"AULD MISS JEAN."
Saughleas was not a large estate, nor were the Dawsons gentlefolks, in
the sense generally accepted in the countryside.
It was acknowledged that both the mother and the wife of the new laird
had had good blood in their veins; but George Dawson himself, had been,
and, in a sense, still was, a merchant in the High-street of Portie. He
was banker and ship-owner as well, and valued the reputation which he
had acquired as a business man, far more than he would ever be likely to
value any honour paid to him as the Laird of Saughleas.
He had gotten his land honestly, as he had gotten all else that he
possessed. He had taken no advantage of the necessities of the last
owner, who had been in his power, in a certain sense, but had paid him
the full value of the place; and not a landed proprietor among them all
had more pride in the name and fame of his ancestry, than he had in the
feet that he had been the maker of his own fortune, and that no man,
speaking truth, could accuse him, in the making of it, of doing a single
mean or dishonest deed.
His mother "had come o' gentle bluid," but his father had been first a
common sailor and then the mate of a whaling ship that sailed many a
time from the little Scottish east coast harbour of Portie, and which at
last sailed away never more to return.
His widow lived through years of heart-sickness that must have killed
her sooner than it did, but that her two fatherless bairns needed her
care. They were but bairns when she died, with no one to look after
them but a neighbour who had been always kind to them. The usual lot
awaited them, it was thought. The laddie must take to the sea, as most
of the laddies in Portie did, and the lassie must get "bit and sup" here
and there among the neighbours, till she should be able to do for
herself as a servant in some house in the town.
But it happened quite otherwise. Whatever the Dawsons had been in old
times, there was good stuff in them now, it was said. For "Wee Jean
Dawson," as she was called, with few words spoken, made it clear that
she was to make her own way in the world. She was barely fifteen at
that time, and her brother was two years younger, and if she had told
her plans and wishes, she would have been laughed at, and possibly
effectually hindered from trying to carry them out. But she said
nothing.
The rent of the two rooms which the children and their mother had
occupied, was paid to the end of the year, and the little stock of pins
and needles, and small wares generally, by the sale of which the mother
had helped out the "white seam," her chief dependence, was not
exhausted, and Jean, declining the invitation of their neighbour to take
up their abode with her in the mean time, quietly declared her intention
of "biding where she was for a while," and no one had the right to say
her nay. Before the time to pay another quarter's rent came round, it
was ready, and Jean had proved her right to make her own plans, having
shown herself capable of carrying them out when they were made.
How she managed, the neighbours could not tell, and they watched her
with doubtful wonder. But it was not so surprising as it seemed to
them. She was doing little more than she had been doing during the last
two years of her mother's life under her mother's guidance. She had
bought and sold, she had toiled late and early at the white seam, when
her mother was past doing much, and had made herself busy with various
trifles in cotton and wool, with crochet-needle and knitting-pins, when
white seam failed them, and that was just what she was doing now.
And she went on bravely. She accepted offered favours gratefully, but
sooner or later, she always repaid them. If Bell Ray, the fishwife,
left a fresh haddock at the door as she passed, she was sure to carry
with her some other day a pair of little socks, or a plaything for the
bairnie at home. And if Mrs Sims, next door, kindly took the heaviest
part of the girl's washing into her hands, she got in return her Sunday
"mutch" starched and ironed and its broad borders set up in a way that
excited the admiring wonder of all.
The two rooms were models of neatness as they had always been. George
was comfortably clothed, at least he was never ragged, he very rarely
went hungry, and he went to the school as regularly, and to as good
purpose, as the banker's son, or the minister's son, and was as obedient
to Jean as he had been to his mother in the old days. Jean was neat,
and more than neat in her black print frock and holland apron--it cannot
be said of the first half year that she was never hungry. For many a
time the portion set aside for the dinner of two was only enough for
one, and it cost Jean less pain to go without her share than to let the
growing laddie be stinted of his needed food. But after the first half
year, they had enough, and some to spare to those who had less, and much
as Jean sometimes needed money to add to her stock in trade, she had
been too wisely taught by her mother, not to know that a sufficient
quantity of simple and wholesome food was absolutely necessary for
health of body and of mind, and therefore necessary for success in life.
Of course she was successful. In after years, when she used to go back
to this time in her thoughts and in her talk, she attributed her success
in business, chiefly to two things--her silence, and her determination
never to fall into debt. To the talk which "neebour folk" fell into in
her little shop, she listened, but she rarely added her word; and she so
ordered matters that it never became, as it very easily might have been,
a centre of gossip and a cause of trouble in the neighbourhood. As to
falling into debt, her determination against it hindered her for a
while; but when the "big" merchants of Portie came to know her and her
ways, they gave her the benefit of the lowest prices in sales, so
trifling to them, but so important to her. They helped her with advice,
and put some advantages as to fashions and fabrics in her way; and best
of all, when Geordie's schooling was supposed to be at an end, one of
them took him into his employment in a humble capacity indeed, but his
rise to the place of honour behind the counter, and then to the
book-keeper's desk, was more rapid than generally happens in such a case
as his.
Before Jean was seven and twenty years of age, she and her brother were
equal partners in a fairly prosperous business established by her in the
High-street. After this fortune was secure in the course of time.
They were equal partners for a good many years, but gradually, as their
resources increased, and new ways of employing energy and capital were
open to the brother, this was changed. With her usual prudence, Jean
refused to engage in risks which she had not sufficient knowledge to
guide or strength to control, and a change was made in their business
relations, and each continued to prosper in the chosen way.
As time went on, Jean ruled well her brother's home and helped him in
many ways; but she did not, as had been predicted of her, grow into a
mere hard business woman--seeing nothing so clearly as the main chance,
and loving money itself better than the comfort that money may bring.
It was they who knew her least, or who knew her only in her capacity of
business woman, who feared this for her. The people who had watched and
wondered at her early efforts and success, the neighbours, and the
fisher wives who had exchanged kindly gifts with her in these days, did
not fear it, nor the "puir bodies" in the back streets and lanes of
Portie, who enjoyed the pickles o' tea and snuff, and the bits of
flannel that found their way to them from her hands, nor the mothers of
fatherless bairns who "won through sair straits," and got the better in
many a "sair fecht" with poverty and trouble by her help.
Her silence and reserve, even to her friends--and she had many--looked
to those who were not specially her friends, like the coldness and
hardness that strengthens with the years. It was by deeds rather than
words that her strong and tender nature found expression, and those who
needed her help most, knew her best and trusted her most fully, and even
in the busiest time of her life, she saw enough of other people's cares
and sorrows, to remind her that there was something more needed in life
than money, or the good things that money could bring.
And, when she ought to have been past "the like o' that," as she said to
herself, for she was not far from thirty, the wonderful gift of love was
given to her. And then, through her love, came the gift which God is
sure, sooner or later, to give to His own,--the gift of sanctified
trouble.
There came to Portie in one of the ships in which her brother had an
interest, a lad--he looked scarcely more than a lad--sick with fever.
Accident brought him to George Dawson's house for a night, and in the
morning he was too ill to leave it. Through long weeks of suffering and
delirium, Jean nursed him, and cared for him, and saved him from death.
He was not a good young man. The wild words uttered in his wanderings,
proved this to Jean, only too clearly, and if he had gone away as soon
as he rose from his bed, he would have taken her interest and her good
will with him, and nothing more. But his convalescence was long and
tedious, and whatever his sins against himself and others might have
been, he was of a sweet and kindly nature, and a handsome and manly lad
withal.
And of course it was the fairest side of his character that he showed to
Jean in these days. Not that he tried to hide his past follies and even
his sins from her. But it was his sorrow for them that he showed her,
and his longing to live a better life by her help; and what with his
penitence and his gentleness and his winning English ways, he wiled the
heart out of her breast before she was aware. And the love was mutual.
But whether he ever could have given to her all that she gave to him,
was doubtful to the only one who knew what had befallen her.
To say that her brother was amazed at her love for a man so much younger
and mentally and morally so much beneath her, is to say little. He was
utterly dismayed. But he knew her strong and steadfast nature too well
to try to move her from her purpose. He only stipulated that there
should be time given to prove the young man's love, and to prove also
the firmness of his determination to live a new life. It was not a
severe test that he insisted on. One voyage the young man was to make,
and coming home with the good word of his captain and shipmates, no
difficulty should be put in the way of the marriage, strange as he
confessed the idea of such a marriage to be. It was to be a six months'
voyage only, and though Jean did not feel that such a sacrifice need be
made, she was yet willing to make it at the will of the brother whom she
loved. And so they parted.
But six months passed, and then six more, and when three more had worn
away tidings came. Through these months of waiting Jean went in
silence, and when the captain's son came home--the only survivor of the
crew of the ship that had carried her heart and her hope away--and told
the story of their wreck on wintry seas, no one knew that she listened
and suffered as no widow of them all suffered for her cruel and utter
loss.
Her lover's name was spoken with the rest, and it was told how brave he
had been and kindly, and how he had kept up the courage of the rest and
cheered them all to the last, and how the hardest and most careless of
the crew had planned together to beguile him into taking more than his
share of the food they had, because he was not strong like the rest, and
because they loved him. And Jean listened to it all, and never uttered
a word. Nor afterward did she open her lips even to her brother. He
tried to speak to her some vague words of comfort, as to its being God's
will, and all for the best, but she only put forth her hand to bid him
cease, and when he still would fain have spoken a word of his own sorrow
for her trouble she rose and went away, and it was many years before
either of them returned to the sorrow of that time. She lived through
her trouble, and she did not grow hard or bitter under it, as she might
have done if he had lived and forgotten her; and comfort came to her as
the years went on.
It came to her in a strange way, her brother thought, and though he was
glad of its coming, it cost him some pain. The first, indeed the only,
danger of estrangement that ever came between the brother and sister
grew out of this. Not that there was any real danger even then; for
Jean was, in her silent and determined way, so soft and gentle and
unprovokable in the new manner of thought and life into which she fell
at this time, that though her brother was both angry and ashamed, and
suffered both shame and anger to appear to her and to others, it made no
real breach between them.
And he had cause for neither shame nor anger. It was only that weary of
herself and the drowsy ministrations of the parish kirk, Jean had
strayed one stormy Sabbath night into "a little kirkie" lately built in
a back street by "a queer kin' o' folk ca'ed missioners," and had there
heard words such as she had never heard before, and had found in them
more than comfort.
Not that the words were altogether new, nor the thoughts,--they were in
her Bible, every one of them--she told her brother afterwards; but, for
one thing, they were earnestly spoken by one who believed them, and then
they came to one ready for them and waiting, though she knew it not.
Ah! well, that does not explain it altogether. It was the Lord Himself
who spoke to her by the voice of His servant revealing Himself to her,
through His own familiar Word in a new way. After that she could say of
Him, "Whose I am and whom I serve," and her life took a new meaning. It
was His who "had bought her with a price." All that she had done
hitherto for pity's sake, she did now _for His sake_. "To one of the
least of these," He had said. The world was full of "these little ones"
of His, and there were some of them in Portie even, and henceforth they
were to be her care.
Her outward life did not change much however. Except that at first she
"whiles" went to "the little kirkie," and afterwards went there
altogether, there was no difference that could be named by her little
world generally. Her brother saw a difference, and so did the poor folk
who shared her care and kindness. Her eye was brighter and her step
lighter, and the look of suffering she had lately worn was giving place
to a look of patient even cheerful peacefulness that was good to see.
She had more words, too, at her command. Not for her brother--at least
not for him at first. But the impulse which her new love for her Master
had given her, was strong enough to overcome the silence natural to her,
and "good words" gently and yet strongly spoken went with her gifts now,
and sometimes they were received as gladly as her gifts. But that she
should cast in her lot with the handful of "newfangled folk" in Stott's
Lane was a pain and a humiliation to her brother which it took years to
outlive.
Their outward life went on as it had done before for a good while, and
then her brother married. His wife was of a family which had had a name
and a place in the countryside for generations; but George Dawson found
her earning her bread as a teacher in a school in Aberdeen, and married
her "for pure love," Portie folk said; and some who had known him best,
expected no such thing of George Dawson.
It was doubtful whether his love for her or his pride in her was
strongest. He did not take her to the house above the shop where he and
his sister had lived so long, but to a fine house at the head of the
High-street in a far pleasanter part of the town, and there they began
their married life together. Jean did not go with them, though they
both wished it. It was better for them to be alone, she said, and as
well for her. So she staid still in the house above the shop, making a
home for the young men employed in the business, keeping a wise and
watchful eye on them and on the business also. After a few years, when
her sister-in-law became delicate, and there were little children
needing her care, she, with greater self-denial than any guessed, gave
up her independent life and went home to them for a while, and lightened
the mother's care for them and for the home as well, and found her
reward in knowing that her work was not vain.
But when more years had passed, and her brother, a richer man than she
knew, bought the small estate of Saughleas, and took his family there,
she did not go with them. She was getting on in years, she was too old
to begin a new life in new circumstances, and the bairns were getting
beyond the need of her care. So she went to a home of her own that
looked out upon the sea, and set herself with wisdom and patience and
loving kindness to the work which her Master had given her to do.