Christmas dinner? We meant it to be a surprise, but perhaps I should
have told you, and then we shouldn’t have had you wasting your money on
bad pastry, and bothering Mr. Porbury with your culinary operations.
Well, we’ll say no more about it, but sit down and see if you can’t find
room for another dinner.”
Then the Doctor laughed louder than before, and Mrs. Lickemwell laughed,
and Jack laughed, and we all laughed, and finally we sat down, and Sally
Primus, and Sally Secundus, appeared with a splendid turkey, and a roast
joint of beef, at the sight of which we discovered that the duck and the
apple tarts had been mere trifles that had only whetted our appetites.
In short, we had a splendid dinner, and glorious fun afterwards. The
young Lickemwells were all there in their best bibs and tuckers, and some
other boys and girls came in to tea, and we had a snap-dragon, and a
Christmas tree, and charades, and no end of games. And, when we had said
good night, and gone back to the school-room to gather up the remnants
of our own despised feast, which were now preserved for another time, we
agreed that the Doctor was a much jollier fellow than we had ever before
thought him, and that we were great fools for having wasted our money.
And that is the story of our Christmas dinner, the only one, I am glad to
say, I ever ate at school, for Ned got all right again very soon, and, as
he came to school himself next half, took good care not to catch any more
scarlet fevers about Christmas time.
A WILD YULE E’EN.
_By CYNTHA._
There are mad northern breezes howling over the heather, and there are
savage blinding showers of snow, which fall in stinging bits and cover
up the little dells, leaving only those same wind-waked heath-tops
uncovered. There are loud-voiced tempestuous waves and anger-tossed foam,
which lift themselves wildly up, as if in their insolent pride they would
mingle with the low-lying clouds. There are grey gaunt cliffs frowning
over the black water, and there are bare dreary-looking hills, with here
and there a solitary cottage, standing unsheltered by tree or wall. It
is not a pleasant scene, although, for some folks, it may have a weird
beauty of its own. This snow is not like the gentle feathery flakes
which robe your naked Christmas boughs in a robe of heavenly white.
These gales are not the soft-toned breezes which bear to your expectant
ears the sound of Christmas bells. These champing surges are not the
light-footed friends who come to greet you with a smile and a word of
seasonable cheer. Ah, no! but surely those fierce combating elements are
fit attendants on the Yule of our sea-king sires.
“Mother, this is Yule e’en,” said little Tronda Henderson, looking
wistfully up in her mother’s face.
“Well, what if it is, bairn? we can have no Yule fun, you know,” and Doya
cast a glance at her husband, who was sitting by the uncurtained window.
It was a look which said much: it was a look of reproach, of enquiry, of
fear, of love; and the children, who sat beside Doya, crept nearer to
her chair and kept silence when they saw that look. But Bartle did not
notice either the woman or children. He was a sullen, discontented man,
who evaded, as lazy ne’er-do-wells will always do, the poor man’s honest
lot—a life of labour. He was the scion of a good old house, which had
fallen into poverty and decay. Being too idle and too proud to work for
a living, Bartle had left Shetland in his early manhood and had betaken
himself to the wild unfettered life of an Australian digger. Years went
past, and he came back in his prime and married an orphan cousin, to whom
he had been engaged since his youth. He came back a reserved and selfish
man, with a shadow on his brow and a strange mystery about even his
everyday life. Bartle took up his abode in the half-ruined home of his
boyhood, and became a subject of curiosity and conjecture to the whole
island. His wife was a lady born, yet it was known that she did all the
work of the house, keeping no servant; and the public also discovered
that she “knitted and ’broidered and sewed” for a livelihood, just as any
poor man’s spouse might do. They did not mingle with their neighbours,
but rather shunned the society of high and low. Bartle had no live stock
or banked money; he did no work, either mental or physical, and although
he always wore the dress of a sailor, he never soiled his fingers with
a fishing-line or other marine implements. He always had plenty of
silver, nay, even gold, in hand for his own personal wants, yet Doya’s
deft fingers provided for herself and the three children. Once Bartle
had offered half-a-crown to his wife, when he chanced to overhear the
little ones cry for breakfast, but she gave it back with such a gesture
of horror and disgust as deterred him from ever repeating the act. And
so they jogged on for many years, living in the same house utterly
independent of one another, each going their own way—the mother keeping
Rassmie, Hermann, and Tronda by her, and the father shrouded in the same
mystery which had hitherto encompassed him.
On this same dark Yule even, Bartle looked out of window, moodily
unconcerned for those within. He looked on a dismal scene. Between the
cottage and the sea there stretched a piece of rough stony ground, which
hardly allowed a weed to find refuge on it. This meagre morsel of mother
earth terminated in a reef of dangerous crags, which were quite covered
at high water, but, when the tide was out, extended high and dry between
the island and a large grass-crowned skerry, which lay a short distance
from the mainland. You could not picture to yourself a more barbarous
coast.
The grey of night had come down, and only the outlines of the landscape,
with here and there a foam-wreath curling about the rocks, could be
descried by the looker out. Evidently such an imperfect view was not to
Bartle’s liking, for very soon he got up, donned his seaman’s hat of
waterproof, and without a word left the house. It was not pleasant out in
that shivering cold, and the sullen man was not a good companion, but he
had scarcely quitted the cottage ere he was followed by his sons. They
were fine manly boys of twelve and fourteen, on whose honest faces lurked
no resemblance to the hard features of their father. It seemed that they
followed Bartle with reluctance, but certainly with a purpose, and he
was not long in observing them. Turning round, he addressed the boys
savagely, with a “What do you want? where are you bound for, you young
rascals?”
They hesitated some time, and then Rassmie, as the oldest, replied,
“Mother told us to go after you in case you might want help or a
messenger, for she guessed you were going to look after the ship we saw
locking the land this afternoon.”
These were simple enough words, but they roused Bartle’s passion in an
instant, and, catching Rassmie by the collar, he would have flung the
poor boy to the ground, had not Hermann thrown himself on his father’s
arm, and so prevented the blow from falling On his beloved brother.
“You young scoundrels,” shouted Bartle, shaking them from him; “what do
you mean by dogging me like this, as if I were a madman who required a
keeper, or—”
“A sinner who needs a Saviour,” said the meek voice of Doya, who had come
to the spot. “Don’t be angry with me, Bartle; don’t hurt the poor boys,
they are too young and innocent to dream of what _I_ know is true, or to
suspect the real motive of your going from home at this late and stormy
hour. Oh, Bartle! it is years since I spoke to you thus—listen to me. Let
me lead you home again, or let us rouse the neighbours, that your already
red hand may be held from further crime.”
I may not repeat to you all the profane abuse with which Bartle Henderson
replied to the timid entreaties of his wife, while the boys stood by, too
terrified to move or speak. When he had exhausted his powers of swearing
(and they were not by any means limited), and had ordered his wife and
children to return to the house, Bartle took his way along the rough
beach with a rapid stride and a lowering look on his face that it was
not good to see. Doya gazed after the figure of her husband until it was
lost in the obscurity of nightfall. Her face was very pale, and sad, and
spiritless. She scarcely knew what instinct had told her to follow Bartle
and speak words which she had never ventured to address to him since the
early days of their married life, when first she came to know the dark
mystery of his means of livelihood.
The courage which had prompted her appeal had died out before his
fierce outburst of anger, and after telling the boys not to go near
their father again, the poor woman returned to her lonely dwelling. Ah!
not _all_ lonely, for little deformed Tronda was waiting there for her
mother’s return. The tiny lassie had raked the fire together and swept
the hearth, as well as her feeble hands could, and the bright face which
she lifted to Doya’s shed light, warm as sunshine, on the leaden heart
of her parent. “Mother, mother, how came you to be so forgetful as to
leave me here alone on Yule e’en, and after day set?” A sweet ringing
laugh followed Tronda’s words, and Doya caught its infection and smiled
upon the bonnie-featured, crooked-backed child, whose infirmities had
not prevented her from being (as the “one ewe lamb” always is) the most
useful and most beloved member of the family.
“Ah, bairn! I was indeed forgetful, but I have been so short a time away,
that I cannot think the fairies have had leisure left them in which to do
mischief to you.”
“Don’t be too sure, mother; I did hear a noise of something hopping about
by the churn, and may be you won’t get any butter to-morrow; and are you
_quite_ sure I am just the same as when you left me? You know this,”
touching her own twisted side, “came of my being left on Yule e’en by
myself.” Tronda spoke jestingly, of course, but her light words carried a
sad pang to the mother’s heart.
Folding her arms about the little thin figure, Doya said, whisperingly,
“If the fairies took my child that night, or if they brought this
life-trouble to her, I dare not repine, for who could be to us what
loving, patient, unselfish, sickly Tronda is?”
Tronda knew that there were serious thoughts expressed in those words of
pleasantry, so she let the Yule joke pass by, and nestling closer to the
loving bosom above her, the child asked: “Tell me how it really happened,
dear mother; I want so much to know, for although it’s all nonsense about
the fairies or trows hurting me, still—I should—like to—know.”
“How old is my little girl?” Doya answered. “Let me see, thirteen past
in September, and not so large as most bairns are at ten; but more than
thirteen, aye, more than twenty, in mind and feeling. I have never
spoken of my sorrows to any one, but I think my daughter can be my
sympathizing friend, so she shall hear it all. It was just ten years
ago, on that awful stormy Yule even, of which you have heard folks talk.
I was happy then, for your father was kind, my little ones were healthy
and beautiful, and I had never looked upon sin in its darker aspects.
My little Tronda shall know _all_ the story. On that wild Yule even I
had put you and Rassmie to bed, and was hushing Hermann on my knee, when
I was startled by hearing a succession of shrieks, which seemed borne
to my ear on the wings of an exultant storm fiend. With the baby in my
arms, I ran to the door and looked out into the mirkness—just such a
night as this,” and Doya shivered, even by the glowing fire; “a tempest
of wind, bright gleaming moonlight, and flying clouds. Again and again
that dreadful cry arose, and, forgetful of everything, I flew down the
slope and stood upon the beach. It was covered with bits of wreck—tables,
chairs, trunks, hammocks. Near these, up to his waist in the roaring sea,
I found your father. Above us, on the height, gleamed a gigantic fire
of peat, and among the surf, close beside me, floated unresistingly the
blood-stained form of a sailor—”
“Oh! mother, don’t tell me more of that. I know, I know; it is all plain
now!”
“Yes,” Doya said, in a dreamy apathetic tone; “it’s all plain; _you_ know
now what _I_ knew then. Hours afterwards I returned to the house, with
Hermann still innocently sleeping on my bosom, and I discovered that in
my absence you had waked up, and finding yourself alone, had tried to get
out of bed, and in so doing had fallen against something on the floor,
where I found you lying helpless and almost unconscious. It was not
trows—no, Tronda; on that Yule e’en it was not trows that came to injure
you—it was a fiend—your own flesh and blood!”
The poor feeble girl shrank away in meek terror from the sudden
fierceness of Doya’s words and gesture. She had never seen her gentle,
patient mother in that mood before, but it passed away, and a long
painful silence fell upon them both.
Loudly and hoarsely roared the winter gales around the cottage. Sometimes
their stormy voices rose defiantly above the boom of the breaking wave.
Sometimes they clamoured fiercely against the chafing surge, whose anger
they had awakened. Oftentimes they moaned and mourned among the heather,
or hurled the “drifting veil” of snow before their impatient pinions
deep into some dimpled valley; and you might well have deemed that evil
spirits were wandering unfettered over the world, for the sweet Christmas
heralds could not have bent their bright brows to earth in such a fearful
hour. But still, musing and silent, sat Doya Henderson and her deformed
child; and the minutes passed into hours, and both were so engrossed
with dismal thoughts and forebodings that they never seemed to miss the
presence of Rassmie and Hermann. But the same dark demon to whom power
had been given over land and sea and human heart—that same “foul fiend”
was reigning to-night as then; and again was brought to Doya’s ear the
wail of bitterest mortal agony. You might almost have thought that she
expected it, for when that awful cry rang out on the night air, Doya did
not start or look surprised, her face just paled, and she dropped on her
knees beside Tronda, whose trembling figure had sought that attitude
which instinct teaches us to adopt when we turn to God in our hours of
helplessness and woe.
“Pray, mother; pray!” cried the girl. “Pray for father; oh! let it be for
him more than all.”
Earnest, though broken, were the supplications which rose from those
grieving hearts; but their “woman’s heavenly part” was interrupted by the
hasty entrance of Rassmie and Hermann, who rushed to their mother, with
white and horror-stricken faces.
“We saw it all; oh, mother, we saw it!” they panted forth. “The peat
stack had been lighted, and the ship had come on the rocks, lured by the
false signals. She went down at once, and then—then we saw father among
the crags. Some one floated on shore; and oh, how could he? he—father!
struck at the swimming man with his knife, and there was a great cry,
and blood among the white surf. Mother, mother! what shall we do? Father
saw us beside him there; _his_ face was awful, and oh, there may come
others, for he was waiting, when we fled to you!”
Tronda had stood up when her brothers came, and as soon as their hurried
tale was told, she spoke calmly and with resolution: “We must all go
to father. It is not for us to give him to the hand of justice, but we
dare not stand still and see murder committed. Come, mother; come, boys;
father must be guided by us now,” and the small decrepit figure and
pinched puny face looked noble and beautiful when the spirit spoke so
boldly and undauntedly.
In obedience to a mind stronger than their own, the others followed
Tronda from the house—from the house, down the slope, over the stony
beach, under the moonlight, against the gale, to the scene of the
shipwreck. There they found no living thing. There were broken spars
and floating _débris_ of various kinds, and there was a helpless human
corpse, but that was all. In vain did Rassmie and Hermann search among
the crags, in the hope of finding their father concealed there. In vain
did Doya call upon his name; and at last they were obliged to believe
that fear had compelled Bartle to fly. He had felt that he was safe
from discovery while only Doya knew of his crimes, but he could not be
so certain of the boys, whose eyes had actually been on him while he
committed murder.
They all lingered on the beach for some time, but no one came from
either land or sea, and at last the storm compelled them to seek the
shelter of their home. You may believe it was a sad, sad night in that
lone dwelling, and although the gale calmed down, and the snow lay still
and fair when the daylight gleamed upon it, there was no hushing the
inward storm. A very dark picture of sin had been presented to young pure
spirits, and it was little wonder that their innocent hearts quivered and
bled before the remembrance of that dreadful scene.
Morning—Yule morning—with its merry breakfast by candlelight, frothing
bowl of “whipcull,” and sweetest of short-cakes for the rich; its
“burstin” and rarely-tasted bacon, with jolly drams of whiskey,
for the cottagers; and its fun and mystic spells, and football and
evening dance, and olden tale and Norland song for both high and low.
Morning—Yule morning—brought the discovery to all in the neighbourhood
of the disastrous shipwreck on the island. Doya and her children sat in
the house and saw the gathering crowd hurry to and fro upon the beach.
They saw when the poor sailor’s body was found wounded, as the simple
islanders supposed, by their own cruel crags; and all the day long the
wife and family of the wrecker watched and waited, but no one came to
them. The corpse was conveyed to an uninhabited dwelling close by,
and decently buried next day; and Doya fell mechanically into all her
accustomed duties. Curious people wondered what had become of Bartle, and
somehow a story got about that he had deserted his wife, because she had
taunted him with having taken her from a life of ease to one of hard and
humble work. Those who believed such a tale had surely observed little of
Doya’s meek contented acceptance of her lowlier lot; but she was quite
willing that the inquisitive neighbours should accept that solution of
Bartle’s conduct. That he had fled from his home and family she knew was
true, but the reason, ah! how different from what was supposed.
The events of that most eventful Yule e’en had worked a great change in
Rassmie and Hermann. They were sharp enough lads, and had made a pretty
shrewd guess that their father gained his livelihood by rescuing from
the deep its unlawful prey, but that he employed such criminal means for
that end they never dreamed of. The appropriation of wreck was viewed,
with smuggling, as a very light offence by the Shetlanders, who, at the
same time, would have shrunk with horror from such crimes as those which
Bartle had committed, and however little the boys might have thought of
the sin against human codes of morality, they saw in all its deepest
blackness the enormity of their parent’s offence against Divine laws.
Therefore, as I told you, these things went a great way to work a change
in the characters of the lads, adding to their hatred of sin, and taking
away much that was evil in their disposition.
[Illustration]
But time, that never flies from the happy, nor lingers with the sad,
although we often think he is cruel enough to do so; time, whose
monotonous footsteps echo along the years at the same even pace, no
matter how we smile or suffer; time went on, and marked another season on
the tablets of eternity, and, as he traced the first lines of the coming
year, he also brought back the brave old Yule. Yule came this time with
glittering frost and smiling sky, quiet waves, and scarce a breath of
wind, and Rassmie launched his fishing boat for a day’s excursion among
the cliffs. Their home was, as usual, unbrightened by festivity, so the
good lads persuaded their mother and Tronda to accompany them on the
water, and the four made a pleasant, if sober, party. Tronda had seldom
been upon the sea, and had seen very little of the sublime scenery so
near her home, therefore she easily prevailed on her brothers to row
close to the shore, that she might the better admire the varied beauty
of the crags and caves. One of the latter particularly attracted Tronda’s
girlish fancy, and at her desire the boat entered the rock-hewn hall,
whose tinted walls gave back a thousand silvery echoes of the splashing
oars. It was a vast cavern into which the boat had entered, and the
further she went the wider and more extensive seemed the boundaries
of that ocean home. Even Doya’s broken spirit seemed to share in the
enthusiasm of the young people, whose exclamations of rapture mingled
with the shrill cry of the brooding sea fowl, and the whispering of the
billows. But suddenly Tronda’s voice changed to a scream of terror, and
she pointed to a ledge of rock in one of the deepest recesses of the
cave. There lay what at first appeared to be merely a heap of ragged
clothing, but which contained too surely a human skeleton. Rassmie’s
first instinct was to turn his boat and fly from the horrible sight, but
his mother was quite above the vulgar fears of the ignorant, and, after
she had by her quiet mien and pious words reassured her children, their
skiff was gently impelled nearer to the object of their alarm. There was
nothing loathsome about those poor mortal remains; only a few whitened
bones, huddled within the folds of a seaman’s dress, and a fleshless
hand spread out upon the chilly stone. He had escaped from drowning by
the help of a little boat, whose broken bits, cast up beyond the reach
of the sea, by some unusually high tide and storm, spoke to so much of
the sad tale. On that hard bed of shelving rock the unfortunate man had
met a more dreadful death than that of the engulphing wave. Unheard,
unsuccoured, he had died of starvation. “What had we better do, mother?”
said one of the boys, after a long silence, which had been employed
by the young people in gazing upon the miserable spectacle of man’s
helpless humanity, and in gathering up the courage which had so suddenly
deserted them. Doya did not reply, and the pallor and anguish which had
fallen so suddenly upon her features gave much alarm to her children.
“Are you ill, dear mother? What is it?” they queried. When at last she
spoke, her voice trembled, and her figure shook with the force of some
inward trouble, which she evidently tried to conceal and overcome. Having
summoned all her strength of mind, she said, hurriedly—“No one must come
here, no one must know of this but you and I. Children, children, the
guardian spirit, who never forsakes its charge, has guided us here.” By
the mother’s direction, Rassmie and Hermann landed on the little strip
of sand which carpeted the further end of the cave. There they gathered
together some bits of wood belonging to the broken boat, and, clambering
up the rude walls, they deposited the spars on a ledge close to that on
which the sailor lay. Then Doya got out of the boat, telling her children
to return to the mouth of the cavern, and linger there out of sight until
she called them. They were reluctant to leave her alone in such a place,
and with such a task as they rightly guessed she had set herself to do,
but obedience was the first lesson these young people had learned, and
reverence for their mother and her wishes was the consequence of her wise
training. The oars were dipped into the quiet water, and in a few moments
Doya was alone with _it_. Ah! who but a wife would have knelt so tenderly
by that ghastly object, and wrapped it in the folds of her cloak? who
else would have laid her living lips on the bleached and bony palm, and
have recognized in those un-sepulchred bones something she had once
loved? Who but a wife, whose young affections had been altogether _his_,
would have forgotten the sin and sorrow, the neglect and unkindness of
years, and have thus cared for the poor remains of a wicked man?
Doya knelt long and prayed by her husband’s corpse, then with reverent
hands she wrapped it closer in the shroud she had taken from her own
person for that purpose, and while doing so she found among the skeleton
fingers a small pocket-book. With an eager hope she opened this message
from the departed. The sleeve of the dead man’s oil-skin coat had
protected the paper from destruction, and the words which Bartle’s dying
hand had pencilled on the leaves were easily deciphered. This is what he
had written:—