less indifferent observer.
‘Oh, that’s nothing,’ said Mabel. ‘Tell him to come round for me at two o’clock.’
Sarah hesitated.
‘It’s so good of you that I don’t like to suggest – but do you think you could possibly come round for him? It’s so difficult to get him to do anything.’
Mabel raised her eyebrows. However, the occasion was an extraordinary one.
‘Very well,’ she said.
Even though her relief was tempered by self-reproach Sarah turned down the High Street with a lighter heart after parting from Mabel. She felt confusedly that William’s Christian charity towards all the world was on a higher level than her own suspicious judgments, but she found it difficult to believe in Divine grace without concrete instances. This morning, however, she had had a lesson. Let that be a lesson to you, she told herself sharply, emerging from her depression into the imperative mood which she mistook for God.
That was a common mistake in and around Calderwick, and Sarah’s father, who had passed it on to her, was not its originator. Even her brother William could not eliminate the imperative mood from his speculations, although his use of it was quite opposed to Sarah’s. ‘God’s in His heaven, therefore all must be well with the world,’ was his version, while Sarah’s, as she made her way towards Mary Watson’s shop, could have been expressed as: ‘All’s well with the world – or nearly so – therefore God must be in His heaven.’
Mary Watson’s shop was another stronghold of the imperative mood. Miss Watson felt it her duty to see that all was well with the world around her, in case God should be jeopardized in His heaven by aberrant humanity. Her father had been an elder in St James’s United Free Church, and although she had inherited his business as a draper she had not been allowed to inherit his eldership, which was perhaps the reason why her moral vigilance, unremitting in general, was especially relentless towards the minister and elders of that church. It was the boast of the town that Mary Watson had driven three ministers away from St James’s in as many years. Even William Murray’s mildness had not disarmed the doughty woman; she dubbed him ‘Milk-and-water Willie,’ and told him to his face that he would never win grown folk from their sins.
Usually, on entering Mary’s shop in the High Street, Sarah felt that she had interrupted a tirade against her brother. The over-loud tones of a customer saying hastily, ‘Aweel, I’ll just take these, Miss Watson,’ never failed to make her bristle. On this occasion, however, she found the shop empty, and, still remembering her lesson, even smiled pleasantly in Mary’s face, saying: ‘Lovely weather for September, isn’t it?’
‘No’ sae bad,’ admitted Mary, ‘But a’thing’s very dry.’
Things were not drier than her tone. Her attitude said plainly: ‘I don’t take it as a favour that you come into my shop: it’s only your duty to support a member of your own congregation.’
As the bales of material were unrolled with a thump and measured off on a yardstick Mary’s tongue was as active as her hands.
‘I suppose you’ve heard that the Town Council has granted a licence to the braw new Golf Club? That’s a fine state o’ things, Miss Murray. There’s mair pubs than kirks in the town already. I hope the minister is to do something about it? The Town Council should be weel rappit ower the knuckles.’
Sarah was well aware that Mary regarded the minister as incapable of rapping anyone over the knuckles. His failure to rap the Town Council would only become another grievance.
‘You should stand for the Town Council and do it yourself, Miss Watson.’ This was a hastily improvised defence, but its effect was unexpected. Mary bridled.
‘Me, Miss Murray! What would put that into your head now?’
‘I’m sure the minister would agree with me.’
‘Aweel, I’m no’ saying. If you and he think it’s my duty—’
Mary’s face was impassive again.
‘Of course it’s your duty.’
‘Ay, now, I never thought o’ that.’
Mary slowly folded up the stuff and made it into a neat parcel.
‘I’ll see what my sister says till’t.’
Then, as if conscious of weakness, she added in her sharpest voice:
‘And you might tell the minister that he hasna darkened our door for mair than twa months. My sister’s a poor bedridden woman, and even if he wasna the minister it wad only be decent of him to give her a look-in in the by-going.’
IV
Number twenty-six High Street, which was being prepared for its new master and mistress, was approved by Mabel. Like every house in the old High Street, of course, it had to be entered from a ‘close’, but once the narrow close entrance was left behind a fair-sized paved courtyard opened out, framed by two respectable Georgian houses, pillared and porticoed, with clipped box-trees set in green tubs before the doors. Dr Scrymgeour’s name shone resplendently on one door, and on the other a smaller and more modest brass plate read ‘H. Shand’. Mabel’s eye fell on that as usual with a slight sense of shock; she could never think of Hector as H. Shand, a householder. She became very much Mrs John Shand as she looked at it; she stiffened a little and examined the big brass bell-knob on its square plate and the whitened doorstep. Both were speckless. That maid wasn’t going to be so bad.
The said maid was breathless when she opened the door, and her eyes were shining.
‘Miss Shand’s here,’ she said. ‘An’ everything’s like a new pin.’
‘You must never answer the door in a kitchen apron. You must always change into a clean one to open the door, Mary Ann!’
‘But that would keep folk waiting.’
‘Better to let them wait. Better still to keep a clean apron under the dirty one, and then all you have to do is to slip it off. Try to remember that.’
Mrs John Shand sailed into the hall.
‘Are you there, Aunt Janet?’ she called in a clear voice.
‘Here, my dear,’ came the answer in a deeper more muffled tone. ‘Up here in their bedroom.’
Mabel mounted the stairs, still armoured in dignity. It was her sole defence against the thought of her husband’s young half-brother, who annoyed her by making her feel like a schoolgirl. He was the only young man who had ever kissed her with indifference. But she was Mrs John Shand now.
Aunt Janet appeared in the doorway.
‘How are you, my dear?’ She pecked Mabel’s cheek and went on without a pause: ‘I think everything’s all right now; the sheets are airing and the kitchen’s in apple-pie order.’
‘I had to check Mary Ann for coming to the door in a dirty apron,’ said Mrs John Shand. ‘Do you think she’ll be all right?’
‘Oh,
