“Sam’l,” said Sanders.
“Ay.”
“I’m hearing ye’re to be mairit.”
“Ay.”
“Weel, Sam’l, she’s a snod bit lassie.”
“Thank ye,” said Sam’l.
“I had ance a kin o’ notion o’ Bell mysel’,” continued Sanders.
“Ye had?”
“Yes, Sam’l; but I thocht better o’ ‘t.”
“Hoo d’ ye mean?” asked Sam’l, a little anxiously.
“Weel, Sam’l, mairitch is a terrible responsibeelity.”
“It is so,” said Sam’l, wincing.
“An’ no the thing to tak’ up withoot conseederation.”
“But it’s a blessed and honourable state, Sanders; ye’ve heard the
minister on ‘t.”
“They say,” continued the relentless Sanders, “‘at the minister doesna
get on sair wi’ the wife himsel’.”
“So they do,” cried Sam’l, with a sinking at the heart.
“I’ve been telt,” Sanders went on, “‘at gin ye can get the upper
han’ o’ the wife for a while at first, there’s the mair chance o’ a
harmonious exeestence.”
“Bell’s no the lassie,” said Sam’l, appealingly, “to thwart her man.”
Sanders smiled.
“D’ ye think she is, Sanders?”
“Weel, Sam’l, I d’na want to fluster ye, but she’s been ower-lang wi’
Lisbeth Fargus no to hae learned her ways. An’ a’body kins what a life
T’nowhead has wi’ her.”
“Guid sake, Sanders, hoo did ye no speak o’ this afore?”
“I thocht ye kent o’ ‘t, Sam’l.”
They had now reached the square, and the U. P. kirk was coming out. The
Auld Licht kirk would be half an hour yet.
“But, Sanders,” said Sam’l, brightening up, “ye was on yer wy to speer
her yersel’.”
“I was, Sam’l,” said Sanders, “and I canna but be thankfu’ ye was
ower-quick for ‘s.”
“Gin ‘t hadna been you,” said Sam’l, “I wid never hae thocht o’ ‘t.”
“I’m saying naething agin Bell,” pursued the other, “but, man, Sam’l, a
body should be mair deleeberate in a thing o’ the kind.”
“It was michty hurried,” said Sam’l wofully.
“It’s a serious thing to speer a lassie,” said Sanders.
“It’s an awfu’ thing,” said Sam’l.
“But we’ll hope for the best,” added Sanders, in a hopeless voice.
They were close to the tenements now, and Sam’l looked as if he were on
his way to be hanged.
“Sam’l!”
“Ay, Sanders.”
“Did ye--did ye kiss her, Sam’l?”
“Na.”
“Hoo?”
“There’s was varra little time, Sanders.”
“Half an ‘oor,” said Sanders.
“Was there? Man Sanders, to tell ye the truth, I never thocht o’ ‘t.”
Then the soul of Sanders Elshioner was filled with contempt for Sam’l
Dickie.
The scandal blew over. At first it was expected that the minister would
interfere to prevent the union, but beyond intimating from the pulpit
that the souls of Sabbath-breakers were beyond praying for, and then
praying for Sam’l and Sanders at great length, with a word thrown in for
Bell, he let things take their course. Some said it was because he
was always frightened lest his young men should intermarry with other
denominations, but Sanders explained it differently to Sam’l.
“I hav’na a word to say agin’ the minister,” he said; “they’re gran’
prayers; but, Sam’l, he’s a mairit man himsel’.”
“He’s a’ the better for that, Sanders, isna he?”
“Do ye no see,” asked Sanders, compassionately, “‘at he’s trying to
mak’ the best o’ ‘t?”
“O Sanders, man!” said Sam’l.
“Cheer up, Sam’l,” said Sanders; “it’ll sune be ower.”
Their having been rival suitors had not interfered with their
friendship. On the contrary, while they had hitherto been mere
acquaintances, they became inseparables as the wedding-day drew near. It
was noticed that they had much to say to each other, and that when they
could not get a room to themselves they wandered about together in the
churchyard. When Sam’l had anything to tell Bell he sent Sanders to tell
it, and Sanders did as he was bid. There was nothing that he would not
have done for Sam’l.
The more obliging Sanders was, however, the sadder Sam’l grew. He never
laughed now on Saturdays, and sometimes his loom was silent half the
day. Sam’l felt that Sanders’s was the kindness of a friend for a dying
man.
It was to be a penny wedding, and Lisbeth Fargus said it was the
delicacy that made Sam’l superintend the fitting up of the barn by
deputy. Once he came to see it in person, but he looked so ill that
Sanders had to see him home. This was on the Thursday afternoon, and the
wedding was fixed for Friday.
“Sanders, Sanders,” said Sam’l, in a voice strangely unlike his own,
“it’ll a’ be ower by this time the morn.”
“It will,” said Sanders.
“If I had only kent her langer,” continued Sam’l.
“It wid hae been safer,” said Sanders.
“Did ye see the yallow floor in Bell’s bonnet?” asked the accepted
swain.
“Ay,” said Sanders, reluctantly.
“I’m dootin’--I’m sair dootin’ she’s but a flichty, light-hearted
crittur after a’.”
“I had aye my suspeecions o’ ‘t,” said Sanders.
“Ye hae kent her langer than me,” said Sam’l.
“Yes,” said Sanders, “but there’s nae getting’ at the heart o’ women.
Man Sam’l, they’re desperate cunnin’.”
“I’m dootin’ ‘t; I’m sair dootin’ ‘t.”
“It’ll be a warnin’ to ye, Sam’l, no to be in sic a hurry i’ the
futur’,” said Sanders.
Sam’l groaned.
“Ye’ll be gaein’ up to the manse to arrange wi’ the minister the morn’s
mornin’,” continued Sanders, in a subdued voice.
Sam’l looked wistfully at his friend.
“I canna do ‘t, Sanders,” he said; “I canna do ‘t.”
“Ye maun,” said Sanders.
“It’s aisy to speak,” retorted Sam’l, bitterly.
“We have a’ oor troubles, Sam’l,” said Sanders, soothingly, “an’ every
man maun bear his ain burdens. Johnny Davie’s wife’s dead, an’ he’s no
repinin’.”
“Ay,” said Sam’l, “but a death’s no a mairitch. We hae haen deaths in
our family too.”
“It may a’ be for the best,” added Sanders, “an’ there wid be a michty
talk i’ the hale country-side gin ye didna ging to the minister like a
man.”
“I maun hae langer to think o’ ‘t,” said Sam’l.
“Bell’s mairitch is the morn,” said Sanders, decisively.
Sam’l glanced up with a wild look in his eyes.
“Sanders!” he cried.
“Sam’l!”
“Ye hae been a guid friend to me, Sanders, in this sair affliction.”
“Nothing ava,” said Sanders; “doun’t mention ‘d.”
“But, Sanders, ye canna deny but what your rinnin’ oot o’ the kirk that
awfu’ day was at the bottom o’ ‘d a’.”
“It was so,” said Sanders, bravely.
“An’ ye used to be fond o’ Bell, Sanders.”
“I dinna deny ‘t.”
“Sanders, laddie,” said Sam’l, bending forward and speaking in a
wheedling voice, “I aye thocht it was you she likit.”
“I had some sic idea mysel’,” said Sanders.
“Sanders, I canna think to pairt twa fowk sae weel suited to ane anither
as you an’ Bell.”
“Canna ye, Sam’l?”
“She wid mak’ ye a guid wife, Sanders. I hae studied her weel, and she’s
a thrifty, douce, clever lassie. Sanders, there’s no the like o’ her.
Mony a time, Sanders, I hae said to mysel’, ‘There’s a lass ony man
micht be prood to tak’.’ A’body says the same, Sanders. There’s nae risk
ava, man--nane to speak o’. Tak’ her, laddie; tak’ her, Sanders; it’s
a gran’ chance, Sanders. She’s yours for the speerin’. I’ll gie her up,
Sanders.”
“Will ye, though?” said Sanders.
“What d’ ye think?” asked Sam’l.
“If ye wid rayther,” said Sanders, politely.
“There’s my han’ on ‘t,” said Sam’l. “Bless ye, Sanders; ye’ve been a
true frien’ to me.”
Then they shook hands for the first time in their lives, and soon
afterward Sanders struck up the brae to T’nowhead.
Next morning Sanders Elshioner, who had been very busy the night before,
put on his Sabbath clothes and strolled up to the manse.
“But--but where is Sam’l?” asked the minister; “I must see himself.”
“It’s a new arrangement,” said Sanders.
“What do you mean, Sanders?”
“Bell’s to marry me,” explained Sanders.
“But--but what does Sam’l say?”
“He’s willin’,” said Sanders.
“And Bell?”
“She’s willin’ too. She prefers ‘t.”
“It is unusual,” said the minister.
“It’s a’ richt,” said Sanders.
“Well, you know best,” said the minister.
“You see the hoose was taen, at ony rate,” continued Sanders, “an’ I’ll
juist ging in til ‘t instead o’ Sam’l.”
“Quite so.”
“An’ I cudna think to disappoint the lassie.”
“Your sentiments do you credit, Sanders,” said the minister; “but I
hope you do not enter upon the blessed state of matrimony without
full consideration of its responsibilities. It is a serious business,
marriage.”
“It’s a’ that,” said Sanders, “but I’m willin’ to stan’ the risk.”
So, as soon as it could be done, Sanders Elshioner took to wife
T’nowhead’s Bell, and I remember seeing Sam’l Dickie trying to dance at
the penny wedding.
Years afterward it was said in Thrums that Sam’l had treated Bell badly,
but he was never sure about it himself.
“It was a near thing--a michty near thing,” he admitted in the square.
“They say,” some other weaver would remark, “‘at it was you Bell liked
best.”
“I d’na kin,” Sam’l would reply; “but there’s nae doot the lassie was
fell fond o’ me; ou, a mere passin’ fancy, ‘s ye micht say.”
“THE HEATHER LINTIE”, By S. R. Crockett
Janet Balchrystie lived in a little cottage at the back of the Long
Wood of Barbrax. She had been a hard-working woman all her days, for her
mother died when she was but young, and she had lived on, keeping her
father’s house by the side of the single-track railway-line. Gavin
Balchrystie was a foreman plate-layer on the P.P.R., and with two men
under him, had charge of a section of three miles. He lived just where
that distinguished but impecunious line plunges into a moss-covered
granite wilderness of moor and bog, where there is not more than a
shepherd’s hut to the half-dozen miles, and where the passage of a
train is the occasion of commotion among scattered groups of black-faced
sheep. Gavin Balchrystie’s three miles of P.P.R. metals gave him
little work, but a good deal of healthy exercise. The black-faced sheep
breaking down the fences and straying on the line side, and the torrents
coming down the granite gullies, foaming white after a water-spout, and
tearing into his embankments, undermining his chairs and plates, were
the only troubles of his life. There was, however, a little public-house
at The Huts, which in the old days of construction had had the license,
and which had lingered alone, license and all, when its immediate
purpose in life had been fulfilled, because there was nobody but the
whaups and the railway officials on the passing trains to object to
its continuance. Now it is cold and blowy on the west-land moors, and
neither whaups nor dark-blue uniforms object to a little refreshment up
there. The mischief was that Gavin Balchrystie did not, like the guards
and engine-drivers, go on with the passing train. He was always on the
spot, and the path through Barbrax Wood to the Railway Inn was as well
trodden as that which led over the bog moss, where the whaups built,
to the great white viaduct of Loch Merrick, where his three miles of
parallel gleaming responsibility began.
When his wife was but newly dead, and his Janet just a smart elf-locked
lassie running to and from the school, Gavin got too much in the way of
“slippin’ doon by.” When Janet grew to be woman muckle, Gavin kept the
habit, and Janet hardly knew that it was not the use and wont of all
fathers to sidle down to a contiguous Railway Arms, and return some
hours later with uncertain step, and face pricked out with bright
pin-points of red--the sure mark of the confirmed drinker of whisky
neat.
They were long days in the cottage at the back of Barbrax Long Wood.
The little “but an’ ben” was whitewashed till it dazzled the eyes as you
came over the brae to it and found it set against the solemn depths of
dark-green firwood. From early morn, when she saw her father off,
till the dusk of the day, when he would return for his supper, Janet
Balchrystie saw no human being. She heard the muffled roar of the trains
through the deep cutting at the back of the wood, but she herself was
entirely out of sight of the carriagefuls of travellers whisking past
within half a mile of her solitude and meditation.
Janet was what is called a “through-gaun lass,” and her work for the day
was often over by eight o’clock in the morning. Janet grew to womanhood
without a sweetheart. She was plain, and she looked plainer than she
was in the dresses which she made for herself by the light of nature
and what she could remember of the current fashions at Merrick Kirk,
to which she went every alternate Sunday. Her father and she took day
about. Wet or shine, she tramped to Merrick Kirk, even when the rain
blattered and the wind raved and bleated alternately among the pines of
the Long Wood of Barbrax. Her father had a simpler way of spending his
day out. He went down to the Railway Inn and drank “ginger-beer” all day
with the landlord. Ginger-beer is an unsteadying beverage when taken the
day by the length. Also the man who drinks it steadily and quietly never
enters on any inheritance of length of days.
So it came to pass that one night Gavin Balchrystie did not come home at
all--at least, not till he was brought lying comfortably on the door
of a disused third-class carriage, which was now seeing out its career
anchored under the bank at Loch Merrick, where Gavin had used it as a
shelter. The driver of the “six-fifty up” train had seen him walking
soberly along toward The Huts (and the Railway Inn), letting his long
surface-man’s hammer fall against the rail-keys occasionally as he
walked. He saw him bend once, as though his keen ear detected a false
ring in a loose length between two plates. This was the last that was
seen of him till the driver of the “nine-thirty-seven down” express--the
“boat-train,” as the employees of the P.P.R. call it, with a touch of
respect in their voices--passed Gavin fallen forward on his face just
when he was flying down grade under a full head of steam. It was duskily
clear, with a great lake of crimson light dying into purple over the
hills of midsummer heather. The driver was John Platt, the Englishman
from Crewe, who had been brought from the great London and Northwestern
Railway, locally known as “The Ell-nen-doubleyou.” In these remote
railway circles the talk is as exclusively of matters of the four-foot
way as in Crewe or Derby. There is an inspector of traffic, whose portly
presence now graces Carlisle Station, who left the P.P.R. in these
sad days of amalgamation, because he could not endure to see so
many “Sou’west” waggons passing over the sacred metals of the P.P.R.
permanent way. From his youth he had been trained in a creed of two
articles: “To swear by the P.P.R. through thick and thin, and hate the
apple green of the ‘Sou’west.’” It was as much as he could do to put
up with the sight of the abominations; to have to hunt for their trucks
when they got astray was more than mortal could stand, so he fled the
land.
So when they stopped the express for Gavin Balchrystie, every man on the
line felt that it was an honour to the dead. John Platt sent a “gurring”
thrill through the train as he put his brakes hard down and whistled
for the guard. He, thinking that the Merrick Viaduct was down at least,
twirled his brake to such purpose that the rear car progressed along the
metals by a series of convulsive bounds. Then they softly ran back,
and there lay Gavin fallen forward on his knees, as though he had been
trying to rise, or had knelt down to pray. Let him have “the benefit of
the doubt” in this world. In the next, if all tales be true, there is no
such thing.
So Janet Balchrystie dwelt alone in the white “but an’ ben” at the back
of the Long Wood of Barbrax. The factor gave her notice, but the laird,
who was not accounted by his neighbours to be very wise, because he
did needlessly kind things, told the factor to let the lassie bide, and
delivered to herself with his own handwriting to the effect that Janet
Balchrystie, in consideration of her lonely condition, was to be allowed
the house for her lifetime, a cow’s grass, and thirty pound sterling in
the year as a charge on the estate. He drove down the cow himself, and
having stalled it in the byre, he informed her of the fact over the yard
dyke by word of mouth, for he never could be induced to enter her door.
He was accounted to be “gey an’ queer,” save by those who had tried
making a bargain with him. But his farmers liked him, knowing him to be
an easy man with those who had been really unfortunate, for he knew to
what the year’s crops of each had amounted, to a single chalder and head
of nowt.
Deep in her heart Janet Balchrystie cherished a great ambition. When
the earliest blackbird awoke and began to sing, while it was yet gray
twilight, Janet would be up and at her work. She had an ambition to be
a great poet. No less than this would serve her. But not even her father
had known, and no other had any chance of knowing. In the black leather
chest, which had been her mother’s, upstairs, there was a slowly growing
pile of manuscript, and the editor of the local paper received every
other week a poem, longer or shorter, for his Poet’s Corner, in an
envelope with the New Dalry postmark. He was an obliging editor, and
generally gave the closely written manuscript to the senior office boy,
who had passed the sixth standard, to cut down, tinker the rhymes,
and lope any superfluity of feet. The senior office boy “just spread
himself,” as he said, and delighted to do the job in style. But there
was a woman fading into a gray old-maidishness which had hardly ever
been girlhood, who did not at all approve of these corrections. She
endured them because over the signature of “Heather Bell” it was a joy
to see in the rich, close luxury of type her own poetry, even though
it might be a trifle tattered and tossed about by hands ruthless and
alien--those, in fact, of the senior office boy.
Janet walked every other week to the post-office at New Dalry to post
her letters to the editor, but neither the great man nor yet the
senior office boy had any conception that the verses of their “esteemed
correspondent” were written by a woman too early old who dwelt alone at
the back of Barbrax Long Wood.
One day Janet took a sudden but long-meditated journey. She went down
by rail from the little station of The Huts to the large town of Drum,
thirty miles to the east. Here, with the most perfect courage and
dignity of bearing, she interviewed a printer and arranged for the
publication of her poems in their own original form, no longer staled
and clapper-clawed by the pencil of the senior office boy. When the
proof-sheets came to Janet, she had no way of indicating the corrections
but by again writing the whole poem out in a neat print hand on the edge
of the proof, and underscoring the words which were to be altered. This,
when you think of it, is a very good way, when the happiest part of your
life is to be spent in such concrete pleasures of hope, as Janet’s were
over the crackly sheets of the printer of Drum. Finally the book was
produced, a small rather thickish octavo, on sufficiently wretched gray
paper which had suffered from want of thorough washing in the original
paper-mill. It was bound in a peculiarly deadly blue, of a rectified
Reckitt tint, which gave you dazzles in the eye at any distance under
ten paces. Janet had selected this as the most appropriate of colours.
She had also many years ago decided upon the title, so that Reckitt had
printed upon it, back and side, “The Heather Lintie,” while inside there
was the acknowledgment of authorship, which Janet felt to be a solemn
duty to the world: “Poems by Janet Balchrystie, Barbrax Cottage, by New
Dalry.” First she had thought of withholding her name and style; but, on
the whole, after the most prolonged consideration, she felt that she was
not justified in bringing about such a controversy as divided Scotland
concerning that “Great Unknown” who wrote the Waverley Novels.
Almost every second or third day Janet trod that long lochside road
to New Dalry for her proof-sheets, and returned them on the morrow
corrected in her own way. Sometimes she got a lift from some farmer or
carter, for she had worn herself with anxiety to the shadow of what she
had once been, and her dry bleached hair became gray and grayer with the
fervour of her devotion to letters.
By April the book was published, and at the end of this month, laid
aside by sickness of the vague kind called locally “a decline,” she took
to her bed, rising only to lay a few sticks upon the fire from her store
gathered in the autumn, or to brew herself a cup of tea. She waited for
the tokens of her book’s conquests in the great world of thought and
men. She had waited so long for her recognition, and now it was coming.
She felt that it would not be long before she was recognised as one of
the singers of the world. Indeed, had she but known it, her recognition
was already on its way.
In a great city of the north a clever young reporter was cutting open
the leaves of “The Heather Lintie” with a hand almost feverishly eager.
“This is a perfect treasure. This is a find indeed. Here is my chance
ready to my hand.”
His paper was making a specialty of “exposures.” If there was anything
weak and erring, anything particularly helpless and foolish which could
make no stand for itself, the “Night Hawk” was on the pounce. Hitherto
the junior reporter had never had a “two-column chance.” He had read--it
was not much that he _had_ read--Macaulay’s too famous article on
“Satan” Montgomery, and, not knowing that Macaulay lived to regret the
spirit of that assault, he felt that if he could bring down the “Night
Hawk” on “The Heather Lintie,” his fortune was made. So he sat down and
he wrote, not knowing and not regarding a lonely woman’s heart, to whom
his word would be as the word of a God, in the lonely cottage lying in
the lee of the Long Wood of Barbrax.
The junior reporter turned out a triumph of the new journalism. “This
is a book which may be a genuine source of pride to every native of the
ancient province of Galloway,” he wrote. “Galloway has been celebrated
for black cattle and for wool, as also for a certain bucolic belatedness
of temperament, but Galloway has never hitherto produced a poetess. One
has arisen in the person of Miss Janet Bal-- something or other. We have
not an interpreter at hand, and so cannot wrestle with the intricacies
of the authoress’s name, which appears to be some Galwegian form of
Erse or Choctaw. Miss Bal--and so forth--has a true fount of pathos and
humour. In what touching language she chronicles the death of two young
lambs which fell down into one of the puddles they call rivers down
there, and were either drowned or choked with the dirt:
“‘They were two bonny, bonny lambs,
That played upon the daisied lea,
And loudly mourned their woolly dams
Above the drumly flowing Dee.’
“How touchingly simple!” continued the junior reporter, buckling up his
sleeves to enjoy himself, and feeling himself born to be a “Saturday
Reviewer.”
“Mark the local colour, the wool and the dirty water of the Dee--without
doubt a name applied to one of their bigger ditches down there. Mark
also the over-fervency of the touching line,
“‘And loudly mourned their woolly dams,’
“Which, but for the sex of the writer and her evident genius, might be
taken for an expression of a strength hardly permissible even in the
metropolis.”
The junior reporter filled his two columns and enjoyed himself in the
doing of it. He concluded with the words: “The authoress will make a
great success. If she will come to the capital, where genius is always
appreciated, she will, without doubt, make her fortune. Nay, if Miss
Bal--but again we cannot proceed for the want of an interpreter--if Miss
B., we say, will only accept a position at Cleary’s Waxworks and give
readings from her poetry, or exhibit herself in the act of pronouncing
her own name, she will be a greater draw in this city than Punch and
Judy, or even the latest American advertising evangelist, who preaches
standing on his head.”
The junior reporter ceased here from very admiration at his own
cleverness in so exactly hitting the tone of the masters of his craft,
and handed his manuscript in to the editor.
It was the gloaming of a long June day when Rob Affleck, the woodman
over at Barbrax, having been at New Dalry with a cart of wood, left his
horse on the roadside and ran over through Gavin’s old short cut, now
seldom used, to Janet’s cottage with a paper in a yellow wrapper.
“Leave it on the step, and thank you kindly, Rob,” said a weak voice
within; and Rob, anxious about his horse and his bed, did so without
another word. In a moment or two Janet crawled to the door, listened
to make sure that Rob was really gone, opened the door, and protruded a
hand wasted to the hard, flat bone--an arm that ought for years to have
been full of flesh and noble curves.
When Janet got back to bed it was too dark to see anything except the
big printing at the top of the paper.
“Two columns of it!” said Janet, with great thankfulness in her heart,
lifting up her soul to God who had given her the power to sing. She
strained her prematurely old and weary eyes to make out the sense. “A
genuine source of pride to every native of the ancient province,” she
read.
“The Lord be praised!” said Janet, in a rapture of devout thankfulness;
“though I never really doubted it,” she added, as though asking pardon
for a moment’s distrust. “But I tried to write these poems to the glory
of God and not to my own praise, and He will accept them and keep me
humble under the praise of men as well as under their neglect.”
So clutching the precious paper close to her breast, and letting tears
of thankfulness fall on the article, which, had they fallen on the
head of the junior reporter, would have burned like fire, she patiently
awaited the coming dawn.
“I can wait till the morning now to read the rest,” she said.
So hour after hour, with her eyes wide, staring hard at the gray
window-squares, she waited the dawn from the east. About half-past two
there was a stirring and a moaning among the pines, and the roar of the
sudden gust came with the breaking day through the dark arches. In the
whirlwind there came a strange expectancy and tremor into the heart of
the poetess, and she pressed the wet sheet of crumpled paper closer to
her bosom, and turned to face the light. Through the spaces of the Long
Wood of Barbrax there came a shining visitor, the Angel of the Presence,
he who comes but once and stands a moment with a beckoning finger. Him
she followed up through the wood.
They found Janet on the morning of the second day after, with a look
so glad on her face, and so natural an expectation in the unclosed eye,
that Rob Affleck spoke to her and expected an answer. The “Night Hawk”
was clasped to her breast with a hand that they could not loosen. It
went to the grave with her body. The ink had run a little here and
there, where the tears had fallen thickest.
God is more merciful than man.