Barr Amelia E.
Winter Evening Tales
It was not alone that they grudged her the money for these labors, as so much out of their own pockets—they grudged her also the time; for they had been long accustomed to rely on Margaret Sinclair for their children's garments, for nursing the sick and for help in weddings, funerals and all the other extraordinary occasions of sympathy among a primitively social people.
Little by little, all winter, the sentiment of disapproval and dislike gathered. Some one soon found out that Margaret's tenants "just sent every bawbee o' the rent-siller to the Glasgow Bank;" and this was a double offence, as it implied a distrust of her own townsfolk and institutions. If from her humble earnings she made a little gift to any common object its small amount was a fresh source of anger and contempt; for none knew how much she had to deny herself even for such curtailed gratuities.
In fact, Margaret Sinclair's sudden stinginess and indifference to her townsfolk was the common wonder and talk of every little gathering. Old friends began to either pointedly reprove her, or pointedly ignore her; and at last even old Helga took the popular tone and said, "Margaret Sinclair had got too scrimping for an auld wife like her to bide wi' langer."
Through all this Margaret suffered keenly. At first she tried earnestly to make her old friends understand that she had good reasons for her conduct; but as she would not explain these good reasons, she failed in her endeavor. She had imagined that her good conscience would support her, and that she could live very well without love and sympathy; she soon found out that it is a kind of negative punishment worse than many stripes.
At the end of the winter Captain Thorkald again earnestly pressed their marriage, saying that, "his regiment was ordered to Chelsea, and any longer delay might be a final one." He proposed also, that his father, the Udaller Thorkald of Serwick, should have charge of her Orkney property, as he understood its value and changes. Margaret wrote and frankly told him that her property was not hers for at least seven years, but that it was under good care, and he must accept her word without explanation. Out of this only grew a very unsatisfactory correspondence. Captain Thorkald went south without Margaret, and a very decided coolness separated them farther than any number of miles.
Udaller Thorkald was exceedingly angry, and his remarks about Margaret Sinclair's refusal "to trust her bit property in as guid hands as her own" increased very much the bitter feeling against the poor girl. At the end of three years the trial became too great for her; she began to think of running away from it.
Throughout these dark days she had purposely and pointedly kept apart from her old friend Dr. Ogilvie, for she feared his influence over her might tempt her to confidence. Latterly the doctor had humored her evident desire, but he had never ceased to watch over and, in a great measure, to believe in her; and, when he heard of this determination to quit Orkney forever, he came to Stromness with a resolution to spare no efforts to win her confidence.
He spoke very solemnly and tenderly to her, reminded her of her father's generosity and good gifts to the church and the poor, and said: "O, Margaret, dear lass! what good at a' will thy silent money do thee in that Day? It ought to speak for thee out o' the mouths o' the sorrowfu' an' the needy, the widows an' the fatherless—indeed it ought. And thou hast gien naught for thy Master's sake these three years! I'm fair 'shamed to think thou bears sae kind a name as thy father's."
What could Margaret do? She broke into passionate sobbing, and, when the good old man left the cottage an hour afterward there was a strange light on his face, and he walked and looked as if he had come from some interview that had set him for a little space still nearer to the angels. Margaret had now one true friend, and in a few days after this she rented her cottage and went to live with the dominie. Nothing could have so effectually reinstated her in public opinion; wherever the dominie went on a message of help or kindness Margaret went with him. She fell gradually into a quieter but still more affectionate regard—the aged, the sick and the little children clung to her hands, and she was comforted.
Her life seemed, indeed, to have wonderfully narrowed, but when the tide is fairly out, it begins to turn again. In the fifth year of her poverty there was from various causes, such an increase in the value of real estate, that her rents were nearly doubled, and by the end of the seventh year she had paid the last shilling of her assumed debt, and was again an independent woman.
It might be two years after this that she one day received a letter that filled her with joy and amazement. It contained a check for her whole nine hundred pounds back again. "The bank had just received from Ronald Sinclair, of San Francisco, the whole amount due it, with the most satisfactory acknowledgment and interest." It was a few minutes before Margaret could take in all the joy this news promised her; but when she did, the calm, well-regulated girl had never been so near committing extravagances.
She ran wildly upstairs to the dominie, and, throwing herself at his knees, cried out, amid tears and smiles: "Father! father! Here is your money! Here is the poor's money and the church's money! God has sent it back to me! Sent it back with such glad tidings!"—and surely if angels rejoice with repenting sinners, they must have felt that day a far deeper joy with the happy, justified girl.
She knew now that she also would soon hear from Ronald, and she was not disappointed. The very next day the dominie brought home the letter. Margaret took it upstairs to read it upon her knees, while the good old man walked softly up and down his study praying for her. Presently she came to him with a radiant face.
"Is it weel wi' the lad, ma dawtie?"
"Yes, father; it is very well." Then she read him the letter.
Ronald had been in New Orleans and had the fever; he had been in Texas, and spent four years in fighting Indians and Mexicans and in herding cattle. He had suffered many things, but had worked night and day, and always managed to grow a little richer every year. Then, suddenly, the word "California!" rung through the world, and he caught the echo even on the lonely southwestern prairies. Through incredible hardships he had made his way thither, and a sudden and wonderful fortune had crowned his labors, first in mining and afterward in speculation and merchandising. He said that he was indeed afraid to tell her how rich he was lest to her Arcadean views the sum might appear incredible.
Margaret let the letter fall on her lap and clasped her hands above it. Her face was beautiful. If the prodigal son had a sister she must have looked just as Margaret looked when they brought in her lost brother, in the best robe and the gold ring.
The dominie was not so satisfied. A good many things in the letter displeased him, but he kissed Margaret tenderly and went away from her. "It is a' I did this, an' I did that, an' I suffered you; there is nae word o' God's help, or o' what ither folk had to thole. I'll no be doing ma duty if I dinna set his sin afore his e'en."
The old man was little used to writing, and the effort was a great one, but he bravely made it, and without delay. In a few curt, idiomatic sentences he told Ronald Margaret's story of suffering and wrong and poverty; her hard work for daily bread; her loss of friends, of her good name and her lover, adding: "It is a puir success, ma lad, that ye dinna acknowledge God in; an' let me tell thee, thy restitution is o'er late for thy credit. I wad hae thought better o' it had thou made it when it took the last plack i' thy pouch. Out o' thy great wealth, a few hun'red pounds is nae matter to speak aboot."
But people did speak of it. In spite of our chronic abuse of human nature it is, after all, a kindly nature, and rejoices in good more than in evil. The story of Ronald's restitution is considered honorable to it, and it was much made of in the daily papers. Margaret's friends flocked round her again, saying, "I'm sorry, Margaret!" as simply and honestly as little children, and the dominie did not fail to give them the lecture on charity that Margaret neglected.
Whether the Udaller Thorkald wrote to his son anent these transactions, or whether the captain read in the papers enough to satisfy him, he never explained; but one day he suddenly appeared at Dr. Ogilvie's and asked for Margaret. He had probably good excuses for his conduct to offer; if not, Margaret was quite ready to invent for him—as she had done for Ronald—all the noble qualities he lacked. The captain was tired of military life, and anxious to return to Orkney; and, as his own and Margaret's property was yearly increasing: in value, he foresaw profitable employment for his talents. He had plans for introducing many southern improvements—for building a fine modern house, growing some of the hardier fruits and for the construction of a grand conservatory for Margaret's flowers.
It must be allowed that Captain Thorkald was a very ordinary lord for a woman like Margaret Sinclair to "love, honor and obey;" but few men would have been worthy of her, and the usual rule which shows us the noblest women marrying men manifestly their inferiors is doubtless a wise one.
A lofty soul can have no higher mission than to help upward one upon a lower plane, and surely Captain Thorkald, being, as the dominie said, "no that bad," had the fairest opportunities to grow to Margaret's stature in Margaret's atmosphere.
While these things were occurring, Ronald got Margaret's letter. It was full of love and praise, and had no word of blame or complaint in it. He noticed, indeed, that she still signed her name "Sinclair," and that she never alluded to Captain Thorkald, and the supposition that the stain on his character had caused a rupture did, for a moment, force itself upon his notice; but he put it instantly away with the reflection that "Thorkald was but a poor fellow, after all, and quite unworthy of his sister."
The very next mail-day he received the dominie's letter. He read it once, and could hardly take it in; read it again and again, until his lips blanched, and his whole countenance changed. In that moment he saw Ronald Sinclair for the first time in his life. Without a word, he left his business, went to his house and locked himself in his own room.
Then Margaret's silent money began to speak. In low upbraidings it showed him the lonely girl in that desolate land trying to make her own bread, deserted of lover and friends, robbed of her property and good name, silently suffering every extremity, never reproaching him once, not even thinking it necessary to tell him of her sufferings, or to count their cost unto him.
What is this bitterness we call remorse? This agony of the soul in all its senses? This sudden flood of intolerable light in the dark places of our hearts? This truth-telling voice which leaves us without a particle of our self-complacency? For many days Ronald could find no words to speak but these, "O, wretched man that I am!"
But at length the Comforter came as swiftly and surely and mysteriously as the accuser had come, and once more that miracle of grace was renewed—"that day Jesus was guest in the house of one who was a sinner."
Margaret's "silent money" now found a thousand tongues. It spoke in many a little feeble church that Ronald Sinclair held in his arms until it was strong enough to stand alone. It spoke in schools and colleges and hospitals, in many a sorrowful home and to many a lonely, struggling heart—and at this very day it has echoes that reach from the far West to the lonely islands beyond the stormy Pentland Firth, and the sea-shattering precipices of Duncansbay Head.
It is not improbable that some of my readers may take a summer's trip to the Orkney Islands; let me ask them to wait at Thurso—the old town of Thor—for a handsome little steamer that leaves there three times a week for Kirkwall. It is the sole property of Captain Geordie Twatt, was a gift from an old friend in California, and is called "The Margaret Sinclair."
JUST WHAT HE DESERVED
There is not in its own way a more distinctive and interesting bit of Scotland than the bleak Lothian country, with its wide views, its brown ploughed fields, and its dense swaying plantations of fir. The Lammermoor Hills and the Pentlands and the veils of smoke that lie about Edinburgh are on its horizon, and within that circle all the large quietude of open grain fields, wide turnip lands, where sheep feed, and far-stretching pastures where the red and white cows ruminate. The patient processes of nature breed patient minds; the gray cold climate can be read in the faces of the people, and in their hearts the seasons take root and grow; so that they have a grave character, passive, yet enduring; strong to feel and strong to act when the time is full ready for action.
Of these natural peculiarities Jean Anderson had her share. She was a Lothian lassie of many generations, usually undemonstrative, but with large possibilities of storm beneath her placid face and gentle manner. Her father was the minister of Lambrig and the manse stood in a very sequestered corner of the big parish, facing the bleak east winds, and the salt showers of the German ocean. It was sheltered by dark fir woods on three sides, and in front a little walled-in garden separated it from the long, dreary, straight line of turnpike road. But Jean had no knowledge of any fairer land; she had read of flowery pastures and rose gardens and vineyards, but these places were to her only in books, while the fields and fells that filled her eyes were her home, and she loved them.
She loved them all the more because the man she loved was going to leave them, and if Gavin Burns did well, and was faithful to her, then it was like to be that she also would go far away from the blue Lammermuirs, and the wide still spaces of the Lothians. She stood at the open door of the manse with her lover thinking of these things, but with no real sense of what pain or deprivation the thought included. She was tall and finely formed, a blooming girl, with warmly-colored cheeks, a mouth rather large and a great deal of wavy brown hair. But the best of all her beauty was the soul in her face; its vitality, its vivacity and immediate response.
However, the time of love had come to her, and though her love had grown as naturally as a sapling in a wood, who could tell what changes it would make. For Gavin Burns had been educated in the minister's house and Jean and he had studied and fished and rambled together all through the years in which Jean had grown from childhood into womanhood. Now Gavin was going to New York to make his fortune. They stepped through the garden and into the long dim road, walking slowly in the calm night, with thoughtful faces and clasped hands. There was at this last hour little left to say. Every promise known to Love had been given; they had exchanged Bibles and broken a piece of silver and vowed an eternal fidelity. So, in the cold sunset they walked silently by the river that was running in flood like their own hearts. At the little stone bridge they stopped, and leaning over the parapet watched the drumly water rushing below; and there Jean reiterated her promise to be Gavin's wife as soon as he was able to make a home for her.
"And I am not proud, Gavin," she said; "a little house, if it is filled with love, will make me happy beyond all."
They were both too hopeful and trustful and too habitually calm to weep or make much visible lament over their parting; and yet when Gavin vanished into the dark of the lonely road, Jean shut the heavy house door very slowly. She felt as if she was shutting part of herself out of the old home forever, and she was shocked by this first breaking of the continuity of life; this sharp cutting of regular events asunder. Gavin's letters were at first frequent and encouraging, but as the months went by he wrote more and more seldom. He said "he was kept so busy; he was making himself indispensable, and could not afford to be less busy. He was weary to death on the Saturday nights, and he could not bring his conscience to write anent his own personal and earthly happiness on the Sabbath day; but he was sure Jean trusted in him, whether he wrote or not; and they were past being bairns, always telling each other the love they were both so sure of."
Late in the autumn the minister died of typhoid fever, and Jean, heartbroken and physically worn out, was compelled to face for her mother and herself, a complete change of life. It had never seemed to these two women that anything could happen to the father and head of the family; in their loving hearts he had been immortal, and though the disease had run its tedious course before their eyes, his death at the last was a shock that shook their lives and their home to the very centre. A new minister was the first inevitable change, and then a removal from the comfortable manse to a little cottage in the village of Lambrig.
While this sad removal was in progress they had felt the sorrow of it, all that they could bear; and neither had dared to look into the future or to speculate as to its necessities. Jean in her heart expected Gavin would at once send for them to come to America. He had a fair salary, and the sale of their furniture would defray their traveling expenses.
She was indeed so sure of this journey, that she did not regard the cottage as more than a temporary shelter during the approaching winter. In the spring, no doubt, Gavin would have a little home ready, and they would cross the ocean to it. The mother had the same thought. As they sat on their new hearthstone, lonely and poor, they talked of this event, and if any doubts lurked unconsciously below their love and trust they talked them away, while they waited for Gavin's answer to the sorrowful letter Jean had sent him on the night of her father's burial.
It was longer in coming than they expected. For a week they saw the postman pass their door with an indifference that seemed cruel; for a week Jean made new excuses and tried to hold up her mother's heart, while her own was sinking lower and lower. Then one morning the looked-for answer came. Jean fled to a room apart to read it alone; Mrs. Anderson sat down and waited, with dropped eyes and hands tightly clasped. She knew, before Jean said a word, that the letter had disappointed her. She had remained alone too long. If all had been as they hoped the mother was certain Jean would not have deferred the good tidings a moment. But a quarter of an hour had passed before Jean came to her side, and then when she lifted her eyes she saw that her daughter had been weeping.
"It is a disappointment, Jean, I see," she said sadly. "Never mind, dearie."
"Yes, mother; Gavin has failed us."
"We have been two foolish women, Jean. Oh, my dear lassie, we should have lippened to God, and He would not have disappointed us! What does Gavin Burns say?"
"It is what he does not say, that hurts me, mother. I may as well tell you the whole truth. When he heard how ill father was, he wrote to me, as if he had foreseen what was to happen. He said, 'there will be a new minister and a break-up of the old home, and you must come at once to your new home here. I am the one to care for you when your father is gone away; and what does it matter under what sun or sky if we are but together?' So, then, mother, when the worst had come to us I wrote with a free heart to Gavin. I said, 'I will come to you gladly, Gavin, but you know well that my mother is very dear to me, and where I am there she also must be.' And he says, in this letter, that it is me he is wanting, and that you have a brother in Glasgow that is unmarried and who will be willing, no doubt, to have you keep his house for him. There is a wale of fine words about it, mother, but they come to just this, and no more—Gavin is willing to care for me, but not for you and I will not trust myself with a man that cannot love you for my sake. We will stay together, mammy darling! Whatever comes or goes we will stay together. The man isna born that can part us two!"
"He is your lover, Jean. A girl must stick to her lover."
"You are my mother. I am bone of your bone, and flesh of your flesh and love of your love. May God forsake me when I forsake you!"
She had thrown herself at her mother's knees and was clasping and kissing the sad face so dear to her, as she fervently uttered the last words. And the mother was profoundly touched by her child's devotion. She drew her close to her heart, and said firmly:
"No! No, my dearie! What could we two do for ourselves? And I'm loth to part you and Gavin. I simply cannot take the sacrifice, you so lovingly offer me. I will write to my brother David. Gavin isna far wrong there; David is a very close man, but he willna see his sister suffer, there is no fear of that."
"It is Jean that will not see you suffer."
"But the bite and the sup, Jean? How are we to get them?"
"I can make my own dresses and cloaks, so then I can make dresses and cloaks for other people. I shall send out a card to the ladies near-by and put an advertisement in the Haddington newspaper, and God can make my needle sharp enough for the battle. Don't cry, mother! Oh, darling, don't cry! We have God and each other, and none can call us desolate."
"But you will break your heart, Jean. You canna help it. And I canna take your love and happiness to brighten my old age. It isna right. I'll not do it. You must go to Gavin. I will go to my brother David."
"I will not break my heart, mother. I will not shed a tear for the false, mean lad, that you were so kind to for fourteen years, when there was no one else to love him. Aye, I know he paid for his board and schooling, but he never could pay for the mother-love you gave him, just because he was motherless. And who has more right to have their life brightened by my love than you have? Beside, it is my happiness to brighten it, and so, what will you say against it? And I will not go to Gavin. Not one step. If he wants me now, he will come for me, and for you, too. This is sure as death! Oh, mammy! Mammy, darling, a false lad shall not part us! Never! Never! Never!"
"Jean! Jean! What will I say at all"
"What would my father say, if he was here this minute? He would say, 'you are right, Jean! And God bless you, Jean! And you may be sure that it is all for the best, Jean! So take the right road with a glad heart, Jean!' That is what father would say. And I will never do anything to prevent me looking him straight in the face when we meet again. Even in heaven I shall want him to smile into my eyes and say, 'Well done, Jean!'"
