THERE were many modest homes in the Glen, but the humblest of them all
was that of Bell Robb, where she lived with Jean, her sister, and blind
Marjorie. It had only one room, and that had only one window. A tall man
could stand upright only in the centre, and the hearth was so near the
top of the chimney that it was a fight in the winter time between the
fire and the snow, and the snow used to win the battle before morning.
There was a box bed at the back of the room where Bell and Jean
slept, and the lowliest of little beds just below the window had been
Marjorie's home night and day for many a long year, because she had
not only been blind from her birth, but since middle age had also been
paralyzed. There was a table and two chairs, and a dresser on which
the humble stock of crockery was carefully displayed. From above the
fireplace the humblest of oil lamps, called a cruizie, projected, but
the cottage had two brass candlesticks which were never used, but were
polished like unto fine gold and were the glory of the home.
If providence had been unkind to any person in the Glen it was to
Marjorie, for her birth had been a tragedy, and the helpless child,
blind and feeble, had been flung upon the world. She had never known
father or mother, she had never seen the primroses in the Tochty woods
when spring made her first visit, nor the purple of the heather in
autumn time, nor the golden com in the field before her door, nor the
sunshine upon the Burn down below. She had no kinsfolk to take charge of
her, she had no claim upon any one except the poor law authorities, and
had she been bom into a parish like Kilbogie the workhouse had been her
only asylum. But it was a kindly little world into which this poor waif
and stray had come--a world which had not many words nor much money,
whose ways were curious and whose manner was austere, but whose heart
was big and warm. Drumtochty had its laws of public policy which
Government itself was never able to over-ride, which every man and woman
in the Glen set themselves to enforce. And one was that no native of
the Glen should ever be sent to the coldness and bondage of a workhouse;
that however poor he might be and however long he lived, he must be kept
in the shelter of our pine woods where he could see the Tochty run. As
a matter of fact, this was not so great a burden on the neighbours, for
Drumtochty folk had a rooted objection, which not even the modern spirit
creeping up into the Glen could overcome, against being paupers or
depending on any person save on themselves and God. Drumtochty had no
pity for wastrels and very little sympathy with shiftless people, but
Marjorie, poor Marjorie, she had the spirit to work--we judged she had
about the highest spirit in the Glen--but what could she do without
sight and with her trembling hands? So the Glen adopted Marjorie, and
declared in wayside talk and many a kirkyard conference that she had
given them more than they had ever given to her.
Bell Robb and Jean, her sister, earned their living by hoeing turnips,
lifting potatoes, binding at harvest and gathering the stones off
the field--which were ever coming up to the surface in our poor thin
soil--and they made between them on an average from January to December
nearly twelve shillings a week. They declared that being two solitary
women providence had intended they should have Marjorie, and now for
thirty years she had been with them, and they spent upon her twice as
much as they received in grants from the parish inspector, and declared
with brazen effrontery that they were making a little fortune out of
her. They also gave sixpence a month to the sustentation fund of the
Free Kirk, and a shilling at a great collection, and if there was any
little presentation in the Glen they had a shilling for that also. How
they did those things was only known to God. Their faces were lined by
labour and burned brown by the sun, but they looked well in the light of
the Sacrament, for they were partakers of the Lord's Cross; their hands
were rough and hard with field labour, but very gentle and kindly
when they waited upon Marjorie. And when Marjorie began to relate the
catalogue of her blessings, she always put next to her Saviour Bell and
her sister Jean. The two sisters have had their humble funeral years
ago, and their tired bodies with Marjorie's body of humiliation were
laid to rest in the old kirkyard, and theirs was then the reward of Him
who said, “I was a stranger and ye took me in.” Drumsheugh, returning
from Muirtown market one afternoon by road, dropped in to pass the time
o' day with Marjorie--leaving half a pound of tea upon the dresser--and
was arrested by the humility of her bed. He was overheard saying “Sall”
to himself as he returned to the main road with the tone of a man who
had come to a resolution, and next Friday he drove up from Muirtown with
a small iron bedstead, arranged in parts over his dogcart, while he sat
with dignity upon the mattress. The installation of Marjorie into her
new couch was the event of her life, and for weeks the Glen dropped in,
partly to see Drumsheugh's amazing gift, but chiefly to hear Marjorie on
his unparalleled kindness and its unparalleled splendour. She had
felt it over inch by inch, and knew the pattern to a turn, but she
was chiefly concerned that her visitors should observe and rightly
appreciate the brass knobs at the four corners.
“Drumsheugh micht have got an ordinary bed for half the money, but
naething wud sateesfy him but brass knobs. Ye may say that I canna
see them, but I can feel them, and I ken that they're there, and the
neighbours see them, and to think o't that I'm lying here like a queen
on a spring bed with four brass knobs. And me that has no claim on
Drumsheugh or ony other body, juist crowned wi' loving kindness. I'll
need to ask grace to be kept humble.”
According to Marjorie indeed her whole life had been arranged on the
principle of Drumsheugh's giving: instead of iron she had received
brass, yea, much fine gold, and all things had worked together for her
good. When her minister Carmichael forgot himself one day and pitied her
for her afflictions she was amazed, and had to remind herself that he
had only come to the Glen. For was it not her helplessness that had won
her so much love, so that from high Glen Urtarch down to the borders of
Kilbogie every man, woman and child was her friend, dropping in to see
her, bringing her all the news, and making her so many little presents
that she was “fair ashamed”? And she reminded John Carmichael that if
she, Marjorie, had been an able-bodied woman, he would not have paid her
so many visits, nor told her so many “bonny stories.”
“Mr. Carmichael, I'll have much to answer for, for I've been greatly
blessed. I judge masel' the maist priveeleged woman in Drumtochty.” And
then Carmichael, who had his own troubles and discontentments, used to
go away a wiser and a better man.
Marjorie saw the hand of an all,-wise and all-loving Providence in the
arrangements of her home. For one thing it faced south, and she got the
warmth and the shining of the sun through her little window, and there
was an advantage in the door opening straight from the garden into the
room, for the scent of the flowers came in to her bed, and she knew when
the wallflowers had begun to bloom and when the first rosebud above the
doorway had opened. She would have liked very well to have gone to the
Kirk with a goodly company, but lying alone on her bed through the hours
of service she had time for prayer, and I have heard her declare that
the time was too short for her petitions. “For, ye see, I have sae mony
friends to remember, and my plan is to begin at the top of the Glen and
tak' them family by family till I come to the end of the parish. And wud
ye believe it, I judge that it takes me four complete days to bring a'
the fowk I love before the Throne of Grace.”
As for her darkness of earthly sight, this, she insisted, was the chief
good which God had bestowed upon her, and she made out her case with the
ingenuity of a faithful and contented heart.
“If I dinna see”--and she spoke as if this was a matter of doubt and she
were making a concession for argument's sake--“there's naebody in the
Glen can hear like me. There's no a footstep of a Drum-tochty man comes
to the door but I ken his name, and there's no a voice oot on the road
that I canna tell. The birds sing sweeter to me than to onybody else,
and I can hear them cheeping to one another in the bushes before they
go to sleep. And the flowers smell sweeter to me--the roses and the
carnations and the bonny moss rose--and I judge that the oatcake and
milk taste the richer because I dinna see them. Na, na, ye're no to
think that I've been ill treated by my God, for if He didna give me ae
thing, He gave me mony things instead.
“And mind ye, it's no as if I'd seen once and lost my sight; that micht
ha' been a trial, and my faith micht have failed. I've lost naething; my
life has been all getting.”