Tom Jardine the grocer--Betty's next-door neighbour--will be thirty-four
years old on the 23rd of January next. He is to a day exactly four years
my senior. I remember it was when his mother and Betty were putting out
clothes together in the back-green that I, a boy of five, heard for the
first time that we had a birthday in common.
To me the fact vested Tom with a special interest. I looked upon him in
more than a mere neighbourly spirit. Though we were rarely associated in
our boys' games, we often casually met about the doors or had disjointed
conversations through the garden hedge; and on these occasions the
desire was always strong within me to talk of our birthday, and to ask
if he wasn't wearying for the 23rd to come round. And when that
auspicious date was ushered in, and my birthday-cake, in all its
white-iced glory, was ceremoniously placed before me at table, I used to
wonder if Tom had one also, and if he, like me, had the honour of
cutting and distributing it.
On looking back, I cannot remember when the Jardines were not our
neighbours. Long ago Robert Jardine, Tom's father, was a tenant of ours,
and twice a year, at the Martinmas and Whitsunday terms, he called upon
us; and when the rent had been paid and sundry repairs and alterations
agreed upon, he and my father drank a glass of wine together. It had,
however, long been the height of Robert's ambition to be the owner of
his own roof-tree. Times then being good, he soon saved the amount
necessary to effect a purchase; and after many calls and conferences,
terms were ultimately arranged to the satisfaction of both vender and
buyer.
Tom was the youngest of a large family, the other members of which had
all emigrated; and when Robert Jardine died--his wife had predeceased
him by a few years--there was no one else to look after affairs. Tom at
once gave up a responsible position in a wholesale grocery establishment
in Glasgow, came south with a wife and three young children, and took
over what I now understand every Thornhill villager believed to be a
dying, if not an altogether dead, concern.
All these changes had taken place in my absence during these past
fourteen years; but it was nevertheless pleasing to me to know from
Betty, shortly after my return, that as neighbours the family was still
represented, the more so as the representative in question was none
other than my old friend Tom.
In describing my attic room I omitted to say that it has a little,
round, gable window through which, from my fireside chair, I can look
down upon the Jardines' back-yard. Long ago I used to sit here and watch
old Robert grooming his horse, cleaning his harness, and packing his
long-bodied spring-cart with bags of flour or meal, and grocery parcels
of tea and sugar, for distribution on his long cadger rounds.
During the past few weeks my interest has often been centred on his son
similarly employed. Tom sings and whistles cheery tunes as he works, and
his iron-shod clogs make a merry clatter on the stone-paved court. His
wife and the two eldest children--blue-eyed, curly-haired bairns they
are--give him willing help, and, standing in his cart or on a chair
placed beside the wheel, he cheerily receives and checks off in a
weather-beaten note-book the various articles for his country clients.
Like Nathan, Tom is no lie-abed in the morning. Of necessity he must be
up betimes, for his journeys are often long and his days are always too
short. When Betty is preparing the early breakfast I hear Tom's ringing
footstep outside, the taming of the key in the stable-door lock, and the
anticipating whinny of the gray mare. Then a horse-pail is filled from
the tap at the stable-door; a minute later it is returned empty and
deposited outside; the lid of the corn-bin, which has been poised on its
creaky hinges, descends with a bang, and I know that his faithful
dappled friend has her nose buried in countless piles of sweet-smelling
corn.
Betty is not an inquisitive woman, nor does she interest herself in a
meddling way in her neighbours' concerns; yet her big, kindly heart and
her never-failing sympathetic nature invite many confidences, and she is
therefore more fully versed in what I might call the inward life of
those around her than many of a more zealously prying and newsvending
disposition.
We were talking one day about the Jardines of a past generation, and our
conversation naturally turned to Tom. I commended him for his industry,
for his sobriety, and for the undivided attention he gave to his
business, and finished up by asking if he was a successful man. Betty
made no reply; but she shook her head doubtfully, from which I argued
that it was not all sunshine and whistling and singing with our young
grocer neighbour; and as she showed no desire to continue the
conversation, I allowed the matter to drop.
After tea, however, she reverted to the subject, and reopened our chat
by asking if it was usual in business for a son to take over his dead
father's debts.
In my short professional career I remembered one such case, in which I
was interested, but only one, and I told her of it. I didn't go into
details, but gave her the bald outstanding points; and after I had
finished she said, 'Ay, and that's the only case ye ever heard o'?'
'Yes, that is so, Betty,' I replied.
She was standing at the round gable window, vacantly looking down into
our neighbour's back-yard. Then I saw her eyebrows begin to pucker, and
I knew there was something on her mind.
'Maister Weelum,' she said at length, 'I've nae concern in the ongauns
o' the folks aboot me, an' I never talk aboot them. But ye asked me
regairdin' Tom Jardine, an' I'm no' betrayin' ony confidences when I
tell ye that young Tom took ower his dead faither's debts, so that will
be twae cases ye ken o'.'
'Tom Jardine!' I said with surprise. 'Surely Robert Jardine wasn't in
debt when he died?'
'That he was, Maister Weelum--the mair's the pity. Ye see, for a lang
time--I micht say for at least five years afore he died--he wasna able
to gang his roons; in fact, he was barely able to stand ahint the
coonter. Younger an' mair active competitors took up the same gr'und;
an' what wi' failin' trade, increasin' competition, an' cuttin' prices,
there wasna a livin' in it. Then his wife had a lang, lingerin' illness,
an' when she slippit away he kind o' lost he'rt. I was often wae for
him, puir man, an' I did a' I could for him in my ain sma' wey. Except
to yin or twae he keepit a smilin' face, though, aye wrote cheerily to
Tom, an' gaed to kirk an' market as lang as he was able wi' his heid in
the air; but, losh me! when his time cam' it was nae surprise to me an'
yin or twae mair that the whole affair--shop, hoose, an' business--didna
show much mair than ten shillin's in the pound. Tom--him that's doon
there noo--was in a guid wey o' doin' in Glesca, an' nothing wad ser'
him but he bood come hame an' tak' things in haun. He was strongly
advised to have nothing to do wi' it, an' to let the creditors handle
what was left as best it was likely to pay them. But Tom said, "No." All
he asked frae the creditors was time an' secrecy as far as was possible
as to how things stood, an' frae the Almighty health an' strength, an',
given these, he promised to clear his dead faither's name an' see every
yin get his ain. That's three years ago past the May term, an', honour
an' praise to the puir laddie, he's nearly succeeded. But it has been a
terrible struggle for him; an' had it no' been for his determination,
his sobriety, his pride in his faither's guid name, an' abune a' the
help o' a lovin' wife wha's a perfect mother in Israel, he wad ha'e
gi'en it up lang or noo as an impossible, thankless job. Nathan and me
lent his faither sixty pounds. We had nae writin' to speak o', only his
signed name. I showed the paper to Tom shortly efter he had settled doon
here, an' instead o' questionin' it he thanked us for our kindness an
promised to pay it back in the same proportion as the ithers. Up to noo
we've got back thirty pounds. I was in his shop the ither day, an' he
said he thocht he wad be able to gi'e's anither ten pounds at the
November term. What think ye o' that noo, Maister Weelum?'
'I think your neighbour is a splendid fellow, Betty, and I would like to
shake hands with him. Have you the paper beside you on which his
father's name appears for sixty pounds?'
'Ay, that I have,' said Betty. She went downstairs, and returned a
minute later with a sheet of notepaper.
I glanced at the unstamped promise, and smiled. 'Betty,' I said
seriously, 'are you aware this is not worth the paper it is written on?'
'Ay, perfectly,' she said with unconcern.
'How did you find that out?' I inquired.
'Oh, when I showed it to Tom Jardine he used exactly the same words as
you did; but, said he, "My faither signed that. I have every confidence
in you an' Nathan. My faither an' mither thought the world o' ye, an'
wi' my assurance that ye'll be paid back, I tender you my best thanks
for your kindness in time o' need."'
Betty folded up her worthless document and put it in the breast of her
gown. 'An honest man like Tom Jardine makes up for a lot o' worthless
yins, Maister Weelum,' she said as she lifted her tea-tray; and I looked
through the wee round window to Tom's back-yard with an increased
appreciation of the coatless and hatless grocer, who was sitting down on
an empty soap-box with a long needle and a roset-end, mending his old
gray mare's collar.
It has rained continuously for three days, and according to Nathan
something has gone very far wrong, as St Swithin's Day from early morn
to dewy eve was cloudless and fair, and accordingly we had every right
to anticipate forty days of dry, fine weather.
Harvest is early with us this year. The corn, which was waving green
when Betty and I drove south from Elvanfoot, is already studding the
fields in regular rows of yellow stooks, and but for this break in the
weather it would even now be on its way to the stackyard in groaning,
creaking carts. The Newton pippins on the apple-tree at the foot of the
garden are showing a bright red cheek, and the phloxes and gladioli in
the plot at the kitchen window are crowned with a mass of bloom so rich
and luxuriant that every one of Betty's cooking utensils reflects their
colourings and appears to be blushing rosy-red. During these past three
days I have missed Tom's cheery song, and I am beginning to wonder if
the gloomy weather has chilled his lightsome heart and silenced the
chords of his tuneful throat.
Time was when I loved to be abroad on a rainy day, whether as an
unprotected boy fishing away up Capel Linn and Cample Cleugh, with the
rain dribbling down the neckband of my shirt and oozing through the
lace-holes of my boots, or as a man with waterproof and hazel staff,
breasting the scarred side of Caerketton or the grassy slopes of
Allermuir, with the pelting, pitiless raindrops blinding my eyes and
stinging my cheek, and the vivid fire of heaven lighting up Halkerside
and momentarily showing the short zigzag course of that 'nameless
trickle' whose rippling music the Wizard of Swanston loved.
How I enjoyed these Pentland rambles, alone in the rain and the soughing
winds! Underfoot, the dank, sodden grass and the broken fern; overhead,
the sombre sky, the scurrying clouds, and the drifting mist; on every
side the grassy mounds of the Dunty Knowes, with their shivering birks
tossing to windward, and a rain-soaked hogg beneath every sheltering
crag. Alone, yet not alone; for a Presence was with me, guiding me on,
showing me through the gathering gloom the sun-bathed crown of
Allermuir, bringing to my ear from out the rage of the storm the wail of
the curlew, and summoning to my side the plaided shepherd 'Honest John'
and his gray, rough-coated collie Swag.
Ah, these are memories only! memories only! for Cample Cleugh and Capel
Linn are lost to me with my boyhood. No more am I the strong,
able-bodied lover of the open, moving with firm, sure step among scenes
which a master's touch has made immortal; but a poor, crippled,
pain-racked invalid, as parochial in feeling as in outlook, sitting in
an easy-chair by an attic fire, watching through a rain-washed
window-pane a scene which fills me with forebodings and touches my heart
to the very quick.
Down there in the courtyard, where the water in the imperfect pavement
is lying in muddy pools, Tom Jardine, hatless, coatless, and regardless
of the splashing rain, is walking to and fro like a lion in his cage.
His face is set and white, his finger-tips clenched in the palm of his
hand, and there is an anxious, troubled expression in his eye which
recalls memories of unfortunate, harassed clients. For a moment he
stands with feet apart and eyes dolefully fixed on the wet, sloppy
flagstones. A door quietly opens, a tiny, smiling-faced figure darts
through the rain, and in an instant two round, bare, chubby arms are
encircling his knee, and a fair, curly head is nestling against his
thigh. But there is no fatherly response to the loving embrace, no reply
to the childish prattle. With a jerky wrench Tom frees himself from the
wee, cuddling arms, and two wide-opened, surprised blue eyes follow him
as again, in thoughtful measured tread, he walks up and down and up and
down. Then red dimpled knuckles are pressed into these blue eyes, a sob
breaks from a wounded little heart, and Tom comes to a sudden halt. In
an instant his clouded face is wreathed in smiles and beams with loving
solicitude. Bending down, he lifts the sobbing morsel; and as he
disappears through the kitchen doorway with the precious burden in his
strong arms and his hungry lips pressed against a soft red cheek, I say
to myself, with a heavy, welling heart, 'Tom, you surely have your
troubles, but as surely you have the antidote.'