Ann and Her Mother

by O. Douglas

"But, Mother," Ann said, "I don't think we need grudge the years he was in India, for he was never really divided from us, his heart was always at home. People there told me that though he loved his work he was always talking of Scotland, his heart was full of the 'blessed beastly place' all the time. D'you remember his first leave? Long before it was sanctioned he had engaged a berth and given us elaborate instructions about writing to every port. It was only three months—six weeks at home—but it was enough, he said, to build the bridge. He was just the same, the same kind simple boy, eager to spend his money buying presents for every one; then, of course, his money went done! I can see him now, lying on the floor with a bit of paper and a pencil trying to make out if he had any money to go back with.... I wonder what made Robbie so utterly lovable? If we could only recapture the charm and put it into words—but we can only remember it and miss it. I think it was partly the way he had of laughing at himself, and the funny short-sighted way he screwed up his eyes—when he missed a shot he would call himself a 'blind buffer.' I always remember his second leave as being, I think, almost the happiest time in my life."

"Yes. It was the last time we were all together—two years after Mark's marriage. Mark took Fennanhopes, which held us all comfortably, and there was good shooting. Alis was a year old, and the idol of her uncles. Davie was about fourteen, I suppose. Robbie was particularly pleased that Davie showed signs of being a good shot, and poor Davie was so anxious to please that he fired at and brought down a snipe, and then suffered agonies of remorse over killing what he described as 'that wee long-nebbit bird.'"

"I remember that," said Ann. "Mother, wasn't it odd how like Robbie and Davie were? Plain little Davie and Robbie who was so good-looking. After Robbie was gone, when Davie and I were together in a room, I used to shut my eyes and make myself almost believe it was Robbie talking to me—and both were so like Father. It must have been the way they moved, and the gentle way they touched things—and the way they fell over things! Mark called Davie 'light-footed Ariel,' from his capacity for taking tosses. They were such friends, Father and the four boys, and Father was the youngest of the lot."

Mrs. Douglas sat with her hands clasped in her lap, looking straight before her. When she spoke it was as if she were speaking to herself.

"Robbie used to say that it was a mistake for a family to be too affectionate, for when we were parted we were homesick for each other all the time. But he wrote once: 'Foreign service must be a cheerless business for the unclannish....'"

"Mother," Ann said gently, "I think you can almost say Robbie's letters by heart. It wasn't so bad saying good-bye to him, after his first leave—at least, not for me, for I was going out to him for the next cold weather. And Mark's marriage was our next excitement; we were frightfully unused to marriages in our family, for you had no brothers or sisters married, and Father had none. Had you and Father proved such an awful example?"

"It is odd," Mrs. Douglas agreed; "but some families are like that. Others flop into matrimony like young ducks into water. Mark's engagement gave me a great shock. It came as a complete surprise, and we knew nothing about Charlotte, and it seemed to me that it must break up everything, and that I must lose my boy."

"It might have meant that, Mother, if Charlotte hadn't been Charlotte. I know young wives who have taken their husbands completely away from their own people. I don't think Mark would have allowed himself to be taken, and I am very sure that Charlotte never tried. How odd it is to remember that first visit she paid to us after she got engaged. None of us had ever seen her, and we wondered what we would talk to her about for a whole fortnight. And if it was bad for us to have a stranger come in amongst us, how infinitely worse it was for poor Charlotte to have to face a solid phalanx of—possibly hostile—new relations! We have often laughed at it since, and Charlotte has confessed that she had a subject for each of us. To you, Mums, she talked about the poor; to Jim, poetry; to Father, flowers; Davie needed no conversation, only butter-scotch; my subject was books. The great thing about Charlotte was that she could always laugh, always be trusted to see the funny side if there was one, and as a family we value that more than anything. And we are pagans in our love for beauty, and Charlotte was very good to look at. We weren't really formidable, Charlotte says. Father she loved at once. Having no brothers of her own, she was delighted to adopt Robbie and Jim and Davie. You and I were the snags, Mother."

"I?" said Mrs. Douglas in a hurt voice. "I'm sure I tried to be as kind as——"

"Of course you did, you couldn't be anything else if you tried; but you had just a little the air of a lioness being robbed of its whelps—and you sighed a good deal. Mark and I had been so much to each other always that it wouldn't have been surprising if Charlotte had disliked the person that she was, in a way, supplanting—but we both liked Mark too well to dislike each other, so we became friends. I never hear a joke now but I think 'I must remember to tell Charlotte that,' and I never enjoy a book without thinking 'I wish Charlotte were here that we might talk it over.' We have laughed so much together, and we have cried so much together, that I don't think anything could come between us. And she has been so good about letting us share the children—What an event the wedding was! D'you remember the hat you chose for it in the middle of a most tremendous thunderstorm? It didn't seem to matter much what hat you took for we expected to be killed any minute, and it always rather solemnised you to put it on."