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.
Martha awoke next morning with a sense of security. Like Mary Annie, she proceeded to be happy in her own way. That consisted at first in following Aunt Josephine everywhere about, dumbly, with grave and enquiring eyes. By and by she followed her to the open space before the door, and plucked her sleeve.
‘Will I dance to you now?’
‘Surely, ma dear, surely.’
She had never been taught to dance. Frock, boots, big-boned hands and limbs were clumsy, and her dancing was little more than a solemn series of ungainly hops. An intelligent observer might have been hard put to it to discover the rhythm to which she moved. A loving observer would have understood that even the worlds in their treading of the sky may sometimes move ungracefully. A young undisciplined star or so, with too much spirit for all its mastery of form … Aunt Josephine was a loving observer. She had never heard of cosmic measures, but she knew quite well that the force that urged the child to dance was the same that moved the sun in heaven and all the stars.
So she let her work alone and stood watching, as grave as Martha herself, and as happy.
‘Lovely, ma dear, just lovely,’ she said: and forgot about the tatties to pare and the dishtowels to wash before another thunder-plump came down. For be it understood that nothing so adaptable as work was allowed to put Aunt Josephine about. She was never harassed with it. She performed the meanest household task with a quiet gusto that made it seem the most desirable occupation in the world. But as soon as anything more interesting offered, she dropped the work where it was, and returned to it, if there was reason in returning to it when she was again at leisure, with the same quiet gusto. If there was no longer any reason in completing the work, why, it was so much labour saved.
‘Josephine sweeps the day an’ dusts the morn,’ Leebie once said with her chilliest snort.
But Leebie’s attitude to labour had been subtly deranged by her many years’ sojourn in Jean’s immaculate household. Early left a widow, and childless, Leebie had lived for nearly thirty years with Mr. and Mrs. Corbett. To the discipline of Jean’s establishment she owed her superb belief in labour as an end in itself. To rise on Tuesdays for any other reason than to turn out the bedrooms, or on Fridays for a purpose beyond baking, would have seemed to both sisters an idle attempt to tamper with an immutable law of life. Indeed it is to be doubted, had Mrs. Corbett not been too much engrossed with the immediate concerns of this world to have any attention for a world beyond, whether she could possibly have envisaged a Tuesday spent in singing hymns. Bedroom day in heaven … the days in their courses, splendid and unshakable as the stars. …
Aunt Josephine, on the other hand, had time to spare for the clumsy young stars, not at all splendid and still rather shaky as to their courses. She stood in great contentment and watched the one that was dancing on her path. Peter Mennie the postie, coming up the path, was drawn also into the vortex of the clumsy star.
‘See to the littlin,’ said Aunt Josephine.
‘She’ll
