Penny Plain/Chapter 22

by O. Douglas

"For never anything can be amiss
 When simpleness and duty tender it."

As You Like It.

THE lot of the conscientious philanthropist is not an easy one. The kind but unthinking rich can strew their benefits about, careless of their effect on the recipients, but the path of the earnest lover of his fellows is thorny and difficult, and dark with disappointment.

To Jean in her innocence it had seemed that money was the one thing necessary to make bright the lives of her poorer neighbours. She pictured herself as a sort of fairy godmother going from house to house carrying sunshine and leaving smiles and happiness in her wake. She soon found that her dreams had been rosy delusions. Far otherwise was the result of her efforts.

"It's like something in a fairy-tale," she complained to Pamela. "You are given a fairy palace, but when you try to go to it mountains of glass are set before you and you can't reach it. You can't think how different the people are to me now. The very poor whom I thought I could help don't treat me any longer like a friend to whom they can tell their troubles in a friendly way. The poor-spirited ones whine, with an eye on my pocket, and where I used to get welcoming smiles I now only get expectant grins. And the high-spirited ones are so afraid that I'll offer them help that their time is spent in snubbing me and keeping me in my place."

"It's no use getting down about it," Pamela told her. "You are only finding what thousands have found before you, that's it the most difficult thing in the world to be wisely charitable. You will never remove mountains. If you can smooth a step here and there for people and make your small corner of the world as pleasant as possible you do very well."

Jean agreed with a sigh. "If I don't finish by doing harm. I have awful thoughts sometimes about the dire effects money may have on the boys—on Mhor especially. In any case it will change their lives entirely. It's a solemnising thought," and she laughed ruefully.

Jean plodded on her well-doing way, and knocked her head against many posts, and blundered into pitfalls, and perhaps did more good and earned more real gratitude than she had any idea of.

"It doesn't matter if I'm cheated ninety-nine times if I'm some real help the hundredth time," she told herself. "Puir thing," said the recipients of her bounty, in kindly tolerance, "she means weel, and it's a kindness to help her awa' wi' some o' her siller. A' she gies us is juist like tippence frae you or me."

One woman, at any rate, blessed Jean in her heart, though her stiff, ungracious lips could not utter a word of thanks. Mary Abbot lived in a neat cottage surrounded by a neat garden. She was a dressmaker in a small way, and had supported her mother till her death. She had been very happy with her work and her bright, tidy house and her garden and her friends, but for more than a year a black fear had brooded over her. Her sight, which was her living, was going. She saw nothing before her but the workhouse. Death she would have welcomed, but this was shame. For months she had fought it out, as her eyes grew dimmer, letting no one know of the anxiety that gnawed at her heart. No one suspected anything wrong. She was always neatly dressed at church, she always had her small contribution ready for collectors, her house shone with rubbing, and as she did not seem to want to take in sewing now, people thought that she must have made a competency and did not need to work so hard.

Jean knew Miss Abbot well by sight. She had sat behind her in church all the Sundays of her life, and had often admired the tidy appearance of the dressmaker, and thought that she was an excellent advertisement of her own wares. Lately she had noticed her thin and ill-coloured, and Mrs. Macdonald had said one day, "I wonder if Miss Abbot is all right. She used to be such a help at the sewing meeting, and now she doesn't come at all, and her excuses are lame. When I go to see her she always says she is perfectly well, but I am not at ease about her. She's the sort of woman who would drop before she made a word of complaint…."

One morning when passing the door Jean saw Miss Abbot polishing her brass knocker. She stopped to say good morning.

"Are you keeping well, Miss Abbot? There is so much illness about."

"I'm in my usual, thank you," said Miss Abbot stiffly.

"I always admire the flowers in your window," said Jean. "How do you manage to keep them so fresh looking? Ours get so mangy. May I come in for a second and look at them?"

Miss Abbot stood aside and said coldly that Jean might come in if she liked, but her flowers were nothing extra.

It was the tidiest of kitchens she entered. Everything shone that could be made to shine. A hearthrug made by Miss Abbot's mother lay before the fireplace, in which a mere handful of fire was burning. An arm-chair with cheerful red cushions stood beside the fire. It was quite comfortable, but Jean felt a bareness. There were no pots on the fire—nothing seemed to be cooking for dinner.

She admired the flowers and got instructions from their owner when to water and when to refrain from watering, and then, seating herself in a chair with an assurance she was far from feeling, she proceeded to try to make Miss Abbot talk. That lady stood bolt upright waiting for her visitor to go, but Jean, having got a footing, was determined to remain.

"Are you very busy just now?" she asked. "I was wondering if you could do some sewing for me? I don't know whether you ever go out by the day?"

"No," said Miss Abbot.

"We could bring it you here if you would do it at your leisure."

"I can't take in any more work just now. I'm sorry."

"Oh, well, it doesn't matter. Perhaps later on…. I'm keeping you. It's Saturday morning, and you'll want to get on with your work."

"Yes."

There was a silence, and Jean reluctantly rose to go. Miss Abbot had turned her back and was looking into the fire.

"Good morning, Miss Abbot. Thank you so much for letting me know about the flowers." Then she saw that Miss Abbot was crying—crying in a hopeless, helpless way that made Jean's heart ache. She went to her and put her hand on her arm. "Won't you tell me what's wrong? Do sit down here in the arm-chair. I'm sure you're not well."

Miss Abbot allowed herself to be led to the arm-chair Having once given way she was finding it no easy matter to regain control of herself.

"Is it that you aren't well?" Jean asked. "I know it's a wretched business trying to go on working when one is seedy."

Miss Abbot shook her head. "It's far worse than that. I have to refuse work for I can't see to do it. I'm losing my sight and …and there is nothing before me but the workhouse."

Over and over again in the silence of the night she had said those words to herself: she had seen them written in letters of fire on the walls of her little room: they had seemed seared into her brain, but she had never meant to tell a soul, not even the minister, and here she was telling this slip of a girl.

Jean gave a cry and caught her hands. "Oh no, no! Never that!"

"I've no relations," said Miss Abbot. She was quiet now and calm, and hopeless. "And if I had I couldn't be a burden on them. Nobody wants a penniless, half-blind woman. I've had to use up all my savings this winter … it will just have to be the workhouse."

"But it shan't be," said Jean. "What's the use of me if I'm not to help? No. Don't stiffen and look at me like that. I'm not offering you charity. Perhaps you may have heard that I've been left a lot of money—in trust. It's your money as much as mine; if it's anybody's it's God's money. I felt I just couldn't pass your door this morning, and I spoke to you, though I was frightfully scared—you looked so stand-offish…. Now listen. All I've got to do is to send your name to my lawyer—he's in London, and he knows nothing about anybody in Priorsford, so you needn't worry about him—and he will arrange that you get a sufficient income all your life. No, it isn't charity. You've fought hard all your life for others, and it's high time you got a rest. Everyone should get a rest and a competency when they are sixty. (Not that you are nearly that, of course.) Some day that happy state of affairs will be. Now the kettle's almost boiling, and I'm going to make you a cup of tea. Where's the caddy?"

There was a spoonful of tea in the caddy, but in the cupboard there was only the heel of a loaf—no butter, no cheese, no jam.

"I'm at the end of my tether," Miss Abbot admitted. "And unless I touch the money laid away for my rent, I haven't a penny in the house."

"Then," said Jean, "it was high time I turned up." She heated the teapot and poked the bit of coal into a blaze. "Now here's your tea"—she reached for her bag that lay on the table—"and here's some money to go on with. Oh, please don't let's go over it all again. Do, my dear, be reasonable."

"I doubt it's charity," said poor Miss Abbot, "but I cannot refuse. Indeed, I don't seem to take it in…. I've whiles dreamed something like this, and cried when I wakened. This last year has been something awful—trying to hide my failing eye-sight and pretending I didn't need sewing when I was near starving, and always seeing the workhouse before me. When I got up this morning there seemed to be a high wall in front of me, and I knew I had come to the end. I thought God had forgotten me."

"Not a bit of it," said Jean. "Put away that money like a sensible body, and I'll write to my lawyer to-day. And the next thing to do is to go with me to an oculist, for your eyes may not be as bad as you think. You know, Miss Abbot, you haven't treated your friends well, keeping them all at arm's length because you were in trouble. Friends do like to be given the chance of being useful…. Now I'll tell you what to do. This is a nice fresh day. You go and do some shopping, and be sure and get something nice for your supper, and fresh butter and marmalade and things, and then go for a walk along Tweedside and let the wind blow on you, and then drop in and have a cup of tea and a gossip with one of the friends you've been neglecting lately, and you see if you don't feel heaps better…. Remember nobody knows anything about this but you and me. I shan't even tell Mr. Macdonald…. You will get papers and things to sign, I expect, from the lawyer, and if you want anything explained you will come to The Rigs, won't you? Perhaps you would rather I didn't come here much. Good morning, Miss Abbot," and Jean went away. "For all the world," as Miss Abbot said to herself, "as if lifting folk from the miry clay and setting their feet on a rock was all in the day's work."

The days slipped away and March came and David was home again; such a smart David in new clothes and (like Shakespeare's Town Clerk) "everything handsome about him."

He immediately began to entice Jean into spending money. It was absurd, he said, to have no one but Mrs. M'Cosh: a smart housemaid must be got.

"She would only worry Mrs. M'Cosh," Jean protested "and there isn't room for another maid, and I hate smart maids anyway. I like to help in the house myself."

"But that's so absurd," said David, "with all your money. You should enjoy life now."

"Yes," said Jean meekly, "but smart maids wouldn't help me to—quite the opposite…. And don't you get ideas into your head about smartness, Davie. The Rigs could never be smart: you must go to The Towers for that. So long as we live at The Rigs we must be small plain people. And I hope I shall live here all my life—and so that's that!"

David, greatly exasperated, bounded from his chair the better to harangue his sister.

"Jean, anybody would think you were a hundred to hear you talk! You'll get nothing out of life except perhaps a text on your tombstone, 'She hath done what she could,' and that's a dull prospect…. Why aren't you more like other girls? Why don't you do your hair the new way, all sort of—oh, I don't know, and wear earrings … you know you don't dress smartly."

"No," said Jean.

"And you haven't any tricks. I mean you don't try and attract attention to yourself."

"No," said Jean.

"You don't talk like other girls, and you're not keen on the new dances. I think you like being old-fashioned."

"I'm afraid I'm a failure as a girl," Jean confessed, "but perhaps I'll get more charming as I get older. Look at Pamela!"

"Oh, Miss Reston," said David, in the tone that he might have said "Helen of Troy." … "But seriously, Jean, I think you are using your money in a very dull way. You see, you're so dashed helpful. What makes you want to think all the time about slum children?… I think you'd better present your money all in a lump to the Government as a drop in the ocean of the National Debt."

"I'll not give it to the Government," said Jean, "but we may count ourselves lucky if they don't thieve it from us. I'm at one with Bella Bathgate when she says, 'I'm no verra sure aboot thae politicians Liberal or Tory.' I think she fears that any day they may grab Hillview from her."

"Anyway," David persisted, "we might have a car. I learned to drive at Oxford. It would be frightfully useful, you know, a little car."

"Useful!" laughed Jean. "Have you written any more, Davie?"

David explained that the term had been a very busy one, and that his time had been too much occupied for any outside work, and Jean understood that the stimulus of poverty having been removed David had fallen into easier ways. And why not—at nineteen?

"We must think about a car. Do you know all about the different makes? We mustn't be rash."

David assured her that he would make all inquiries and went out of the room whistling blithely.

Jean, left alone, sat thinking. Was the money to be a treasure to her or the reverse? It was fine to give David what he wanted, to know that Jock and Mhor could have the best of everything, but their wants would grow and grow; simple tastes and habits were easily shed, and luxurious ways easily learned. Would the possession of money spoil the boys? She sighed, and then smiled rather ruefully as she thought of David and his smart maids and motors and his desire to turn her into a modern girl. It was very natural and very boyish of him. "He'll have the face ett off me," said Jean, quoting the Irish R.M…. Richard Plantagenet hadn't minded her being old-fashioned.

It was odd how empty her life felt when it ought to feel so rich. She had the three boys beside her, Pamela was next door, she had all manner of schemes in hand to keep her thoughts occupied—but there was a great want somewhere. Jean owned to herself that the blank had been there ever since Lord Bidborough went away. It was frightfully silly, but there it was. And probably by this time he had quite forgotten her. It had amused him to imagine himself in love, something to pass the time in a dull little town. She knew from books that men had a roving fancy—but even as she said it to herself her heart rebuked her for disloyalty Richard Plantagenet's eyes, laughing, full of kindness and honest—oh, honest, she was sure!—looked into hers. She thrilled again as she seemed to feel the touch of his hand and heard his voice saying, "Oh, Penny-plain, are you going to send me away?" Why hadn't he written to congratulate her on the fortune? He might have done that, surely…. And Pamela hardly spoke of him. Didn't seem to think Jean would be interested. Jean, whose heart leapt into her throat at the mere casual mention of his name.

Jean looked up quickly, hearing a step on the gravel. It was Pamela sauntering in, smiling over her shoulder at Mhor, who was swinging on the gate with Peter by his side.

"Oh, Pamela, I am glad to see you. David says I am using the money in such a stuffy way. Do you think I am?"

"What does David want you to do?" Pamela asked, as she threw off her coat and knelt before the fire to warm her hands.

"'To eat your supper in a room
  Blazing with lights, four Titians on the wall
  And twenty naked girls to change your plate?'"

Jean laughed. "Something like that, I suppose. Anyway he wants a smart parlour-maid at once, and a motor-car. Also he wants me to wear earrings, and talk slang, and wear the newest sort of clothes."

"Poor Penny-plain, are you going to be forced into being twopence coloured? But I think you should get another maid; you have too much to do. And a car would be a great interest to you. Jock and Mhor would love it too: you could go touring all round in it. You must begin to see the world now. I think, perhaps, David is right. It is rather stuffy to stick in the same place (even if that place is Priorsford) when the whole wide world is waiting to be looked at…. I remember a dear old curé in Switzerland who, when he retired from his living at the age of eighty, set off to see the world. He told me he did it because he was quite sure when he entered heaven's gate the first question God would put to him would be, 'And what did you think of My world?' and he wanted to be in a position to answer intelligently…. He was an old dear. When you come to think of it, it is a little ungrateful of you, Jean, not to want to taste all the pleasures provided for the inhabitants of this earth. There is no sense in useless extravagance, but there is a certain fitness in things. A cottage is a delicious thing, but it is meant for the lucky people with small means; the big houses have their uses too. That's why so many rich people have discontented faces. It's because to them £200 a year and a cottage is 'paradise enow' and they are doomed to the many mansions and the many servants."

Jean nodded. "Mrs. M'Cosh often says, 'There's mony a lang gant in a cairriage,' and I dare say it's true. I don't want to be ungrateful, Pamela. I think it's about the worst sin one can commit—ingratitude. And I don't want to be stuffy, either, but I think I was meant for small ways."

"Poor Penny-plain! Never mind. I'm not going to preach any more. You shall do just as you please with your life. I was remembering, Jean, your desire to go to the Shakespeare Festival at Stratford in April. Why not motor there? It is a lovely run. I meant to take you myself, but I expect you would enjoy it much better if you went with the boys. It would be great fun for you all, and take you away from your philanthropic efforts and let you see round everything clearly."

Jean's eyes lit with interest, and Pamela, seeing the light in them, went on:

"Everybody should make a pilgrimage in spring: it's the correct thing to do. Imagine starting on an April morning, through new roads, among singing birds and cowslips and green new leaves, and stopping at little inns for the night—lovely, Jean."

Jean gave a great sigh.

"Lovely," she echoed. Lovely, indeed, to be away from housekeeping and poor people and known paths for a little, and into leafy Warwick lanes and the rich English country which she had never seen.

"And then," Pamela went on, "you would come back appreciating Priorsford more than you have ever done. You would come back to Tweed and Peel Tower and the Hopetoun Woods with a new understanding. There's nothing so makes you appreciate your home as leaving it…. Bother! That's the bell. Visitors!"

It was only one visitor—Lewis Elliot.

"Cousin Lewis!" cried Jean. "Where in the world have you been? Three whole months since you went away and never a word from you. You didn't even write to Mrs. Hope."

"No," said Lewis; "I was rather busy." He greeted Pamela and sat down.

"Were you so very busy that you couldn't write so much as a post card? And I don't believe you know that I'm an heiress?"

"Yes; I heard that, but only the other day. It was a most unexpected windfall. I was delighted to hear about it." Jean looked at him and wondered if he were well. His long holiday did not seem to have improved his spirits; he was more absent-minded than usual and disappointingly uninterested.

"I didn't know you were back in Priorsford," he said, addressing Pamela, "till I met your brother in London. I called on you just now, and Miss Bathgate sent me over here."

"Is Biddy amusing himself well?" Pamela asked.

"I should think excellently well. I dined with him one night and he seemed in great spirits. He seemed to be very much in request. He wanted to take me about a bit, but I've got out of London ways. I don't seem to know what to talk about to this new generation and I yawn. I'm better at home at Laverlaw among the sheep."

Mrs. M'Cosh came in to lay the tea, and Jean said: "You'll have tea here, Cousin Lewis, though this isn't my visit, and then you can go over to Hillview with Pamela and pay your visit to her. You mustn't miss the opportunity of killing two birds with one stone. Besides, Pamela's time in Priorsford is so short now, you mayn't have another chance of paying a visit of ceremony."

"Well, if I may——"

"Yes, do come. I expect Jean has had enough of me for one day. I've been lecturing her…. By the way, where are the boys to-day? Mhor was swinging on the gate as I came in. He told me he was going somewhere, but his speech was obstructed by a large piece of toffee, and I couldn't make out what he said."

"He was waiting for Jock," said Jean. "Did you notice that he was very clean, and that his hair was sleeked down with brilliantine? They are invited to bring Peter to tea at the Miss Watsons', and are in great spirits about it. They generally hate going out to tea, but Jock discovered recently that the Watsons had a father who was a sea captain. That fact has thrown such a halo round the two ladies that he can't keep away from them. They have allowed him to go to the attic and rummage in the big sea-chests which, he says, are chockful of treasures like ostrich eggs and lumps of coral and Chinese idols. It seems the Miss Watsons won't have these treasures downstairs as they don't look genteel among the 'new art' ornaments admired in Balmoral. All the treasures are to be on view to-day (Jock has great hopes of persuading the dear ladies to give him one to bring home, what he calls a 'Chinese scratcher'—it certainly sounds far from genteel) and a gorgeous spread as well—Jock confided to me that he thought there might even be sandwiches; and Peter being invited has filled Mhor's cup of happiness to the brim. So few people welcome that marauder."

"I wish I could be there to hear the conversation," said Pamela. "Jock with his company manners is a joy."

An hour later Lewis Elliot accompanied Pamela back to Hillview.

"It's rather absurd," he protested. "I'm afraid I'm inflicting myself on you, but if you will give me half an hour I shall be grateful."

"You must tell me about Biddy," Pamela said, as she sat down in her favourite chair. "Draw up that basket chair, won't you? and be comfortable. You look as if you were just going to dart away again. Did Biddy say anything in particular?"

"He told me to come and see you…. I won't take a chair, thanks. I would rather stand. ….Pamela, I know it's the most frightful cheek, but I've cared for you exactly twenty-five years. You never had a notion of it, I know, and of course I never said anything, for to think of your marrying a penniless, dreamy sort of idiot was absurd—you who might have married anybody! I couldn't stay near you loving you as I did, so I went right out of your life. I don't suppose you ever noticed I had gone, you had always so many round you waiting for a smile…. I used to read the lists of engagements in The Times, dreading to see your name. No, that's not the right word, because I loved you well enough to wish happiness for you whoever brought it. I sometimes heard of you from one and another, and I never forgot—never for a day. Then my uncle died and my cousin was killed, and I came back to Priorsford and settled down at Laverlaw, and was content and quite fairly happy. The War came, and of course I offered my services. I wasn't much use but, thank goodness, I got out to France, and got some fighting—a second-lieutenant at forty! It was the first time I had ever felt myself of some real use…. Then that finished and I was back at Laverlaw among my sheep—and you came to Priorsford The moment I saw you I knew that my love for you was as strong and young as it was twenty years ago…."

Pamela sat fingering a fan she had taken up to protect her face from the blaze and looking into the fire.

"Pamela. Have you nothing to say to me?"

"Twenty-five years is a long time," Pamela said slowly. "I was fifteen then and you were twenty. Twenty years ago I was twenty and you were twenty-five—why didn't you speak then, Lewis? You went away and I thought you didn't care. Does a man never think how awful it is for a woman who has to wait without speaking? You thought you were noble to go away…. I suppose it must have been for some wise reason that the good God made men blind, but it's hard on the women. You might at least have given me the chance to say No."

"I was a coward. But it was unbelievable that you could care. You never showed me by word or look."

"Was it likely? I was proud and you were blind, so we missed the best. We lost our youth and I very nearly lost my soul. After you left, nothing seemed to matter but enjoying myself as best I could. I hated the thought of growing old, and I looked at the painted, restless faces round me and wondered if they were afraid too. Then I thought I would marry and have more of a reason for living. A man offered himself—a man with a great position—and I accepted him and it was worse than ever, so I fled from it all—to Priorsford. I loved it from the first, the little town and the river and the hills, and Bella Bathgate's grim honesty and poor cookery! And you came into my life again and I found I couldn't marry the other man and his position…."

"Pamela, can you really marry a fool like me? … It's my fault that we've missed so much, but thank God we haven't missed everything. I think I could make you happy. I wouldn't ask you to stay at Laverlaw for more than a month or two at a time. We would live in London if you wanted to. I could stick even London if I had you."

Pamela looked at him with laughter in her eyes.

"And you couldn't say fairer than that, my dear. No, no, Lewis. If I marry you we'll live at Laverlaw I love your green glen already; it's a place after my own heart. We won't trouble London much, but spend our declining years among the sheep—unless you become suddenly ambitious for public honours and, as Mrs. Hope desires, enter Parliament."

"There's no saying what I may do now. Already I feel twice the man I was."

They talked in the firelight and Pamela said: "I'm not sure that our happiness won't be the greater because it has come twenty years late. Twenty years ago we would have taken it pretty much as a matter of course. We would have rushed at our happiness and swallowed it whole, so to speak. Now, with twenty lonely, restless years behind us we shall go slowly, and taste every moment and be grateful. Years bring their compensation…. It's a funny world. It's a nice, funny world."

"I think," said Lewis, "I know something of what Jacob must have felt after he had served all the years and at last took Rachel by the hand——"

"'Served' is good," said Pamela in mocking tones.

But her eyes were tender.