Ann and Her Mother

by O. Douglas

Mrs. Douglas nodded. "Mrs. Burnett would like to be remembered by spring flowers. She loved them as she loved all young things. Her one little grandson, Jimmie, was the same age as Davie. Her great regret when she was dying was that she wouldn't see the two boys grow up. Ah, but if she could have known—they didn't grow up very far. Jimmie was killed at the landing in Gallipoli, and Davie at Arras, when they were still only little boys."

"You have always been well off for friends, Mother," Ann said, breaking a silence. "In Inchkeld, in Kirkcaple, Glasgow. It's because you are such a friendly person yourself."

"Oh, me! I often feel myself a poor creature, with little to give in return for treasure-houses opened to me."

Ann laughed unbelievingly and said, "I'm bound to admit we have had some wonderful friends—Miss Barbara Stewart for one. She was one of your three friends, wasn't she?"

"Indeed she was! Miss Barbara—to say her name gives me a warm feeling at my heart."

"Miss Barbara," Ann repeated. "What a lot the name conjures up! I don't know anyone who made more of life. She might have been a lonely, soured old woman, for she was the very last of her family, wasn't she? but to the great family of the poor and the afflicted she said, 'You are my brothers and my sisters.' I wonder how many men in Glasgow owe their start in life to Miss Barbara? I wonder how many lonely women died blessing her that it was their own and not a workhouse roof that covered them at the end? I wonder how many betrayed souls sinking hopelessly into hell had a succouring hand held out to them by that sharp-tongued spinster? How did you know Miss Barbara so well? She didn't belong to the church."

"Not in our time, but all her people had belonged. Miss Barbara had gone to the other side of Glasgow, and it was too far for her to come. She always took a great interest; but what good work was she not interested in? She sat there in her vast, early-Victorian dining-room, wrapped in innumerable shawls and woolly coats, for she suspected draughts from every quarter, a tall woman, broadly made, with a large, strong face. What would I not give now to go into that room and see those whimsical, shrewd, kind eyes, and feel the wealth of welcome in those big soft hands as she rose to greet me, with shawls falling from her like leaves in Vallombrosa. She generally received me with abuse. 'What d'you mean by coming out on such a day? You'll go home with a chill and bother your poor family by lying in bed. Here—see—sit down in that chair and hold the soles of your boots to the fire,' all the time doing things for one's comfort, ringing for tea to be brought in, kneeling down to make fresh toast. She hated to trouble anyone; it was almost an obsession with her, the desire not to be a nuisance. She had a very aged cook, who had been in the Stewart family all her life, and it was said that Miss Barbara, herself nearly eighty, got up every morning and carried tea to her before she would let her rise to her duties."

"Dear Miss Barbara," Ann said, stroking the Tatler's smoke-grey fur, "she wasn't only good, she was delightfully funny. Her passion for cats!—not for well-fed, comfortable cats, but for poor, lean, homeless ones. She used to send me into a butcher's shop to buy a quarter of a pound of mince-collops, and then down area steps carrying it (the horrid stuff oozing clammily through the paper) after some terrified animal that fled from me, paying no attention to my blandishments. She was utterly unlike the ordinary rich old woman, flattered and kowtowed to for her money until she thinks she isn't made of ordinary clay. I don't think Miss Barbara ever gave a thought to herself; she hadn't time, she was so busy looking after other people."

"In her youth," said Mrs. Douglas, "Miss Barbara was a great worker in the slums of Glasgow, but when I knew her she wasn't able for that, and people had to go to her. The clergy waited on her by the dozen, and everyone else who wanted money for good works, not to speak of many who were mere cranks and charlatans. Everyone who came was admitted, and Miss Barbara wouldn't have listened to a word against any of them."

"No," said Ann; "she would have said with Falstaff, 'Tush, man, mortal men, mortal men'; or, rather, she wouldn't, for she had probably never heard of Falstaff, and thought that anyone who could read Shakespeare for pleasure was eccentric almost to madness. If you told her of a book you had enjoyed, she would say, 'Is it true? No? Well, then——' But everyone who went to No. 10 got a hearing."