It was just a saying of Aunt Josephine’s, that − a remark current for any season. She said it as one says, ‘It’s a bonny day,’ or, ‘I dinna ken fat’s ta’en the weather the year.’
‘Josephine’ll mebbe hae her fencie ready for her funeral,’ said Sandy Corbett, Aunt Jean’s gristly husband.
The fence was not neglected from carelessness, or procrastination, or a distaste for work. Still less, of course, from indifference. Miss Leggatt had a tender concern for her seedlings, and would interrupt even a game of cards at the advent of a scraping hen. But deep within herself she felt obscurely the contrast between the lifeless propriety of a fence and the lively interest of shooing a hen; and Aunt Josephine at every turn chose instinctively the way of life. The flame of life burned visibly in her with an even glow. A miracle to turn aside and see − the bush burning and not consumed. One could read it in her eye, a serene unclouded eye, that never blazed and was never dimmed. An eye, moreover, that never saw too much.
But pleasant as one found her eye, it was the nose that was the feature of Aunt Josephine Leggatt’s countenance. It was as straight as her back. A fine sharp sculptured nose that together with her lofty brow gave her profile a magnificence she had height enough to carry. A good chin too: though Jean, as Josephine herself was the first to acknowledge, had the chin of the family. Jean’s chin spoke.
To look in Aunt Josephine’s face, one felt that life was a simple matter, irrationally happy. Temper could not dwell with her. On this June day, hot and airless, with the spattered dents of early morning thunder-drops still uneffaced in the dust, not even Emmeline could withstand her serenity.
‘She’s ta’en a grip o’ ill-natur,’ Emmeline grumbled, shaking the child. ‘She’s aye girnin’, an’ whan she’s nae she’s up in a flist that wad fleg ye. An ill-conditioned monkey.’
‘Leave the bairn’s temper alane,’ said Miss Leggatt. ‘The inside’ll clear o’ itsel, but the ootside wunna. A sup water and some soap wad set ye better’n a grumble.’
Martha was accordingly washed, and another frock put on her. She possessed no second pair of boots, and therefore the existing pair remained as they were. A bundle that went under Aunt Josephine’s arm, and a hat pulled over Martha’s tangled wisps of hair, completed these preparations for the child’s first sojourn from home: a sojourn upon which she started in wrath.
Crannochie
Aunt Josephine made no overtures. She trudged leisurely on through the soft dust, her skirt trailing a little and worrying the powder of dust into fantastic patterns. If she spoke it was to herself as much as to Martha − a trickle of commentary on the drought and the heat, sublime useless ends of talk that required no answer. Martha heard them all. They settled slowly over her, and she neither acknowledged them nor shook them off. She ploughed her way stubbornly along a cart-rut, where the dust was thickest and softest and rose in fascinating puffs and clouds at the shuffle of her heavy boots. She bent her head forward and watched it smoke and seethe; and ignored everything else in the world but that and her own indignation.
But in the wood there were powers in wait for her: the troubled hush of a thousand fir-trees; a light so changed, so subdued from its own lively ardour to the dark solemnity of that which it had entered, that the child’s spirit, brooding and responsive, went out from her and was liberated. In that hour was born her perception of the world’s beauty. The quiet generosity of the visible and tangible world sank into her mind, and with every step through the wood she felt it more closely concentrated and expressed in the gracious figure of old Miss Leggatt. She therefore drew closer to her aunt, looking sidelong now and then into her face.
Beyond the wood they were again on dusty road, and curious little tufts of wind came fichering with the dust; and suddenly a steady blast was up and about, roaring out of the south-east, and the long blue west closed in on them, nearer and denser and darker, inky, then ashen, discoloured with yellow like a bruise.
‘It’s comin’ on rainin’,’ said Martha; and as the first deliberate drops thumped down, she came close up to Aunt Josephine and clutched her skirt.
‘We’re nearly hame, ma dear, we’re nearly hame,’ said Aunt Josephine; and she took the child’s hand firmly in hers and held back her eager pace. Thunder growled far up by the Hill o’ Fare, then rumbled fiercely down-country like a loosened rock; and in a moment a frantic rain belaboured the earth. Martha tugged and ran, but Aunt Josephine had her fast and held her to the same sober step.
‘It’s a sair brae this,’ she said. ‘We’ll be weet whatever, an’ we needna lose breath an’ bravery baith. We’re in nae hurry − tak yer time, tak yer time.’
They took their time. The rain was pouring from Martha’s shapeless hat, her sodden frock clung to her limbs, her boots were in pulp. But Aunt Josephine had her stripped and rolled in a shawl, the fire blazing and the Kettle on, before she troubled to remove her own dripping garments or noticed the puddles that spread and gathered on the kitchen floor.
Martha was already munching cake and Aunt Josephine was on her knees drying up the waters, when the sound of a voice made the child glance up to see a face thrust in and peering. A singular distorted monkey face, incredibly lined.
‘It’s Mary Annie,’ said Miss Josephine. ‘Come awa ben.’
A shrivelled little old woman came in.
She came apologetic. She had brought Miss Josephine a birthday cake and discovered too late that she had mistaken the day; and on the very birthday she had made her own uses of the cake. She had set it on the table when she had visitors to tea, for ornament merely. Now, in face of the wrong date, her conscience troubled her; and what if Jeannie should know? Jeannie was her daughter and terrible in rectitude; and Jeannie had been from home when Mrs. Mortimer had held her tea-party.
‘Ye wunna tell Jeannie, Miss Josephine. Ye ken Jeannie, she’s that gweed − ower gweed for the likes o’ me.’
‘Hoots,’ said Aunt Josephine, ‘fat wad I dae tellin’ Jeannie? Jeannie kens ower muckle as it is. There’s nae harm dane to the cake, I’m sure, by bein’ lookit at.’
Her heartiness restored Mary Annie’s sense of pleasure; but she went away with no lightening of the anxiety that sat on her countenance.
Aunt Josephine had a curious belief that it was good for people to be happy in their own way: and a curious disbelief in the goodness of Jeannie.
‘She’s a − ay is she −’ she said, and said no more.
‘An’ noo,’ she added, looking at Martha, ‘we’ll just cut the new cake, for that ye’re eatin’s ower hard to be gweed. It’s as hard’s Hen’erson, an’ he was that hard he reeshled whan he ran.’
She plunged a knife through the gleaming top of the cake, and served Martha with a goodly slice and some of the broken sugar.
‘Yes, ma dear, he reeshled whan he ran. Did ye ken that? An’ the birdies’ll be nane the waur o’ a nimsch of cake.’
She moved about the room all the while she spoke, crumbling the old cake out at the window, sweeping the crumbs of the new together with her hand and tasting them, and breaking an end of the sugar to put in her mouth − with such a quiet serenity, so settled and debonair a mien, that the last puffs of Martha’s perturbation melted away on the air.
But even in the excitement of eating iced cake, following as it did on her struggle and the long hot walk through the dust, was not prickly enough to keep her waking. Half the cake still clutched in her messy fingers, she fell asleep against Aunt Josephine’s table; and Aunt Josephine, muttering, ‘She’s clean forfoch’en, the littlin − clean forfoch’en, that’s fat she is,’ put her to bed, sticky fingers and all, without more ado.