THE ANGER OF ALEXANDER-JONITA.
(_Comment and Addition by Hob MacClellan._)
I met my lass Jonita that night by the sheep-fold on the hill. It was
not yet sundown, but the spaces of the heavens had slowly grown large
and vague. The wind also had gradually died away to a breathing
stillness. The scent of the bog-myrtle was in our nostrils, as if the
plant itself leaned against our faces.
I had been waiting a long time ere I heard her come, lissomly springing
from tuft to tuft of grass and whistling that bonny dance tune, “The
Broom o’ the Cowdenknowes.” But even before I looked up I caught the
trouble in her tones. She whistled more shrilly than usual, and the
liquid fluting of her notes, mellow mostly like those of the blackbird,
had now an angry ring.
“What is the matter, Alexander-Jonita?” I cried, e’er I had so much as
set eyes on her.
The whistling ceased at my question. She came near, and leaning her
elbows on the dyke, she regarded me sternly.
“Then you know something about it?” she said, looking at me between the
eyes, her own narrowed till they glinted wintry and keen as the
gimlet-tool wherewith the joiner bores his holes.
“Has your father married the dairymaid, or Meg the pony cast a shoe?” I
asked of her, with a lightness I did not feel.
“Tut,” she cried, “’tis the matter of your brother, as well you know.”
“What of my brother?”
“Why, our silly Jean has made eyes at him, and let the salt water fall
on the breast of his black minister’s coat. And now the calf declares
that he loves her!”
I stood up in sharp surprise.
“He no more loves her than--than----”
“Than you love me,” said Alexander-Jonita; “I know--drive on!”
I did not notice her evil-conditioned jibe.
“Why, Jonita, he has all his life been in love with the Lady Mary--the
Bull of Earlstoun’s daughter.”
Alexander-Jonita nodded pensively.
“Even so I thought,” she said, “but, as I guess, Mary Gordon has sent
him about his business, and so he has been taken with our poor Jean’s
puling pussydom. God forgive me that I should say so much of a dying
woman.”
“A dying woman!” cried I, “there is nothing the matter with Jean.”
Alexander-Jonita shook her head.
“Jean is not long for this world,” she said, “I bid you remember. Saw
you ever the red leap through the white like yon, save when the life
burns fast to the ashes and the pulse beats ever more light and weak?”
“And how long hath this thing been afoot?”
“Since the day of your brother’s first preaching, when to save her shoon
Jean must needs go barefoot and wash her feet in the burn that slips
down by the kirkyard wall.”
“That was the day Quintin first spoke with her, when she gave him her
nooning piece of bread to stay his hunger.”
“Aye,” said Alexander-Jonita; “better had he gone hungry all
sermon-time than eaten of our Jean’s piece.”
“For shame, Alexander-Jonita!” I cried, “and a double shame to speak
thus of a lassie that is, by your own tale, dying on her feet--and your
sister forbye. I believe that ye are but jealous!”
She flamed up in sudden anger. If she had had a knife or a pistol in her
hand, I believe she would have killed me.
“Get out of our ewe-buchts before I twist your impudent neck, Hob
MacClellan!” she cried. “I care not a docken for any man alive--least of
all for you and your brother. Yet I thought, from what I heard of his
doings at the Presbytery, that he was more of a man than any of you. But
now I see that he is feckless and feeble like the rest.”
“Ah, Jonita, you snooded folk tame us all. From David the King to Hob
MacClellan there is no man so wise but a woman may tie him in knots
about her little finger.”
“I thought better of your brother!” she said more mildly, her anger
dying away as suddenly as it had risen, and I think she sighed.
“But not better of me!” I said.
She looked at me with contempt, but yet a contempt mightily pleasant.
“Good e’en to ye, Hob,” she cried. “I was not so far left to myself as
to think about you at all!”
And with that she took her light plaid over her arm with a saucyish
swirl, and whistling on her dogs, she swung down the hill, carrying, if
you please, her shoulders squared and her head in the air like a young
conceited birkie going to see his sweetheart.
And then, when the thing became public, what a din there was in the
parish of Balmaghie! Only those who know the position of a young
minister and the interest in his doings can imagine. It was somewhat
thus that the good wives wagged their tongues.
“To marry Jean Gemmell! Aye, juist poor Jean, the shilpit, pewlin’ brat
that never did a hand’s turn in her life, indoor or oot! Fegs, a bonny
wife she will mak’ to him. Apothecaries’ drugs and red claret wine she
maun hae to leeve on. A bonnie penny it will cost him, gin ever she wins
to the threshold o’ his manse!
“But she’s no there yet, kimmer! Na--certes no! I mind o’ her mither
weel. Jean was her name, too, juist sich anither ‘_cloyt_’--a feckless,
white-faced bury-me-decent, withoot as muckle spirit as wad gar her turn
a sow oot o’ the kail-yard. And a’ the kin o’ her were like her--no yin
to better anither. There was her uncle Jacob Ahanny a’ the Risk; he
keepit in wi’ the Government in the auld Persecution, and when Clavers
cam’ to the door and asked him what religion he was o’, he said that the
estate had changed hands lately, and that he hadna had time to speer at
the new laird. And at that Clavers laughed and laughed, and it wasna
often that Jockie Graham did the like. Fegs no, kimmers! But he clappit
Jacob on the shooder. ‘Puir craitur,’ quo’ he; ‘ye are no the stuff that
rebels are made o’. Na, there’s nocht o’ Richie Cameron aboot you.’”
“Aye, faith, do ye tell me, and Jean is to mairry the minister, and him
sae bauld and croose before the Presbytery. What deil’s cantrip can hae
ta’en him?”
“Hoot, Mary McKeand, I wonder to hear ye. Do ye no ken that the baulder
and greater a man the easier a woman can get round him?”
“Aweel, even sae I hae heard. I wish oor Jock was a great man, then; I
could maybe, keep him awa’ frae the change-hoose in the clachan. But
the minister, he had far better hae ta’en yon wild sister----”
“Her? I’se warrant she wadna look at him. She doesna even gang to
Balmaghie Kirk to hear him preach.”
“Mary McKeand, hae ye come to your age withoot kennin, that the woman
that wad refuse the minister o’ a parish when he speers her, hasna been
born?”
“Aweel, maybe no! But kimmer harken to me, there’s mony an egg laid in
the nest that never leeved to craw in the morn. Him and her are no
married yet. Hoot na, woman!”
* * * * *
And so without further eavesdropping I took my way out of the clachan of
Pluckamin, and left the good wives to arrange my brother’s future. I had
not yet spoken to him on the subject, but I resolved to do so that very
night.
It was already well upon the grey selvage of the dark when I strode up
the manse-loaning, intent to have the matter out with my brother
forthwith. It was not often that I took it on me to question him; for
after all I was but a landward lout by comparison with him. I understood
little of the high aims and purposes that inspired him, being at best
but a plain country lad with my wits a little sharpened by the
_giff-gaff_ of the pedlar’s trade. But when it came to the push I think
that Quintin had some respect for my opinion--all the more that I so
seldom troubled him with it.
I found my brother in the little gable-room where he studied, with the
window open that he might hear the sough of the soft-flowing river
beneath, and perhaps also that the drowsy hum of the bees and the
sweet-sour smell of the hives might drift in to him upon the balmy air
of night.
The minister had a great black-lettered book propped up before him,
which from its upright thick and thin letters (like pea-sticks dibbled
in the ground) I knew to be Hebrew. But I do not think he read in it,
nor gathered much lear for his Sabbath’s sermon.
He looked up as I came in.
“Quintin,” said I, directly, lest by waiting I should lose courage, “are
you to marry Jean Gemmell?”
He kept his eyes straight upon me, as indeed he did ever with whomsoever
he spake.
“Aye, Hob,” he said, quietly; “have ye any word to say against that?”
“I do not know that I have,” I answered, “but what will Mary Gordon
say?”
I could see him wince like one that is touched on an unhealed wound.
But he recovered himself at once, and said calmly, “She will say
nothing, feel nothing, care nothing.”
“I am none so sure of that,” said I, looking as straightly at him as
ever he did at me.
He started up, one hand on the table, his long hair thrown back with a
certain jerk he had when he was touched, which made him look like a
roused lion that stands at bay. “By what right do ye speak thus, Hob
MacClellan?”
“By the right of that which I know,” said I; “but a man who will pull up
the seed which he has just planted, and cast it away because he finds
not ripened ears, deserves to starve all his life on sprouted and musty
corn.”
“Riddle me no riddles,” said my brother, knocking on the table with his
palm till the great Hebrew book slid from its prop and fell heavily to
the floor; “this is too terrible a venture. Speak plainly and tell me
all you mean.”
“Well,” said I, “the matter is not all mine to tell. But you are well
aware that Hob MacClellan can hold his peace, and is no gossip-monger.
I tell you that when you went from Earlstoun the last time the Lady Mary
went to the battlement tower to watch you go, and came down with her
kerchief wringing with her tears.”
“It is a thing impossible, mad, incredible!” said he, putting his elbow
on the table and his hand to his eyes as if he had been looking into the
glare of an overpowering sun. Yet there was hardly enough light in the
little room for us to see one another by. After a long silence Quintin
turned to me and said, “Tell me how ye came to ken this.”
“That,” said I, bluntly, “is not a matter that can concern you. But know
it I do, or I should not have troubled you with the matter.”
At this he gave a wild kind of throat cry that I never heard before. It
was the driven, throttled cry of a man’s agony, once heard, never
forgotten. Would that Mary Gordon had hearkened to it! It is the one
thing no woman can stand. It either melts or terrifies her. But with
another man it is different.
“Ah, you _have_ troubled me--you have troubled me sore!” he cried. And
with no more than that he left me abruptly and went out into the night.
I looked through the window and saw him marching up and down by the
kirk, on a strip of greensward for which he had ever a liking. It was
pitiful to watch him. He walked fast like one that would have run away
from melancholy thoughts, turning ever when he came opposite the low
tomb-stone of the two martyr Hallidays. He was bareheaded, and I feared
the chilling night dews. So I lifted down his minister’s hat from the
deer’s horn by the hallan door and took it out to him.
At first he did not see me, being enwrapped in his own meditations, and
it was only when a couple of blackbirds flew scolding out of the lilac
bushes that he heard my foot and turned.
“Man Hob,” he said, speaking just the plain country speech he used to do
at Ardarroch, before ever he went to the college of Edinburgh, “it’s an
awfu’ thing that a man should care mair for the guid word of a lass than
about the grace o’ God and the Covenanted Kirk of Scotland!”