Up here in the glen school-house after my pupils have straggled home,
there comes to me at times, and so sudden that it may be while I am
infusing my tea, a hot desire to write great books. Perhaps an hour
afterwards I rise, beaten, from my desk, flinging all I have written
into the fire (yet rescuing some of it on second thought), and curse
myself as an ingle-nook man, for I see that one can only paint what he
himself has felt, and in my passion I wish to have all the vices, even
to being an impious man, that I may describe them better. For this may
I be pardoned. It comes to nothing in the end, save that my tea is
brackish.
Yet though my solitary life in the glen is cheating me of many
experiences, more helpful to a writer than to a Christian, it has not
been so tame but that I can understand why Babbie cried when she went
into Nanny's garden and saw the new world. Let no one who loves be
called altogether unhappy. Even love unreturned has its rainbow, and
Babbie knew that Gavin loved her. Yet she stood in woe among the stiff
berry bushes, as one who stretches forth her hands to Love and sees
him looking for her, and knows she must shrink from the arms she would
lie in, and only call to him in a voice he cannot hear. This is not a
love that is always bitter. It grows sweet with age. But could that
dry the tears of the little Egyptian, who had only been a woman for a
day?
Much was still dark to her. Of one obstacle that must keep her and
Gavin ever apart she knew, and he did not; but had it been removed she
would have given herself to him humbly, not in her own longing, but
because he wanted her. "Behold what I am," she could have said to him
then, and left the rest to him, believing that her unworthiness would
not drag him down, it would lose itself so readily in his strength.
That Thrums could rise against such a man if he defied it, she did not
believe; but she was to learn the truth presently from a child.
To most of us, I suppose, has come some shock that was to make us
different men from that hour, and yet, how many days elapsed before
something of the man we had been leapt up in us? Babbie thought she
had buried her old impulsiveness, and then remembering that from the
top of the field she might see Gavin returning from church, she
hastened to the hill to look upon him from a distance. Before she
reached the gate where I had met her and him, however, she stopped,
distressed at her selfishness, and asked bitterly, "Why am I so
different from other women; why should what is so easy to them be so
hard to me?"
"Gavin, my beloved!" the Egyptian cried in her agony, and the wind
caught her words and flung them in the air, making sport of her.
She wandered westward over the bleak hill, and by-and-by came to a
great slab called the Standing Stone, on which children often sit and
muse until they see gay ladies riding by on palfreys--a kind of
horse--and knights in glittering armour, and goblins, and fiery
dragons, and other wonders now extinct, of which bare-legged laddies
dream, as well as boys in socks. The Standing Stone is in the dyke
that separates the hill from a fir wood, and it is the fairy-book of
Thrums. If you would be a knight yourself, you must sit on it and
whisper to it your desire.
Babbie came to the Standing Stone, and there was a little boy astride
it. His hair stood up through holes in his bonnet, and he was very
ragged and miserable.
"Why are you crying, little boy?" Babbie asked him, gently; but he did
not look up, and the tongue was strange to him.
"How are you greeting so sair?" she asked.
"I'm no greeting very sair," he answered, turning his head from her
that a woman might not see his tears. "I'm no greeting so sair but
what I grat sairer when my mither died."
"When did she die?" Babbie inquired.
"Lang syne," he answered, still with averted face.
"What is your name?"
"Micah is my name. Rob Dow's my father."
"And have you no brothers nor sisters?" asked Babbie, with a
fellow-feeling for him.
"No, juist my father," he said.
"You should be the better laddie to him then. Did your mither no tell
you to be that afore she died?"
"Ay," he answered, "she telled me ay to hide the bottle frae him when
I could get haed o't. She took me into the bed to make me promise
that, and syne she died."
"Does your father drina?"
"He hauds mair than ony other man in Thrums," Micah replied, almost
proudly.
"And he strikes you?" Babbie asked, compassionately.
"That's a lie," retorted the boy, fiercely. "Leastwise, he doesna
strike me except when he's mortal, and syne I can jouk him."
"What are you doing there?"
"I'm wishing. It's a wishing stane."
"You are wishing your father wouldna drink."
"No, I'm no," answered Micah. "There was a lang time he didna drink,
but the woman has sent him to it again. It's about her I'm wishing.
I'm wishing she was in hell."
"What woman is it?" asked Babbie, shuddering.
"I dinna ken," Micah said, "but she's an ill ane."
"Did you never see her at your father's house?"
"Na; if he could get grip o' her he would break her ower his knee. I
hearken to him saying that, when he's wild. He says she should be
burned for a witch."
"But if he hates her," asked Babbie, "how can she have sic power ower
him?"
"It's no him that she has haud o'," replied Micah, still looking away
from her.
"Wha is it then?"
"It's Mr. Dishart."
Babbie was struck as if by an arrow from the wood. It was so
unexpected that she gave a cry, and then for the first time Micah
looked at her.
"How should that send your father to the drink?" she asked, with an
effort.
"Because my father's michty fond o' him," answered Micah, staring
strangely at her; "and when the folk ken about the woman, they'll
stane the minister out o' Thrums."
The wood faded for a moment from the Egyptian's sight. When it came
back, the boy had slid off the Standing Stone and was stealing away.
"Why do you run frae me?" Babbie asked, pathetically.
"I'm fleid at you," he gasped, coming to a standstill at a safe
distance: "you're the woman!"
Babbie cowered before her little judge, and he drew nearer her
slowly.
"What makes you think that?" she said.
It was a curious time for Babbie's beauty to be paid its most princely
compliment.
[Illustration: "I'M WISHING SHE WAS IN HELL."]
"Because you're so bonny," Micah whispered across the dyke. Her tears
gave him courage. "You micht gang awa," he entreated. "If you kent
what a differ Mr. Dishart made in my father till you came, you
would maybe gang awa. When he's roaring fou I have to sleep in the
wood, and it's awfu' cauld. I'm doubting he'll kill me, woman, if you
dinna gang awa."
Poor Babbie put her hand to her heart, but the innocent lad continued
mercilessly--
"If ony shame comes to the minister, his auld mither'll die. How have
you sic an ill will at the minister?"
Babbie held up her hands like a supplicant.
"I'll gie you my rabbit," Micah said, "if you'll gang awa. I've juist
the ane." She shook her head, and, misunderstanding her, he cried,
with his knuckles in his eye, "I'll gie you them baith, though I'm
michty sweer to part wi' Spotty."
Then at last Babbie found her voice.
"Keep your rabbits, laddie," she said, "and greet no more. I'm gaen
awa."
"And you'll never come back no more a' your life?" pleaded Micah.
"Never no more a' my life," repeated Babbie.
"And ye'll leave the minister alane for ever and ever?"
"For ever and ever."
Micah rubbed his face dry, and said, "Will you let me stand on the
Standing Stane and watch you gaen awa for ever and ever?"
At that a sob broke from Babbie's heart, and looking at her doubtfully
Micah said--
"Maybe you're gey ill for what you've done?"
"Ay," Babbie answered, "I'm gey ill for what I've done."
A minute passed, and in her anguish she did not know that still she
was standing at the dyke. Micah's voice roused her:
"You said you would gang awa, and you're no gaen."
Then Babbie went away. The boy watched her across the hill. He climbed
the Standing Stone and gazed after her until she was but a coloured
ribbon among the broom. When she disappeared into Windyghoul he ran
home joyfully, and told his father what a good day's work he had done.
Rob struck him for a fool for taking a gypsy's word, and warned him
against speaking of the woman in Thrums.
[Illustration: "ROB STRUCK HIM FOR A FOOL FOR TAKING A GYPSY'S WORD."]
But though Dow believed that Gavin continued to meet the Egyptian
secretly, he was wrong. A sum of money for Nanny was sent to the
minister, but he could guess only from whom it came. In vain did he
search for Babbie. Some months passed and he gave up the search,
persuaded that he should see her no more. He went about his duties
with a drawn face that made many folk uneasy when it was stern, and
pained them when it tried to smile. But to Margaret, though the effort
was terrible, he was as he had ever been, and so no thought of a woman
crossed her loving breast.
Chapter Twenty-Five.