It roused in me a curiosity I felt it would be pleasant to gratify, and so a little while after I began this story, I wrote to a London newspaper man and asked him to send me some of his Orkney exchanges. I have a habit of trusting newspaper editors and I found this one as I expected, willing and obliging. He sent me two Orkney papers and the first thing I noticed was the prevalence of the old names. Among them I saw Mrs. Max Grant, and I thought I would write to her and take my chance of the lady turning out to be the old Sunna Vedder. It was quite a possibility, as we were apparently about the same age when I saw her. It was only for an hour or two in the evening we met, at the Ragnor house, but girls see a deal in an hour or two and if I remembered her, she had doubtless chronicled an opinion of me.
In about five weeks Mrs. Grant"s letter in answer to mine arrived. She began it by saying she remembered me, because I wore a hat, a sailor"s hat, and she said it was the first hat she ever saw on a woman"s head.
She said also, that I told her women were beginning to wear them for shopping and walking and driving, or out at sea, but never for church or visiting. All of which I doubtless said, for it was my first hat.
And I do not remember women wearing hats at all until about this time.
I suppose [she continued] thou wants to know first of all about the Vedders. They were _the_ people then, and they have not grown a bit smaller, nor do they think any less of themselves yet. My grandfather married again and was not sorry for it. I don"t know whether his wife was sorry or not. I took Maximus Grant for a husband for, after Boris Ragnor died, I did not care who I took, provided he had plenty of good qualities and plenty of gold. We lived together thirty years very respectably. I took my way and I usually expected him to do the same. We had four sons, and they have nine sons among them, and all of the nine are now fighting the vipers they have been coddling for forty or fifty years. Some are in the regular army, some in the navy, and some in the plucky, fighting little navy, patrolling England and her brood of coastwise islands. They are a tough, rough, hard lot, but I love them all better than anything else in this world. There are a good many Vedder houses in Orkney, and they are all full of little squabbling, fighting, never clean, and never properly dressed little brats, from four to eleven years old. So I don"t worry about there being Vedders enough to run things the way they want them run.
The Ragnors are here in plenty. All the men are at the war, all the women running fishing boats or keeping general shops, to which I like to see the Germans going. They are told what kind of people they are as they walk up to the shops; and they get what they want at an impoverishing price. Serve them right! Men, however, will pay any money for a thing they want.
There has not been such good times in Orkney since I was born, as there is now. We have an enemy to beat in trade and an enemy to beat in fight at our very doors, and our men are neither to hold nor to bind, they are that top-lofty. War is a man"s native air.
My sons and grandsons are all two inches taller than they were and they defy Nature to contradict them. I never attempt it. Well, then, they are proper men in all things, a little hard to deal with and masterful, but just as I wish them. My grandfather died fifty years ago, he might have lived longer if he had not married. His widow wept in the deepest black and people thought she was sorry.
The Ragnors are mostly here and in Shetland. Conall Ragnor never really settled down again. Rahal and he lived in Edinburgh or London, when not travelling. I heard that Conall wrote books and really got money for them. I cannot believe that. Rahal died first. Conall lived a month after her. They were laid in earth in Stromness Church-yard. My grandfather wanted to bring the body of Boris home and bury it in Stromness, and I would not let him. He is all mine where he sleeps in the Crimea. I don"t want him among a congregation of his brothers and sisters and uncles and aunts.
I suppose thou must have heard of Thora"s husband. He really did become famous, and I was told his father forgave him all his youthful follies. It was said Thora managed that in some clever way; but I"m sure I don"t know what to say. Thora never seemed at all clever to me. She had many children, but she died long ago, though she did live long enough to see her husband knighted and her eldest boy marry the daughter of a lord. I have no doubt she was happy in her own way, only she never did dress herself as a person in the best society ought to have done. I once told her so. "Well, then," she said, "I dress to please my husband." Imagine such simplicity! As to myself I am getting near to ninety, but I live a good life and G.o.d helps me. I have kept my fine hair and complexion and I run around on my little errands quite comfortably. Indeed I am sunwise able for everything I want. I shall be glad to hear from thee again, and if thou wilt send me occasionally some of those delightful American papers, thou wilt make me much thy debtor. Also, I want thee to tell all the brave young Americans thou knows that if they would like a real life on the ocean wave, they ought to join our wonderful patrol round the English coast. They will learn more and see more and feel more in a month, in this little interfering navy, than they"d learn in a lifetime in a first-cla.s.s man-of-war.
Write to me again and then we shall have tied our friendship with a three-fold letter. Thine, with all good will and wishes,
SUNNA VEDDER GRANT.
This is a woman"s letter and it must have a postscript. It is only two lines of John Stuart Blackie"s, and it should have been at the beginning, but it will touch your heart at the end as well as at the beginning.
"Oh, for a breath of the great North Sea, Girdling the mountains!"
S. V. G.