair and beamed with pleasure.
‘She’s a tongue in her heid an’ she can use it tae,’ she would tell Martha. ‘She’s some terrible up-comes. She’s a caution, is Clem. A cure.’
A cure she was. The bluffert of her presence did Miss Josephine good. The very sound of her voice, strident and exuberant, carrying across the fields, was companionship in the long lonely days; and when Clemmie made jam, she gave Miss Josephine a taste; when she baked she brought her a scone for her tea.
And Stoddart Semple shambled in once or twice with his dambrod and gave the old lady a game; but she was ‘tired some seen’ for the game to be much of a success. ‘We maun jist tire an’ fa’ tae again,’ she said, ‘that’s fat we maun dae. Tire an’ fa’ tae again.’ They fell to again, Stoddart having ample leisure to await her convenience and in his glum fashion enjoying the stir.
Mary Annie, too, old widowed Mrs Mortimer, would look in, hastily and deferentially, upon her friend. Her visits were conditioned. With the years Jeannie Mortimer had become increasingly peremptory and inquisitorial. She had carried her habit of bigotry from her religion into the minutest affairs of daily life; and surer every hour of her own salvation, grew proportionately contemptuous of the remnant of mankind. For Miss Leggatt in particular, who said straight out exactly what she thought of such a misanthropic variety of religion (‘I’m ane like this,’ Miss Leggatt would proclaim, ‘fatever I think I say.’ And she thought, and said, that Jeannie Mortimer was a besom. ‘She’s blawn up nae handy in her ain conceits. Religion’s nae for plaguin’ ye. A bit prayer’s richt bonny in its ain time an’ place, but yon’s fair furth the gate. She’s nae near han’ soun’.’), for Miss Leggatt in particular Jeannie entertained an unconcealed distaste.