On the east coast of Scotland, hidden, as if in a quarry, at the foot
of cliffs that may one day fall forward, is a village called Harvie.
So has it shrunk since the day when I skulked from it that I hear of a
traveller's asking lately at one of its doors how far he was from a
village; yet Harvie throve once and was celebrated even in distant
Thrums for its fish. Most of our weavers would have thought it as
unnatural not to buy harvies in the square on the Muckle Friday, as to
let Saturday night pass without laying in a sufficient stock of
halfpennies to go round the family twice.
Gavin was born in Harvie, but left it at such an early age that he
could only recall thatched houses with nets drying on the roofs, and a
sandy shore in which coarse grass grew. In the picture he could not
pick out the house of his birth, though he might have been able to go
to it had he ever returned to the village. Soon he learned that his
mother did not care to speak of Harvie, and perhaps he thought that
she had forgotten it too, all save one scene to which his memory still
guided him. When his mind wandered to Harvie, Gavin saw the door of
his home open and a fisherman enter, who scratched his head and then
said, "Your man's drowned, missis." Gavin seemed to see many women
crying, and his mother staring at them with a face suddenly painted
white, and next to hear a voice that was his own saying, "Never mind,
mother; I'll be a man to you now, and I'll need breeks for the
burial." But Adam required no funeral, for his body lay deep in the
sea.
Gavin thought that this was the tragedy of his mother's life, and the
most memorable event of his own childhood. But it was neither. When
Margaret, even after she came to Thrums, thought of Harvie, it was not
at Adam's death she shuddered, but at the recollection of me.
It would ill become me to take a late revenge on Adam Dishart now by
saying what is not true of him. Though he died a fisherman he was a
sailor for a great part of his life, and doubtless his recklessness
was washed into him on the high seas, where in his time men made a
crony of death, and drank merrily over dodging it for another night.
To me his roars of laughter without cause were as repellent as a boy's
drum; yet many faces that were long in my company brightened at his
coming, and women, with whom, despite my yearning, I was in no wise a
favorite, ran to their doors to listen to him as readily as to the
bell-man. Children scurried from him if his mood was savage, but to
him at all other times, while me they merely disregarded. There was
always a smell of the sea about him. He had a rolling gait, unless he
was drunk, when he walked very straight, and before both sexes he
boasted that any woman would take him for his beard alone. Of this
beard he took prodigious care, though otherwise thinking little of his
appearance, and I now see that he understood women better than I did,
who had nevertheless reflected much about them. It cannot be said that
he was vain, for though he thought he attracted women strangely, that,
I maintain, is a weakness common to all men, and so no more to be
marvelled at than a stake in a fence. Foreign oaths were the nails
with which he held his talk together, yet I doubt not they were a
curiosity gathered at sea, like his chains of shells, more for his own
pleasure than for others' pain. His friends gave them no weight, and
when he wanted to talk emphatically he kept them back, though they
were then as troublesome to him as eggs to the bird-nesting boy who
has to speak with his spoil in his mouth.
Adam was drowned on Gavin's fourth birthday, a year after I had to
leave Harvie. He was blown off his smack in a storm, and could not
reach the rope his partner flung him. "It's no go, lad," he shouted;
"so long, Jim," and sank.
A month afterwards Margaret sold her share in the smack, which was all
Adam left her, and the furniture of the house was rouped. She took
Gavin to Glasgow, where her only brother needed a housekeeper, and
there mother and son remained until Gavin got his call to Thrums.
During those seventeen years I lost knowledge of them as completely as
Margaret had lost knowledge of me. On hearing of Adam's death I went
back to Harvie to try to trace her, but she had feared this, and so
told no one where she was going.
According to Margaret, Gavin's genius showed itself while he was still
a child. He was born with a brow whose nobility impressed her from the
first. It was a minister's brow, and though Margaret herself was no
scholar, being as slow to read as she was quick at turning bannocks on
the girdle, she decided, when his age was still counted by months,
that the ministry had need of him. In those days the first question
asked of a child was not, "Tell me your name," but "What are you to
be?" and one child in every family replied, "A minister." He was set
apart for the Church as doggedly as the shilling a week for the rent,
and the rule held good though the family consisted of only one boy.
From his earliest days Gavin thought he had been fashioned for the
ministry as certainly as a spade for digging, and Margaret rejoiced
and marvelled thereat, though she had made her own puzzle. An
enthusiastic mother may bend her son's mind as she chooses if she
begins at once; nay, she may do stranger things. I know a mother in
Thrums who loves "features," and had a child born with no chin to
speak of. The neighbors expected this to bring her to the dust, but it
only showed what a mother can do. In a few months that child had a
chin with the best of them.
Margaret's brother died, but she remained in his single room, and,
ever with a picture of her son in a pulpit to repay her, contrived to
keep Gavin at school. Everything a woman's fingers can do Margaret's
did better than most, and among the wealthy people who employed
her--would that I could have the teaching of the sons of such as were
good to her in those hard days!--her gentle manner was spoken of. For
though Margaret had no schooling, she was a lady at heart, moving and
almost speaking as one even in Harvie, where they did not perhaps like
her the better for it.
At six Gavin hit another boy hard for belonging to the Established
Church, and at seven he could not lose himself in the Shorter
Catechism. His mother expounded the Scriptures to him till he was
eight, when he began to expound them to her. By this time he was
studying the practical work of the pulpit as enthusiastically as ever
medical student cut off a leg. From a front pew in the gallery Gavin
watched the minister's every movement, noting that the first thing to
do on ascending the pulpit is to cover your face with your hands, as
if the exalted position affected you like a strong light, and the
second to move the big Bible slightly, to show that the kirk officer,
not having had a university education, could not be expected to know
the very spot on which it ought to lie. Gavin saw that the minister
joined in the singing more like one countenancing a seemly thing than
because he needed it himself, and that he only sang a mouthful now and
again after the congregation was in full pursuit of the precentor. It
was noteworthy that the first prayer lasted longer than all the
others, and that to read the intimations about the Bible-class and the
collection elsewhere than immediately before the last Psalm would have
been as sacrilegious as to insert the dedication to King James at the
end of Revelation. Sitting under a minister justly honoured in his
day, the boy was often some words in advance of him, not vainglorious
of his memory, but fervent, eager, and regarding the preacher as
hardly less sacred than the Book. Gavin was encouraged by his
frightened yet admiring mother to saw the air from their pew as the
minister sawed it in the pulpit, and two benedictions were pronounced
twice a Sabbath in that church, in the same words, the same manner,
and simultaneously.
There was a black year when the things of this world, especially its
pastimes, took such a grip of Gavin that he said to Margaret he would
rather be good at the high jump than the author of "The Pilgrim's
Progress." That year passed, and Gavin came to his right mind. One
afternoon Margaret was at home making a glengarry for him out of a
piece of carpet, and giving it a tartan edging, when the boy bounded
in from school, crying, "Come quick, mother, and you'll see him."
Margaret reached the door in time to see a street musician flying from
Gavin and his friends. "Did you take stock of him, mother?" the boy
asked when he reappeared with the mark of a muddy stick on his back.
"He's a Papist!--a sore sight, mother, a sore sight. We stoned him for
persecuting the noble Martyrs."
When Gavin was twelve he went to the university, and also got a place
in a shop as errand boy. He used to run through the streets between
his work and his classes. Potatoes and salt fish, which could then be
got at two pence the pound if bought by the half-hundred weight, were
his food. There was not always a good meal for two, yet when Gavin
reached home at night there was generally something ready for him,
and Margaret had supped "hours ago." Gavin's hunger urged him to fall
to, but his love for his mother made him watchful.
"What did you have yourself, mother?" he would demand suspiciously.
"Oh, I had a fine supper, I assure you."
"What had you?"
"I had potatoes, for one thing."
"And dripping?"
"You may be sure."
"Mother, you're cheating me. The dripping hasn't been touched since
yesterday."
"I dinna--don't--care for dripping--no much."
Then would Gavin stride the room fiercely, a queer little figure.
"Do you think I'll stand this, mother? Will I let myself be pampered
with dripping and every delicacy while you starve?"
"Gavin, I really dinna care for dripping."
"Then I'll give up my classes, and we can have butter."
"I assure you I'm no hungry. It's different wi' a growing laddie."
"I'm not a growing laddie," Gavin would say, bitterly; "but, mother, I
warn you that not another bite passes my throat till I see you eating
too."
So Margaret had to take her seat at the table, and when she said "I
can eat no more," Gavin retorted sternly, "Nor will I, for fine I see
through you."
These two were as one far more than most married people, and, just as
Gavin in his childhood reflected his mother, she now reflected him.
The people for whom she sewed thought it was contact with them that
had rubbed the broad Scotch from her tongue, but she was only keeping
pace with Gavin. When she was excited the Harvie words came back to
her, as they come back to me. I have taught the English language all
my life, and I try to write it, but everything I say in this book I
first think to myself in the Doric. This, too, I notice, that in
talking to myself I am broader than when gossiping with the farmers of
the glen, who send their children to me to learn English, and then
jeer at them if they say "old lights" instead of "auld lichts."
To Margaret it was happiness to sit through the long evenings sewing,
and look over her work at Gavin as he read or wrote or recited to
himself the learning of the schools. But she coughed every time the
weather changed, and then Gavin would start.
"You must go to your bed, mother," he would say, tearing himself from
his books; or he would sit beside her and talk of the dream that was
common to both--a dream of a manse where Margaret was mistress and
Gavin was called the minister. Every night Gavin was at his mother's
bedside to wind her shawl round her feet, and while he did it Margaret
smiled.
"Mother, this is the chaff pillow you've taken out of my bed, and
given me your feather one."
"Gavin, you needna change them. I winna have the feather pillow."
"Do you dare to think I'll let you sleep on chaff? Put up your head.
Now, is that soft?"
"It's fine. I dinna deny but what I sleep better on feathers. Do you
mind, Gavin, you bought this pillow for me the moment you got your
bursary money?"
The reserve that is a wall between many of the Scottish poor had been
broken down by these two. When he saw his mother sleeping happily,
Gavin went back to his work. To save the expense of a lamp, he would
put his book almost beneath the dying fire, and, taking the place of
the fender, read till he was shivering with cold.
"Gavin, it is near morning, and you not in your bed yet! What are you
thinking about so hard?"
"Oh, mother, I was wondering if the time would ever come when I would
be a minister, and you would have an egg for your breakfast every
morning."
So the years passed, and soon Gavin would be a minister. He had now
sermons to prepare, and every one of them was first preached to
Margaret. How solemn was his voice, how his eyes flashed, how stern
were his admonitions.
"Gavin, such a sermon I never heard. The spirit of God is on you. I'm
ashamed you should have me for a mother."
"God grant, mother," Gavin said, little thinking what was soon to
happen, or he would have made this prayer on his knees, "that you may
never be ashamed to have me for a son."
"Ah, mother," he would say wistfully, "it is not a great sermon, but
do you think I'm preaching Christ? That is what I try, but I'm carried
away and forget to watch myself."
"The Lord has you by the hand, Gavin; and mind, I dinna say that
because you're my laddie."
"Yes, you do, mother, and well I know it, and yet it does me good to
hear you."
That it did him good I, who would fain have shared those days with
them, am very sure. The praise that comes of love does not make us
vain, but humble rather. Knowing what we are, the pride that shines in
our mother's eyes as she looks at us is about the most pathetic thing
a man has to face, but he would be a devil altogether if it did not
burn some of the sin out of him.
Not long before Gavin preached for our kirk and got his call, a great
event took place in the little room at Glasgow. The student appeared
for the first time before his mother in his ministerial clothes. He
wore the black silk hat, that was destined to become a terror to
evil-doers in Thrums, and I dare say he was rather puffed up about
himself that day. You would probably have smiled at him.
"It's a pity I'm so little, mother," he said with a sigh.
"You're no what I would call a particularly long man," Margaret said,
"but you're just the height I like."
Then Gavin went out in his grandeur, and Margaret cried for an hour.
She was thinking of me as well as of Gavin, and as it happens, I know
that I was thinking at the same time of her. Gavin kept a diary in
those days, which I have seen, and by comparing it with mine, I
discovered that while he was showing himself to his mother in his
black clothes, I was on my way back from Tilliedrum, where I had gone
to buy a sand-glass for the school. The one I bought was so like
another Margaret had used at Harvie that it set me thinking of her
again all the way home. This is a matter hardly worth mentioning, and
yet it interests me.
Busy days followed the call to Thrums, and Gavin had difficulty in
forcing himself to his sermons when there was always something more to
tell his mother about the weaving town they were going to, or about
the manse or the furniture that had been transferred to him by the
retiring minister. The little room which had become so familiar that
it seemed one of a family party of three had to be stripped, and many
of its contents were sold. Among what were brought to Thrums was a
little exercise book, in which Margaret had tried, unknown to Gavin,
to teach herself writing and grammar, that she might be less unfit for
a manse. He found it accidentally one day. It was full of "I am, thou
art, he is," and the like, written many times in a shaking hand. Gavin
put his arms round his mother when he saw what she had been doing. The
exercise book is in my desk now, and will be my little maid's when I
die.
"Gavin, Gavin," Margaret said many times in those last days at
Glasgow, "to think it has all come true!"
"Let the last word you say in the house be a prayer of thankfulness,"
she whispered to him when they were taking a final glance at the old
home.
In the bare room they called the house, the little minister and his
mother went on their knees, but, as it chanced, their last word there
was not addressed to God.
"Gavin," Margaret whispered as he took her arm, "do you think this
bonnet sets me?"
Chapter Three.