The Project Gutenberg EBook of A Night of the Nets, by Amelia E. Barr This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org Title: A Night of the Nets Author: Amelia E. Barr Release Date: November, 2005 [EBook #9374] First Posted: September 26, 2003 Last Updated: November 21, 2018 Language: English Character set encoding: UTF-8 *** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK A NIGHT OF THE NETS *** Etext produced by Juliet Sutherland, Tonya Allen and PG Distributed Proofreaders, from images generously made available by the Canadian Institute for Historical Microreproductions. HTML file produced by David Widger
Grey sky, brown waters: as a bird that flies My heart flits forth to these; Back to the winter rose of Northern skies, Back to the Northern seas.
“Toot! toot! quoth the grey-headed father, She’s less of a bride than a bairn; She’s ta’en like a colt from the heather, With sense and discretion to learn.
“Half-husband I trow, and half daddy, As humour inconstantly leans; The man must be patient and steady, That weds with a lass in her teens.”She had hardly finished the verse, when she heard a step blending with its echoes. Her ears rung inward; her eyes dilated with an unhappy expectancy; she put down her iron with a sudden faint feeling, and turned her face to the door. Andrew entered the cottage. He looked at her despairingly, and sinking into his chair, he covered his wretched face with his hands. It was not the same man who had left her a few hours before. A change, like that which a hot iron would make upon a green leaf, had been made in her handsome, hopeful, happy brother. She could not avoid an exclamation that was a cry of terror; and she went to him and kissed him, and murmured, she knew not what words of pity and love. Under their influence, the flood gates of sorrow were unloosed, he began to weep, to sob, to shake and tremble, like a reed in a tempest. Christina saw that his soul was tossed from top to bottom, and in the madness of the storm, she knew it was folly to ask “why?” But she went to the door, closed it, slipped forward the bolt, and then came back to his side, waiting there patiently until the first paroxysm of his grief was over. Then she said softly:— “Andrew! My brother Andrew! What sorrow has come to you? Tell Christina.” “Sophy is dead—dead and gone for me. Oh Sophy, Sophy, Sophy!” “Andrew, tell me a straight tale. You are not a woman to let any sorrow get the mastery over you.” “Sophy has gone from me. She has played me false—and after all these years, deceived and left me.” “Then there is still the Faithful One. His love is from everlasting, to everlasting. He changeth not.” “Ay; I know,” he said drearily. But he straightened himself and unfastened the button at his throat, and stood up on his feet, planting them far apart, as if he felt the earth like the reeling deck of a ship. And Christina opened the little window, and drew his chair near it, and let the fresh breeze blow upon him; and her heart throbbed hotly with anger and pity. “Sit down in the sea wind, Andrew,” she said. “There’s strength and a breath of comfort in it; and try and give your trouble words. Did you see Sophy?” “Ay; I saw her.” “At her aunt’s house?” “No. I met her on the road. She was in a dog-cart; and the master of Braelands was driving her. I saw her, ere she saw me; and she was looking in his face as she never looked in my face. She loves him, Christina, as she never loved me.” “Did you speak to her?” “I was that foolish, and left to myself. She was going to pass me, without a look or a word; but I could not thole the scorn and pain of it, and I called out to her, ‘Sophy!Sophy!’” “And she did not answer you?” “She cruddled closer to Braelands. And then he lifted the whip to hurry the horse; and before I knew what I was doing, I had the beast by the head—and the lash of the whip—struck me clean across the cheek bone.” “Oh Andrew! Andrew!” And she bent forward and looked at the outraged cheek, and murmuring, “I see the mark of it! I see the mark of it!” she kissed the long, white welt, and wetted it with her indignant tears. Andrew sat passive under her sympathy until she asked, “Did Braelands say anything when he struck you? Had he no word of excuse?” “He said: ‘It is your own fault, fisherman. The lash was meant for the horse, and not for you.’” “Well?” “And I was in a passion; and I shouted some words I should not have said—words I never said in my life before. I didn’t think the like of them were in my heart.” “I don’t blame you, Andrew.” “I blame myself though. Then I bid Sophy get out of the cart and come to me;—and—” “Yes, dear?” “And she never moved or spoke; she just covered her face with her hands, and gave a little scream;—for no doubt I had frighted her—and Braelands, he got into the de’il’s own rage then, and dared me to call the lady ‘Sophy’ again; ‘for,’ said he, ‘she will be my wife before many days’; and with that, he struck the horse savagely again and again, and the poor beast broke from my hand, and bounded for’ard; and I fell on my back, and the wheels of the cart grazed the soles of my shoon as they passed me.” “And then?” “I don’t know how long I lay there.” “And they went on and left you lying in the highway?” “They went on.” “The wicked lass! Oh the wicked, heartless lass!” “You are not able to judge her, Christina.” “But you can judge Braelands. Get a warrant for the scoundrel the morn. He is without the law.” “Then I would make Sophy the common talk, far and near. How could I wrong Sophy to right myself?” “But the whip lash! the whip lash! Andrew. You cannot thole the like of that!” “There was One tholed for me the lash and the buffet, and answer’d never a word. I can thole the lash for Sophy’s sake. A poor love I would have for Sophy, if I put my own pride before her good name. If I get help ‘from beyond,’ I can thole the lash, Christina.” He was white through all the tan of wind, and sea, and sun; and the sweat of his suffering stood in great beads on his pallid face and brow. Christina lifted a towel, which she had just ironed, and wiped it away; and he said feebly;— “Thank you, dear lass! I will go to my bed a wee.” So Christina opened the door of his room and he tottered in, swaying like a drunken man, and threw himself upon his bed. Five minutes afterward she stepped softly to his side. He was sunk in deep sleep, fathoms below the tide of grief whose waves and billows had gone over him. “Thanks be to the Merciful!” she whispered. “When the sorrow is too great, then He giveth His beloved sleep.”
“But peace they have that none may gain that live; And rest about them that no love can give And over them, while death and life shall be, The light and sound and darkness of the Sea.”It was a verse that meant more to Andrew than he would have been able to explain. He only knew that it led him somehow through those dim, obscure pathways of spiritual life, on which the light of common day does not shine. And as he stood there, his mother and sister felt vaguely that they knew what “moral beauty” meant, and were the better for the knowledge. He did not try to forget Sophy; he only placed her beyond his own horizon; and whereas he had once thought of her with personal hope and desire, he now remembered her only with a prayer for her happiness, or if by chance his tongue spoke her name, he added a blessing with it. Never did he make a complaint of her desertion, but he wept inwardly; and it was easy to see that he spent many of those hours that make the heart grey, though they leave the hair untouched. And it was at this time he contracted the habit of frequently looking up, finding in the very act that sense of strength and help and adoration which is inseparable to it. And thus, day by day, he overcame the aching sorrow of his heart, for no man is ever crushed from without; if he is abased to despair, his ruin has come from within. About three weeks after Sophy’s marriage, Christina was standing one evening at the gloaming, looking over the immense, cheerless waste of waters. Mists, vague and troublous as the background of dreams, were on the horizon, and there Was a feeling of melancholy in the air. But she liked the damp, fresh wind, with its taste of brine, and she drew her plaid round her, and breathed it with a sense of enjoyment. Very soon Andrew came up the cliff, and he stood at her side, and they spoke of Jamie and wondered at his whereabouts, and after a little pause, Andrew added:— “Christina, I got a very important letter to-day, and I am going to-morrow about the business I told you of. I want to start early in the morning, so put up what I need in my little bag. And I wish you to say nothing to mother until all things are settled.” “She will maybe ask me the question, Andrew.” “I told her I was going about a new boat, and she took me at my word without this or that to it. She is a blithe creature, one of the Lord’s most contented bairns. I wish we were both more like her.” “I wish we were, Andrew. If we could just do as mother does! for she leaves yesterday where it fell, and trusts to-morrow with God, and so catches every blink of happiness that passes by her.” “God forever bless her! There is no mother like the mother that bore us; we must aye remember that, Christina. But it is a dour, storm-like sky yon,” he continued, pointing eastward. “We shall have a snoring breeze before midnight.” Then Christina thought of her lover again, and as they turned in to the fireside, she began to tell her brother her hopes and fears about Jamie, and to read him portions of a letter received that day from America. While Andrew’s trouble had been fresh and heavy on him, Christina had refrained herself from all speech about her lover; she felt instinctively that it would not be welcome and perhaps hardly kind. But this night it fell out naturally, and Andrew listened kindly and made his sister very happy by his interest in all that related to Jamie’s future. Then he ate some bread and cheese with the women, and after the exercise went to his room, for he had many things to prepare for his journey on the following day. Janet continued the conversation. It related to her daughter’s marriage and settlement in Glasgow, and of this subject she never wearied. The storm Andrew had foreseen was by this time raging round the cottage, the Clustering waves making strange noises on the sands and falling on the rocks with a keen, lashing sound It affected them gradually; their hearts became troubled, and they spoke low and with sad inflections, for both were thinking of the sailor-men and fishermen peopling the lonely waters. “I wouldn’t put out to sea this night,” said Janet. “No, not for a capful of sovereigns.” “Yet there will be plenty of boats, hammering through the big waves all night long, till the dawn shows in the east; and it is very like that Jamie is now on the Atlantic—a stormy place, God knows!” “A good passage, if it so pleases God!” said Janet, lifting her eyes to heaven, and Christina looked kindly at her mother for the wish. But talking was fast becoming difficult, for the wind had suddenly veered more northerly, and, sleet-laden, it howled and shrieked down the wide chimney. In one of the pauses forced on them by this blatant intruder, they were startled by a human cry, loud and piercing, and quite distinct from the turbulent roar of winds and waves. Both women were on their feet on the instant Both had received the same swift, positive impression, that it came from Andrew’s room, and they were at his door in a moment. It was locked. They called him, and he made no answer. Again and again, with ever increasing terror, they entreated him to open to them; for the door was solid and heavy, and the lock large and strong, and no power they possessed could avail to force an entrance. He heeded none of, their passionate prayers until Janet began to cry bitterly. Then he turned the key and they entered. Andrew looked at them with anger; his countenance was pale and distraught, and a quiet fury burned in his eyes. He could not speak, and the women regarded him with fear and wonder. Presently he managed to articulate with a thick difficulty:— “My money! My money! It is all gone!” “Gone!” shrieked Christina, “that is just impossible.” “It is all gone!” Then he gripped her cruelly by the shoulder, and asked in a fierce whisper: “What did you do with it?” “Me? Andrew!” “Ay, you! You wicked lass, you!” “I never put finger on it” “Christina! Christina! To think that I trusted you for this! Go out of my sight, will you! I’m not able to bear the face of you!” “Andrew! Andrew! Surely, you are not calling me a ‘thief’?” “Who, then?” he cried, with gathering rage, “unless it be Jamie Logan?” “Don’t be so wicked as to wrong innocent folk such a way; Jamie never saw, never heard tell of your money. The unborn babe is not more guiltless than Jamie Logan.” “How do you know that? How do Iknow that? The very night I told you of the money—that very night I showed you where I kept it—that night Jamie ought to have been in the boats, and he was not in them. What do you make of that?” “Nothing. He is as innocent as I am.” “And he was drinking with some strange man at the public. What were they up to? Tell me that. And then he comes whistling up the road, and says he missed his boat. A made up story! and after it he goes off to America! Oh. woman! woman! If you can’t put facts together. I can.” “Jamie never touched a bawbee of your money. I’ll ware my life on that. For I never let on to any mortal creature that you had a penny of silent money. God Almighty knows I am speaking the truth.” “You won’t dare to bring God Almighty’s name into such a black business. Are you not feared to take it into your mouth?” Then Janet laid her hand heavily on his shoulder. He had sat down on his bed, and was leaning heavily against one of the posts, and the very fashion of his countenance was changed; his hair stood upright, and he continually smote his large, nervous hands together. “Andrew,” said his mother, angrily, “you are just giving yourself up to Satan. Your passion is beyond seeing, or hearing tell of. And think shame of yourself for calling your sister a ‘thief and a ‘liar’ and what not. I wonder what’s come over you! Step ben the house, and talk reasonable to us.” “Leave me to myself! Leave me to myself! I tell you both to go away. Will you go? both of you?” “I’m your mother, Andrew.” “Then for God’s sake have pity on me, and leave me alone with my sorrow! Go! Go! I’m not a responsible creature just now—” and his passion was so stern and terrific that neither of them dared to face any increase of it. So they left him alone and went back to the sputtering fireside—for the rain was now beating down the chimney—and in awe-struck whispers Christina told her mother of the money which Andrew had hoarded through long laborious years, and of the plans which the loss of it would break to pieces. “There would be a thousand pounds, or near by it. Mother, I’m thinking,” said Christina. “You know well how scrimping with himself he has been. Good fishing or bad fishing, he never had a shilling to spend on any one. He bought nothing other boys bought; when he was a laddie, and when he grew to the boats, you may mind that he put all he made away somewhere. And he made a deal more than folks thought. He had a bit venture here, and a bit there, and they must have prospered finely.” “Not they!” said Janet angrily. “What good has come of them? What good could come of money, hid away from everybody but himself? Why didn’t he tell his mother? If her thoughts had been round about his siller, it would not have gone an ill road. A man who hides away his money is just a miracle of stupidity, for the devil knows where it is if no decent human soul does.” It was a mighty sorrow to bear, even for the two women, and Janet wept like a child over the hopes blasted before she knew of them. “He should have told us both long since,” she sobbed. “I would have been praying for the bonnie ship building for him, every plank would have been laid with a blessing. And as I sat quiet in my house, I would have been thinking of my son Captain Binnie, and many a day would have been a bright day, that has been but a middling one. So selfish as the lad has been!” “Maybe it wasn’t pure selfishness, Mother. He was saving for a good end.” “It was pure selfishness! He was that way even about Sophy. Nobody but himself must have word or look from her, and the lassie just wearied of him. Why wouldn’t she? He put himself and her in a circle, and then made a wilderness all round about it. And Sophy wanted company, for when a girl says ‘a man is all the world to her,’ she doesn’t mean that nobody else is to come into her world. She would be a wicked lass if she did.” “Well, Mother, he lost her, and he bore his loss like a man.” “Ay, men often bear the loss of love easier than the loss of money. I’ve seen far more fuss made over the loss of a set of fishing-nets, than over the brave fellows that handled them. And to think of our Andrew hiding away his gold all these years for his own hoping and pleasuring! A perfectly selfish pleasuring! The gold might well take wings to itself and fly away. He should have clipped the wings of it with giving a piece to the kirk now and then, and a piece to his mother and sister at odd times, and the flying wouldn’t have been so easy. Now he has lost the whole, and he well deserves it I’m thinking his Maker is dourly angry with him for such ways, and I am angry myself.” “Ah well, Mother, there is no use in our anger; the lad is suffering enough, and for the rest we must just leave him to the general mercy of God.” “‘General mercy of God.’ Don’t let me hear you use the like of such words, Christina. The minister would tell you it is a very loose expression and a very dangerous doctrine. He was reproving Elder McInnes for them very words, and any good minister will be keeping his thumb on such a wide outgate. Andrew knows well that he has to have the particular and elected grace of God to keep him where he ought to be. This hid-away money has given him a sore tumble, and I will tell him so very plainly.” “Don’t trouble him, Mother. He will not bear words on it, even from you.” “He will have to bear them. I am not feared for Andrew Binnie, and he shall not be left in ignorance of his sin. Whether he knows it or not, he has done a deed that would make a very poor kind of a Christian ashamed to look the devil in the face; and I be to let him know it.” But in the morning Andrew looked so utterly wretched, that Janet could only pity him. “I’ll not be the one to break the bruised reed,” she said to Christina, for the miserable man sat silent with dropped eyes the whole day long, eating nothing, seeing nothing, and apparently lost to all interests outside his own bewildering, utterly hopeless speculations. It was not until another letter came about the ship he was to command, that he roused himself sufficiently to write and cancel the whole transaction. He could not keep his promises financially, and though he was urged to make some other offer, he would have nothing from The Fleet on any humbler basis than his first proposition. With a foolish pride, born of his great disappointment and anger, he turned his back on his broken hopes, and went sullen and sorrowful back to his fishing-boat. He had never been even in his family a very social man. Jokes and songs and daffing of all kinds were alien to his nature. Yet his grave and pleasant smile had been a familiar thing, and gentle words had always hitherto come readily to his lips. But after his ruinous loss, he seldom spoke unless it was to his mother. Christina he noticed not, either by word or look, and the poor girl was broken-hearted under this silent accusation. For she felt that Andrew doubted both her and Jamie, and though she was indignant at the suspicion, it eat its way into her heart and tortured her. For put the thought away as she would, the fact of Jamie’s dereliction that unfortunate night would return and return, and always with a more suspicious aspect. Who was the man he was drinking with? Nobody in the village but Jamie, knew him. He had come and gone in a night. It was possible that, having missed the boat, Jamie had brought his friend up the cliff to call on her; that, seeing the light in Andrew’s room, they had looked in at the window, and so might have seen Andrew and herself standing over the money, and then watched until it was returned to its hiding-place. Jamie had come whistling in a very pronounced manner up to the house—that might have been because he had been drinking, and then again, it might not—and then there was his quarrel with Andrew! Was that a planned affair, in order to give the other man time to carry off the box? She could not remember whether the curtain had been drawn across the window or not; and when she dared to name this doubt to Andrew, he only answered— “What for are you asking after spilled milk?” The whole circumstance was so mysterious that it stupified her. And yet she felt that it contained all the elements of sorrow and separation between Jamie and herself. However, she kept assuring her heart that Jamie would be in Glasgow the following week; and she wrote a letter to meet him, expressing a strong desire that he would “be sure to come to Pittendurie, as there was most important business.” But she did not like to tell him what the business was, and Jamie did not answer the request. In fact, the lad could not, without resigning his position entirely. The ship had been delayed thirty hours by storms, and there was nearly double tides of work for every man on her in order that she might be able to keep her next sailing day. Jamie was therefore so certain that a request to go on shore about his own concerns would be denied, that he did not even ask the favour. But he wrote to Christina, and explained to her in the most loving manner the impossibility of his leaving his duties. He said “that for her sake, as well as his own, he was obligated to remain at his post,” and he assured her that this obligation was “a reasonable one.” Christina believed him fully, and was satisfied, her mother only smiled with shut lips and remained silent; but Andrew spoke with a bitterness it was hard to forgive; still harder was it to escape from the wretched inferences his words implied. “No wonder he keeps away from Pittendurie!” he said with a scornful laugh. “He’ll come here no more—unless he is made to come, and if it was not for mother’s sake, and for your good name, Christina, I would send the constables to the ship to bring him here this very day.” And Christina could make no answer, save that of passionate weeping. For it shocked her to see, that her mother did not stand up for Jamie, but went silently about her house duties, with a face as inscrutable as the figure-head of Andrew’s boat. Thus backward, every way flew the wheels of life in the Binnie cottage. Andrew took a grim pleasure in accepting his poverty before his mother and sister. In the home he made them feel that everything but the barest necessities were impossible wants. His newspaper was resigned, his pipe also, after a little struggle He took his tea without sugar, he put the butter and marmalade aside, as if they were sinful luxuries, and in fact reduced his life to the most essential and primitive conditions it was possible to live it on. And as Janet and Christina were not the bread winners, and did not know the exact state of the Binnie finances, they felt obliged to follow Andrew’s example. Of course, all Christina’s little extravagances of wedding preparations were peremptorily stopped. There would be no silk wedding gown now. It began to look, as if there would be no wedding at all. For Andrew’s continual suspicions, spoken and unspoken, insensibly affected her, and that in spite of her angry denials of them. She fought against their influence, but often in vain, for Jamie did not come to Pittendurie either after the second or the third voyage. He was not to blame; it was the winter season, and delays were constant, and there were other circumstances—with which he had nothing whatever to do—that still put him in such a position that to ask for leave of absence meant asking for his dismissal. And then there would be no prospect at all of his marriage with Christina. But the fisher folk, who had their time very much at their own command and who were nursed in a sense of every individual’s independence, did not realise Jamie’s dilemma. It could not be made intelligent to them, and they began to wonder, and to ask embarrassing questions. Very soon there was a shake of the head and a sigh of pity whenever “poor Christina Binnie” was mentioned. So four wretched months went by, and then one moonlight night in February, Christina heard the quick footstep and the joyous whistle she knew so well. She stood up trembling with pleasure; and as Jamie flung wide the door, she flew to his arms with an irrepressible cry. For some minutes he saw nothing and cared for nothing but the girl clasped to his breast; but as she began to sob, he looked at Janet—who had purposely gone to the china rack that she might have her back to him—and then at Andrew who stood white and stern, with both hands in his pockets, regarding him. The young man was confounded by this reception, he released himself from Christina’s embrace, and stepping forward, asked anxiously “What ever is the matter with you, Andrew? You aren’t like yourself at all. Why, you are ill, man! Oh, but I’m vexed to see you so changed.” “Where is my money, James Logan? Where is the gold and the bank-notes you took from me?—the savings of all my lifetime.” “Your money, Andrew? Your gold and bank-notes? Metake your money! Why, man, you are either mad or joking—and I’m not liking such jokes either.” Then he turned to Christina and asked, “What does he mean, my dearie?” “I mean this,” cried Andrew with gathering passion, “I mean that I had nearly a thousand pounds taken out of my room yon night that you should have gone to the boats—and that you did not go.” “Do you intend to say that I took your thousand pounds? Mind your words, Andrew Binnie!” and as he spoke, he put Christina behind him and stood squarely before Andrew. And his face was a flame of passion. “I am most sure you took it. Prove to me that you did not.” Before the words were finished, they were answered with a blow, the blow was promptly returned; and then the two men closed in a deadly struggle. Christina was white and sick with terror, but withal glad that Andrew had found himself so promptly answered. Janet turned sharply at the first blow, and threw herself between the men. All the old prowess of the fish-wife was roused in her. “How dare you?” she cried in a temper quite equal to their own. “I’ll have no cursing and fighting in my house,” and with a twist of her hand in her son’s collar, she threw him back in his chair. Then she turned to Jamie and cried angrily— “Jamie Logan, my bonnie lad, if you have got nothing to say for yourself, you’ll do well to take your way down the cliff.” “I have been called a ‘thief’ in this house,” he answered; and wounded feeling and a bitter sense of wrong made his voice tremble. “I came here to kiss my bride; and I know nothing at all of what Andrew means. I will swear it. Give me the Bible.” “Let my Bible alone,” shouted Andrew. “I’ll have no man swear to a lie on my Bible. Get out of my house, James Logan, and be thankful that I don’t call the officers to take care of you.” “There is a mad man inside of you, Andrew Binnie, or a devil of some kind, and you are not fit to be in the same house with good women. Come with me, Christina. I’ll marry you tonight at the Largo minister’s house. Come my dear lassie. Never mind aught you have, but your plaidie.” Christina rose and put out her hand. Andrew leaped to his feet and strode between them. “I will strike you to the ground, if you dare to touch my sister again,” he shouted, and if Janet had not taken both his hands in her own strong grip, Andrew would have kept his threat. Then Janet’s anger turned most unreasonably upon Christina— “Go ben the house,” she screamed. “Go ben the house, you worrying, whimpering lassie. You will be having the whole village fighting about you the next thing.” “I am going with Jamie, Mother.” “I will take very good care, you do not go with Jamie. There is not a soul, but Jamie Logan, will leave this house tonight. I would just like to see any other man or woman try it,” and she looked defiantly both at Andrew and Christina. “I ran the risk of losing my berth to come here,” said Jamie. “More fool, I. I have been called ‘thief’ and ‘loon’ for doing it. I came for your sake, Christina, and now you must go with me for my sake. Come away, my dearie, and there is none that shall part us more.” Again Christina rose, and again her mother interfered. “You will go out of this house alone, Jamie Logan. I don’t know whether you are right or wrong. I know nothing about that weary siller. But I do know there has been nothing but trouble to my boy since he saved you from the sea. I am not saying it is your fault; but the sea has been against him ever since, and now you will go away, and you will stay away.” “Christina, am I to go?” “Go, Jamie, but I will come to you, and there is none that shall keep me from you.” Then Jamie went, and far down on the sands Christina heard him call, “Good-bye, Christina! Good-bye!” And she would have answered him, but Janet had locked the door, and the key was in her pocket. Then for hours the domestic storm raged, Andrew growing more and more positive and passionate, until even Janet was alarmed, and with tears and coaxing persuaded him to go to bed. Still in this hurly burly of temper, Christina kept her purpose intact. She was determined to go to Glasgow as soon as she could get outside. If she was in time for a marriage with Jamie, she would be his wife at once. If Jamie had gone, then she would hire herself out until the return of his ship. This was the purpose she intended to carry out in the morning, but before the dawn her mother awakened her out of a deep sleep. She was in a sweat of terror. “Run up the cliff for Thomas Roy,” she cried, “and then send Sandy for the doctor.” “What is the matter, Mother.” “Your brother Andrew is raving, and clean beyond himself, and I’m feared for him, and for us all. Quick Christina! There is not a moment to lose!”
There’s nane exempt frae worldly cares
And few frae some domestic jars
Whyles all are in, whyles all are out,
And grief and joy come turn about.
And it’s the turn now for the young people to be happy. Cold and
bleak it is here on the Fife coast, but they are among roses and sunshine
and so God bless them, I say, and keep us and every one from cutting short
their turn of happiness. You had your bride time, Madame, and when Angus
McAllister first took me to his cottage in Strathmoyer, I thought I was on
a visit to Paradise.”
“Give me my glass of negus, and then I will go to bed. Everybody has
taken to preaching and advising lately, and that is not the kind of
fore-talk that spares after-talk—not it, Allister.”
She sunk then into unapproachable silence, and Allister knew that she
needed not try to move her further that night in any direction. Her eyes
were fixed upon the red coals, but she was really thinking of the roses
and sunshine of the South, and picturing to herself her son and his bride,
wandering happily amid the warmth and beauty.
In reality, they were crossing the Braelands’s moor at that very
moment The rain was beating against the closed windows of their coach, and
the horses floundering heavily along the boggy road. Sophy’s head
rested on her husband’s shoulder, but they were not talking, nor had
they spoken for some time. Both indeed were tired and depressed, and
Archie at least was unpleasantly conscious of the wonderment their
unexpected return would cause.
The end of April or the beginning of May had been the time appointed, and
yet here they were, at the threshold of their home, in the middle of the
winter. Sophy’s frail health had been Archie’s excuse for a
season in the South with her; and she was coming back to Scotland when the
weather was at its very bleakest and coldest. One excuse after another
formed itself in Archie’s mind, only to be peremptorily dismissed.
“It is no one’s business but our own,” he kept assuring
himself, “and I will give neither reason nor apology but my wife’s
desire.” and yet he knew that reasons and apologies would be asked,
and he was fretting inwardly at their necessity, and wondering vaguely if
women ever did know what they really wanted.
For to go to France and Germany and Italy, had seemed to Sophy the very
essence of every joy in life. Before her marriage, she had sat by Archie’s
side hour after hour, listening to his descriptions of foreign lands, and
dreaming of all the delights that were to meet her in them. She had
started on this bridal trip with all her senses set to an unnatural key of
expectation, and she had, of course, suffered continual disappointments
and disillusions. The small frets and sicknesses of travel, the loneliness
of being in places where she could not speak even to her servants, or go
shopping without an attendant, the continual presence of what was strange—of
what wounded her prejudices and very often her conscience,—and the
constant absence of all that was familiar and approved, were in themselves
no slight cause of unhappiness.
Yet it had been a very gradual disillusion, and one mitigated by many
experiences that had fully justified even Sophy’s extravagant
anticipations. The trouble, in the main, was one common to a great
majority of travellers for pleasure—a mind totally unprepared for
the experience.
She grew weary of great cities which had no individual character or
history in her mind; weary of fine hotels in which she was of no special
importance; weary of art which had no meaning for her. Her child-like
enthusiasms, which at first both delighted and embarrassed her husband,
faded gradually away; the present not only lost its charm, but she began
to look backward to the homely airs and scenes of Fife, and to suffer from
a nostalgia that grew worse continually.
However, Archie bore her unreasonable depression with great consideration.
She was but a frail child after all, and she was in a condition of health
demanding the most affectionate patience and tenderness he could give her.
Besides, it was no great sin in his eyes to be sick with longing for dear
old Scotland. He loved his native land; and his little mountain blue-bell,
trembling in every breeze, and drooping in every hour of heat and
sunshine, appealed to the very best instincts of his nature. And when
Sophy began to voice her longing, to cry a little in his arms, and to say
she was wearying for a sight of the great grey sea round her Fife home,
Archie vowed he was homesick as a man could be, and asked, “why they
should stop away from their own dear land any longer?”
“People will wonder and talk so, Archie They will say unkind things—they
will maybe say we are not happy together.”
“Let them talk. What care we? And we are happy together. Do you want
to go back to Scotland tomorrow? today—this very hour?”
“Aye. I do, Archie. And I am that weak and poorly, if I don’t
go soon, maybe I will have to wait a long time, and then you know.”
“Yes, I know. And that would never, never do. Braelands of Fife
cannot run the risk of having his heir born in a foreign country. Why, it
would be thrown up to the child, lad and man, as long as he lived! So call
your maid, my bonnie Sophy, and set her to packing all your braws and
pretty things, and we will turn our faces to Scotland’s hills and
braes tomorrow morning.”
Thus it happened that on that bleak night in February, Archie Braelands
and his wife came suddenly to their home amid the stormy winds and rains
of a stormy night. Madame heard the wheels of their carriage as she sat
sipping her negus, and thinking over her conversation with Allister and
her alert soul instantly divined who the late comers were.
“Give me my silk morning gown and my brocade petticoat, Allister,”
she cried, as she rose up hastily and set down her glass. “Mr.
Archibald has come home; his carriage is at the door—haste ye,
woman!”
“Will you be heeding your silks to-night, Madame?”
“Get them at once. Quick! Do you think I will meet the bride in a
flannel dressing-gown? No, no! I am not going to lose ground the first
hour.”
With nervous haste the richer garments were donned, and just as the final
gold brooch was clasped, Archie knocked at his mother’s door. She
opened to him with her own hands, and took him to her heart with an
effusive affection she rarely permitted herself to exhibit.
“I am so glad that you are dressed, Mother,” he said. “Sophy
must not miss your welcome, and the poor little woman is just weary to
death.” Then he whispered some words to her, which brought a flush
of pride and joy to his own face, but no such answering response to Madame’s.
“Indeed,” she replied, “I am sorry she is so tired. It
seems to me, that the women of this generation are but weak creatures.”
Then she took her son’s arm, and went down to the parlour, where
servants were re-kindling the fire, and setting a table with refreshments
for the unexpected guests. Sophy was resting on a sofa drawn towards the
hearth. Archie had thrown his travelling cloak of black fox over her, and
her white, flower-like face, surrounded by the black fur, had a singularly
pathetic beauty. She opened her large blue eyes as Madame approached and
looked at her with wistful entreaty; and Madame, in spite of all her
pre-arrangements of conduct, was unable at that hour not to answer the
appeal for affection she saw in them. She stooped and kissed the childlike
little woman, and Archie watched this token of reconciliation and promise
with eyes wet with happiness.
When supper was served, Madame took her usual place at the head of the
table, and Archie noticed the circumstance, though it did not seem a
proper time to make any remark about it. For Sophy was not able to eat,
and did not rise from her couch; and Madame seemed to fall so properly
into her character of hostess, that it would have been churlish to have
made the slightest dissent. Yet it was a false kindness to both; for in
the morning Madame took the same position, and Archie felt less able than
on the previous night to make any opposition, though he had told himself
continually on his homeward journey that he would not suffer Sophy to be
imposed upon, and would demand for her the utmost title of her rights as
his wife.
In this resolve, however, he had forgot to take into account his mother’s
long and absolute influence over him. When she was absent, it was
comparatively easy to relegate her to the position she ought to occupy;
when she was present, he found it impossible to say or do anything which
made her less than Mistress of Braelands. And during the first few weeks
after her return, Sophy helped her mother-in-law considerably against
herself. She was so anxious to please, so anxious to be loved, so afraid
of making trouble for Archie, that she submitted without protest to one
infringement after another on her rights as the wife of the Master of
Braelands. All the same she was dumbly conscious of the wrong being done
to her; and like a child, she nursed her sense of the injustice until it
showed itself in a continual mood of sullen, silent protest.
After the lapse of a month or more, she became aware that even her ill
health was used as a weapon against her, and she suddenly resolved to
throw off her lassitude, and assert her right to go out and call upon her
friends. But she was petulant and foolish in the carrying out of the
measure. She had made up her mind to visit her aunt on the following day,
and though the weather was bitterly cold and damp, she adhered to her
resolution. Madame, at first politely, finally with provoking
positiveness, told her “she would not permit her to risk her life,
and a life still more precious, for any such folly.”
Then Sophy rose, with a sudden excitement of manner, and rang the bell.
When the servant appeared, she ordered the carriage to be ready for her in
half an hour. Madame waited until they were alone, and then said:
“Sophy, go to your room and lie down. You are not fit to go out. I
shall counter-order the carriage in your name.”
“You will not,” cried the trembling, passionate girl. “You
have ordered and counter-ordered in my name too much. You will, in the
future, mind your own affairs, and leave me to attend to mine.”
“When Archie comes back”
“You will tell him all kinds of lies. I know that.”
“I do not lie.”
“Perhaps not; but you misrepresent things so, that you make it
impossible for Archie to get at the truth. I want to see my aunt. You have
kept me from her, and kept her from me, until I am sick for a sight of
those who really love me. I am going to Aunt Kilgour’s this
very morning, whether you like it or not.”
“You shall not leave this house until Archie comes back from Largo.
I will not take the responsibility.”
“We shall see. Iwill take the responsibility myself. I
am mistress of Braelands. You will please remember that fact. And I know
my rights, though I have allowed you to take them from me.”
“Sophy, listen to me.”
“I am going to Aunt Kilgour’s.”
“Archie will be very angry.”
“Not if you will let him judge for himself. Anyway, I don’t
care. I am going to see my aunt! You expect Archie to be always thinking
of feelings, and your likes and dislikes. I have just as good a right to
care about my aunt’s feelings. She was all the same as mother to me.
I have been a wicked lassie not to have gone to her lang syne.”
“Wicked lassie! Lang syne! I wish you would at least try to speak
like a lady.”
“I am not a lady. I am just one of God’s fisher folk. I want
to see my own kith and kin. I am going to do so.”
“You are not—until your husband gives you permission.”
“Permission! do you say? I will go on my own permission, Sophy
Braelands’s permission.”
“It is a shame to take the horses out in such weather—and poor
old Thomas.”
“Shame or not, I shall take them out.”
“Indeed, no! I cannot permit you to make a fool and a laughing-stock
of yourself.” She rang the bell sharply and sent for the coachman
When he appeared, she said:
“Thomas, I think the horses had better not go out this morning. It
is bitterly cold, and there is a storm coming from the northeast. Do you
not think so?”
“It is a bad day, Madame, and like to be worse.”
“Then we will not go out.”
As Madame uttered the words, Sophy walked rapidly forward. All the passion
of her Viking ancestors was in her face, which had undergone a sort of
transfiguration. Her eyes flashed, her soft curly yellow hair seemed
instinct with a strange life and brilliancy, and she said with an
authority that struck Madame with amazement and fear:
“Thomas, you will have the carriage at the door in fifteen minutes,
exactly,” and she drew out her little jewelled watch, and gave him
the time with a smiling, invincible calmness.
Thomas looked from one woman to the other, and said, fretfully, “A
man canna tak’ twa contrary orders at the same minute o’ time.
What will I do in the case?”
“You will do as I tell you, Thomas,” said Madame. “You
have done so for twenty years. Have you come to any scath or wrong by it?”
“If the carriage is not at the door in fifteen minutes, you will
leave Braelands this night, Thomas,” said Sophy. “Listen! I
give you fifteen minutes; after that I shall walk into Largo, and you can
answer to your master for it. I am Mistress of Braelands. Don’t
forget that fact if you want to keep your place, Thomas.”
She turned passionately away with the words, and left the room. In fifteen
minutes she went to the front door in her cloak and hood, and the carriage
was waiting there. “You will drive me to my aunt Kilgour’s
shop,” she said with an air of reckless pride and defiance. It
pleased her at that hour to humble herself to her low estate. And it
pleased Thomas also that she had done so. His sympathy was with the fisher
girl. He was delighted that she had at last found courage to assert
herself, for Sophy’s wrongs had been the staple talk of the
kitchen-table and fireside.
“No born lady I ever saw,” he said afterwards to the cook,
“could have held her own better. It will be an even fight between
them two now, and I will bet my shilling on fisherman Traill’s girl.”
“Madame has more wit, and more hold out” answered the
cook. “Mrs. Archibald is good for a spurt, but I’ll be bound
she cried her eyes red at Griselda Kilgour’s, and was as weak as a
baby.”
This opinion was a perfectly correct one. Once in her aunt’s little
back parlour, Sophy gave full sway to her childlike temper. She told all
her wrongs, and was comforted by her kinswoman’s interest and pity,
and strengthened in her resolution to resist Madame’s interference
with her life. And then the small black teapot was warmed and filled, and
Sophy begged for a herring and a bit of oatcake; and the two women sat
close to one another, and Miss Kilgour told Sophy all the gossip and clash
of gossip there had been about Christina Binnie and her lover, and how the
marriage had been broken off, no one knowing just why, but many thinking
that since Jamie Logan had got a place on “The Line,” he was
set on bettering himself with a girl something above the like of Christina
Binnie.
And as they talked Helen Marr came into the shop for a yard of ribbon, and
said it was the rumour all through Pittendurie, that Andrew Binnie was all
but dead, and folks were laying all the blame upon the Mistress of
Braelands, for that every one knew that Andrew had never held up his head
an hour since her marriage. And though Miss Kilgour did not encourage this
phase of gossip, yet the woman would persist in describing his sufferings,
and the poverty that had come to the Binnies with the loss of their only
bread-winner, and the doctors to pay, and the medicine folks said they had
not the money to buy, and much more of the same sort, which Sophy heard
every word of, knowing also that Helen Marr must have seen her carriage at
the door, and so, knowing of her presence, had determined that she should
hear it.
Certainly if Helen had wished to wound her to the very heart, she
succeeded. When Miss Kilgour got rid of her customer, and came back to
Sophy, she found her with her face in the pillow, sobbing passionately
about the trouble of her old friends. She did not name Andrew, but the
thought of his love and suffering hurt her sorely, and she could not
endure to think of Janet’s and Christina’s long hardships and
sorrow. For she knew well how much they would blame her, and the thought
of their anger, and of her own apparent ingratitude, made her sick with
shame and grief. And as they talked of this new trouble, and Sophy sent
messages of love and pity to Janet and Christina, the shop-bell rung
violently, and Sophy heard her husband’s step, and in another moment
he was at her side, and quite inclined to be very angry with her for
venturing out in such miserable weather.
Then Sophy seized her opportunity, and Miss Kilgour left them alone for
the explanation that was better to be made there than at Braelands. And
for once Archie took his wife’s part without reservation. He was not
indeed ill-pleased that she had assumed her proper position, and when he
slipped a crown into Thomas’s hand, the man also knew that he had
done wisely. Indeed there was something in the coachman’s face and
air which affected Madame unpleasantly, before she noticed that Sophy had
returned in her husband’s company, and that they were evidently on
the most affectionate terms.
“I have lost this battle,” she said to herself, and she wisely
retreated to her own room, and had a nominal headache, and a very genuine
heartache about the loss.
All day long Sophy was at an unnatural pitch, all day long she exerted
herself, as she had not done for weeks and months, to entertain and keep
her husband at her side, and all day long her pretty wifely triumph was
bright and unbroken. The very servants took a delight in ministering to
it, and Madame was not missed in a single item of the household routine.
But about midnight there was a great and sudden change. Bells were
frantically rung, lights flew about the house, and there was saddling of
horses and riding in hot haste into Largo for any or all the doctors that
could be found.
Then Madame came quietly from her seclusion, and resumed her place as head
of the household, for the little mistress of one day lay in her chamber
quite unconscious of her lost authority. Some twelve hours later, the
hoped-for heir of Braelands was born, and died, and Sophy, on the very
outermost shoal of life, felt the wash and murmur of that dark river which
flows to the Eternal Sea.
It was no time to reproach the poor little wife, and yet Madame did not
scruple to do so. “She had warned Sophy,—she had begged her
not to go out—she had been insulted for endeavouring to prevent what
had come to pass just as she had predicted.” And in spite of Archie’s
love and pity, her continual regrets did finally influence him. He began
to think he had been badly used, and to agree with Madame in her
assertions that Sophy must be put under some restrictions, and subjected
to some social instruction.
“The idea of the Braelands’s carriage standing two hours at
Griselda Kilgour’s shop door! All the town talking about it! Every
one wondering what had happened at Braelands, to drive your wife out of
doors in such weather. All sorts of rumours about you and Sophy, and
Griselda shaking her head and sighing and looking unspeakable things, just
to keep the curiosity alive; and the crowds of gossiping women coming and
going to her shop. Many a cap and bonnet has been sold to your name,
Archie, no doubt, and I can tell you my own cheeks are kept burning with
the shame of the whole affair! And then this morning, the first thing she
said to me was, that she wanted to see her cousins Isobel and Christina.”
“She asked me also about them, Mother, and really, I think she had
better be humoured in this matter. Our friends are not her friends.”
“They ought to be.”
“Let us be just. When has she had any opportunity to make them so?
She has seen no one yet,—her health has been so bad—and it did
often look. Mother, as if you encouraged her not to see callers.”
“Perhaps I did, Archie. You cannot blame me. Her manners are so
crude, so exigent, so effusive. She is so much pleased, or so indifferent
about people; so glad to see them, or else so careless as to how she
treats them. You have no idea what I suffered when Lady Blair called, and
insisted on meeting your wife. Of course she pretended to fall in love
with her, and kissed, and petted, and flattered Sophy, until the girl
hardly knew what she was doing or saying. And as for ‘saying,’
she fell into broad Scotch, as she always does when she is pleased or
excited, and Lady Blair professed herself charmed, and talked broad Scotch
back to her. And I? I sat tingling with shame and annoyance, for I knew
right well what mockeries and laughter Sophy was supplying Annette Blair
with for her future visitors.”
“I think you are wrong. Lady Blair is not at all ill-natured. She
was herself a poor minister’s daughter, and accustomed to go in and
out of the fishers’ cottages. I can imagine that she would really be
charmed with Sophy.”
“You can ‘imagine’ what you like; that will not alter
the real state of the case; and if Sophy is ever to take her position as
your wife, she must be prepared for it. Besides which, it will be a good
thing to give her some new interests in life, for she must drop the old
ones. About that there cannot be two opinions.”
“What then do you propose, Mother?”
“I should get proper teachers for her. Her English education has
been frightfully neglected; and she ought to learn music and French.”
“She speaks French pretty well. I never saw any one pick up a
language as cleverly as she did the few weeks we were in Paris.”
“O, she is clever enough if she wants to be! There is a French woman
teaching at Miss Linley’s Seminary. She will perfect her. And I have
heard she also plays well. It would be a good thing to engage her for
Sophy, two or three hours a day. A teacher for grammar, history, writing,
etc., is easily found. I myself will give her lessons in social etiquette,
and in all things pertaining to the dignity and decorum which your wife
ought to exhibit. Depend upon it, Archie, this routine is absolutely
necessary. It will interest and occupy her idle hours, of which she has
far too many; and it will wean her better than any other thing from her
low, uncultivated relations.”
“The poor little woman says she wants to be loved; that she is
lonely when I am away; that no one but the servants care for her; that
therefore she wants to see her cousins and kinsfolk.”
“She does me a great injustice. I would love her if she would be
reasonable—if she would only trust me. But idle hearts are lonely
hearts, Archie. Tell her you wish her to study, and fit herself for the
position you have raised her to. Surely the desire to please you ought to
be enough. Do you know who this Christina Binnie is that she talks
so continually about?”
“Her fourth or fifth cousin, I believe.”
“She is the sister of the man you won Sophy from—the man whom
you struck across the cheek with your whip. Now do you wish her to see
Christina Binnie!”
“Yes, I do! Do you think I am jealous or fearful of my wife? No, by
Heaven! No! Sophy may be unlearned and unfashionable, but she is loyal and
true, and if she wants to see her old lover and his sister, she has my
full permission. As for the fisherman, he behaved very nobly. And I did
not intend to strike him. It was an accident, and I shall apologise for it
the first opportunity I have to do so.”
“You are a fool, Archie Braelands.”
“I am a husband, who knows his wife’s heart and who trusts in
it. And though I think you are quite right in your ideas about Sophy’s
education, I do not think you are right in objecting to her seeing her old
friends. Every one in this bound of Fife knows that I married a
fisher-girl. I never intend to be ashamed of the fact. If our social world
will accept her as the representative of my honour and my family, I shall
be obliged to the world. If it will not, I can live without its approval—having
Sophy to love me and live with me. I counted all this cost before I
married; you may be sure of that, Mother.”
“You forgot, however, to take my honour and feelings into your
consideration.”
“I knew, Mother, that you were well able to protect your own honour
and feelings.”
This conversation but indicates the tone of many others which occupied the
hours mother and son passed together during Sophy’s convalescence.
And the son, being the weaker character of the two, was insensibly moved
and moulded to all Madame’s opinions. Indeed, before Sophy was well
enough to begin the course of study marked out for her, Archie had become
thoroughly convinced that it was his first duty to his wife and himself to
insist upon it.
The weak, loving woman made no objections. Indeed, Archie’s evident
enthusiasm sensibly affected her own desires. She listened with pleasure
to the plans for her education, and promised “as soon as she was
able, to do her very best.”
And there was a strange pathos in the few words “as soon as I am
able,” which Archie remembered years afterwards, when it was far too
late. At the moment, they touched him but lightly, but Oh, afterwards!
Oh, afterwards! when memory brought back the vision of the small white
face on the white pillow, and the faint golden light of the golden curls
shadowing the large blue eyes that even then had in them that wide gaze
and wistfulness that marks those predestined for sorrow or early death.
Alas! Alas! We see too late, we hear too late, when it is the dead who
open the eyes and the ears of the living!
“Beneath its little patch of sky, And little lot of stars,”and upward, to where innumerable worlds were whirling noiselessly through the limitless void, and forgot her own clamorous personality and “the something that infects the world;” and doing this, though she did not voice her anxiety, it passed from her heart into the Infinite Heart, and thus she was calmed and comforted. Then, suddenly, the prayer of her childhood and her girlhood came to her lips, and she stood up, and clasping her hands, she cast her eyes towards heaven, and said reverently:—
“This is the change of Thy Right Hand, O Thou Most High
Thou art strong to strengthen.’
Thou art gracious to help!
Thou art ready to better.’
Thou art mighty to save’”
As the words passed her lips, she heard a movement, and softly and
silently as a spirit, her brother Andrew, fully dressed, passed through
the doorway. His arm lightly touched Christina’s clothing, but he
was unconscious of her presence. He looked more than mortal, and was
evidently seeing through his eyes, and not with them. She
was afraid to speak to him. She did not dream of touching him, or of
arresting his steps. Without a sign or word, he went rapidly down the
cliff, walking with that indifference to physical obstacles which a spirit
that had cast off its incarnation might manifest.
“He is walking in his sleep, and he may get into danger or find
death itself,” thought Christina, and her fear gave strength and
fleetness to her footsteps as she quickly followed her brother. He made no
noise of any kind; he did not even disturb a pebble in his path; but went
forward, with a motion light and rapid, and the very reverse of the slow,
heavy-footed gait of a fisherman. But she kept him in sight as he glided
over the ribbed and water-lined sands, and rounded the rocky points which
jutted into the sea water. After a walk of nearly two miles, he made
direct for a series of bold rocks which were penetrated by numberless
caverns, and into one of these he entered.
Hitherto he had not shown a moment’s hesitation, nor did he now
though the path was dangerously narrow and rocky, overhanging unfathomable
abysses of dark water. But Christina was in mortal terror, both for
herself and Andrew. She did not dare to call his name, lest, in the sudden
awakening he might miss his precarious foothold, and fall to unavoidable
death. She found it almost impossible to follow him nor indeed in her
ordinary frame of mind could she have done so. But the experience, so
strange and thrilling, had lifted her in a measure above the control of
the physical and she was conscious of an exaltation of spirit which defied
difficulties that would ordinarily have terrified her. Still she was so
much delayed by the precautions evidently necessary for her life, that she
lost sight of her brother, and her heart stood still with fright.
Prayers parted her white lips continually, as she slowly climbed the
hollow crags that seemed to close together and forbid her further
progress. But she would not turn back, for she could not believe that
Andrew had perished. She would have heard the fall of his body or its
splash in the water beneath and so she continued to climb and clamber
though every step appeared to make further exploration more and more
impossible.
With a startling unexpectedness, she found herself in a circular chamber,
open to the sky and on one of the large boulders lying around, Andrew sat.
He was still in the depths of a somnambulistic sleep; but he had his lost
box of gold and bank-notes before him, and he was counting the money. She
held her breath. She stood still as a stone. She was afraid to think. But
she divined at once the whole secret. Motionless she watched him, as he
unrolled and rerolled the notes, as he counted and recounted the gold, and
then carefully locked the box, and hid the key under the edge of the stone
on which he sat.
What would he now do with the box? She watched his movements with a
breathless interest. He sat still for a few moments, clasping his treasure
firmly in his large, brown hands; then he rose, and put it in an aperture
above his head, filling the space in front of it with a stone that exactly
fitted. Without hurry, and without hesitation, the whole transaction was
accomplished; and then, with an equal composure and confidence, he
retraced his steps through the cavern and over the rocks and sands to his
own sleeping room.
Christina followed as rapidly as she was able; but her exaltation had died
away, and left her weak and ready to weep; so that when she reached the
open beach, Andrew was so far in advance as to be almost out of sight. She
could not hope to overtake him, and she sat down for a few minutes to try
and realise the great relief that had come to them—to wonder—to
clasp her hands in adoration, to weep tears of joy. When she reached her
home at last, it was quite light. She looked into her brother’s
room, and saw that he was lying motionless in the deepest sleep; but Janet
was half-awake, and she asked sleepily:—
“Whatever are you about so early for, Christina? Isn’t the day
long enough for the sorrow and the care of it?”
“Oh, Mother! Mother! The day isn’t long enough for the joy and
the blessing of it.”
“What do you mean, my lass? What is it in your face? What have you
seen? Who has spoken a word to you?” and Janet rose up quickly, and
put her hands on Christina’s shoulders; for the girl was swaying and
trembling, and ready to break out into a passion of sobbing.
“I have seen, Mother, the salvation of the Lord! I have found Andrew’s
lost money! I have proved that poor Jamie is innocent! We aren’t
poor any longer. There is no need to borrow, or mortgage, or to run in
debt. Oh, Mother! Mother! The blessing you bespoke last night, the
blessing we were not thinking of, has come to us.”
“The Lord be thanked! I knew He would save us, in His own time, and
His time is never too late.”
Then Christina sat down by her mother’s side, and in low, intense
tones, told her all she had seen. Janet listened with kindling face and
shining eyes.
“The mercy of God is on His beloved, and His regard is unto His
elect,” she cried, “and I am glad this day, that I never
doubted Him, and never prayed to Him with a grudge at the bottom of my
heart.” Then she began to dress herself with her old joyfulness,
humming a line of this and that psalm or paraphrase, and stopping in the
middle to ask Christina another question; until the kettle began to simmer
to her happy mood, and she suddenly sung out joyfully four lines, never
very far from her lips:—
“My heart is dashed with cares and fears, My song comes fluttering and is gone; Oh! High above this home of tears. Eternal Joy sing on!”How would it feel for the hyssop on the wall to turn cedar, I wonder? Just about as Janet and Christina felt that morning, eating their simple breakfast with glad hearts. Poor as the viands were, they had the flavour of joy and thankfulness, and of a wondrous salvation. “It is the Lord’s doing!” This was the key to which the two women set all their hopes and rejoicing, and yet even into its noble melody there stole at last a little of the fret of earth. For suddenly Janet had a fear—not of God, but of man—and she said anxiously to her daughter:— “You should have brought the box home with you, Christina. O my lass, if some other body should have seen what you have seen, then we will be fairly ruined twice over.” “No, no. Mother! I would not have touched the box for all there is in it. Andrew must go for it himself. He might never believe it was where I saw it, if he did not go for it. You know well he suspicioned both Jamie and me; and indeed, Mother dear, you yourself thought worse of Jamie than you should have done.” “Let that be now, Christina. God has righted all. We will have no casts up. If I thought of any one wrongly, I am sorry for it, and I could not say more than that even to my Maker. If ill news was waiting for Andrew, it would have shaken him off his pillow ere this.” “Let him sleep. His soul took his body a weary walk this morning. He is sore needing sleep, no doubt.” “He will have to wake up now, and go about his business. It is high time.” “You should mind, Mother, what a tempest he has come through; all the waves and billows of sorrow have gone over him.” “He is a good man, and ought to be the better of the tempest. His ship may have been sorely beaten and tossed, but his anchor was fast all through the storm. It is time he lifted anchor now, and faced the brunt and the buffet again. An idle man, if he is not a sick man, is on a lee shore, let him put out to sea, why, lassie! A storm is better than a shipwreck.” “To be sure, Mother. Here the dear lad comes!” and with that Andrew sauntered slowly into the kitchen. There was no light on his face, no hope or purpose in his movements. He sat down at the table, and drew his cup of tea towards him with an air of indifference, almost of despair. It wounded Janet. She put her hand on his hand, and compelled him to look into her face. As he did so, his eyes opened wide; speculation, wonder, something like hope came into them. The very silence of the two women—a silence full of meaning—arrested his soul. He looked from one to the other, and saw the same inscrutable joy answering his gaze. “What is it, Mother?” he asked. “I can see you have something to tell me.” “I have that, Andrew! O my dear lad, your money is found! I do not think a penny-bit of it is missing. Don’t mind me! I am greeting for the very joy of it—but O Andrew, you be to praise God! It is his doing, and marvellous in our eyes. Ask Christina. She can tell you better than I can.” But Andrew could not speak. He touched his sister’s hand, and dumbly looked into her happy face. He was white as death, but he sat bending forward to her, with one hand outstretched, as if to clasp and grasp the thing she had to tell him. So Christina told him the whole story, and after he had heard it, he pushed his plate and cup away, and rose up, and went into his room and shut the door. And Janet said gratefully:— “It is all right, Christina. He’ll get nothing but good advice in God’s council chamber. We’ll not need to worry ourselves again anent either the lad or the money. The one has come to his senses, and the other will come to its use. And we will cast nothing up to him; the best boat loses her rudder once in a while.” It was not long before Andrew joined his mother and sister, and the man was a changed man. There was grave purpose in his calm face, and a joy, too deep for words, in the glint of his eyes and in the graciousness of his manner. “Come, Christina!” he said. “I want you you to go with me; we will bring the siller home together. But I forget—it is maybe too far for you to walk again to-day?” “I would walk ten times as far to pleasure you, Andrew. Do you know the place I told you of?” “Aye, I know it well. I hid the first few shillings there that I ever saved.” As they walked together over the sands Christina said: “I wonder, Andrew, when and how you carried the box there? Can you guess at all the way this trouble came about?” “I can, but I’m ashamed to tell you, Christina. You see, after I had shown you the money, I took a fear anent it. I thought maybe you might tell Jamie Logan, and the possibility of this fretted on my mind until it became a sure thing with me. So, being troubled in my heart, I doubtless got up in my sleep and put the box in my oldest and safest hiding-place.” “But why then did you not remember that you had done so?” “You see, dearie, I hid it in my sleep, so then it was only in my sleep I knew where I had put it. There is two of us, I am thinking, lassie, and the one man does not always tell the other man all he knows. I ought to have trusted you, Christina; but I doubted you, and, as mother says, doubt aye fathers sin or sorrow of some kind or other.” “You might have safely trusted me, Andrew.” “I know now I might. But he is lifeless that is faultless; and the wrong I have done I must put right. I am thinking of Jamie Logan?” “Poor Jamie! You know now that he never wronged you?” “I know, and I will let him know as soon as possible. When did you hear from him? And where is he at all?” “I don’t know just where he is. He sailed away yon time; and when he got to New York, he left the ship.” “What for did he do that?” “O Andrew, I cannot tell. He was angry with me for not coming to Glasgow as I promised him I would.” “You promised him that?” “Aye, the night you were taken so bad. But how could I leave you in Dead Man’s Dale and mother here lone to help you through it? So I wrote and told him I be to see you through your trouble, and he went away from Scotland and said he would never come back again till we found out how sorely all of us had wronged him.” “Don’t cry, Christina! I will seek Jamie over the wide world till I find him. I wonder at myself I am shamed of myself. However, will you forgive me for all the sorrow I have brought on you?” “You were not altogether to blame, Andrew. You were ill to death at the time. Your brain was on fire, poor laddie, and it would be a sin to hold you countable for any word you said or did not say. But if you will seek after Jamie either by letter or your own travel, and say as much to him as you have said to me I may be happy yet, for all that has come and gone.” “What else can I do but seek the lad I have wronged so cruelly? What else can I do for the sister that never deserved ill word or deed from me? No, I cannot rest until I have made the wrong to both of you as far right as sorrow and siller can do.” When they reached the cavern, Andrew would not let Christina enter it with him. He said he knew perfectly well the spot to which he must go, and he would not have her tread again the dangerous road. So Christina sat down on the rocks to wait for him, and the water tinkled beneath her feet, and the sunshine dimpled the water, and the fresh salt wind blew strength and happiness into her heart and hopes. In a short time, the last moment of her anxiety was over, and Andrew came back to her, with the box and its precious contents in his hands. “It is all here!” he said, and his voice had its old tones, for his heart was ringing to the music of its happiness, knowing that the door of fortune was now open to him, and that he could walk up to success, as to a friend, on his own hearthstone. That afternoon he put the money in Largo bank, and made arrangements for his mother’s and sister’s comfort for some weeks. “For there is nothing I can do for my own side, until I have found Jamie Logan, and put Christina’s and his affairs right,” he said. And Janet was of the same opinion. “You cannot bless yourself, laddie, until you bless others,” she said, “and the sooner you go about the business, the better for everybody.” So that night Andrew started for Glasgow, and when he reached that city, he was fortunate enough to find the very ship in which Jamie had sailed away, lying at her dock. The first mate recalled the young man readily. “The more by token that he had my own name,” he said to Andrew. “We are both of us Fife Logans, and I took a liking to the lad, and he told me his trouble.” “About some lost money?” asked Andrew. “Nay, he said nothing about money. It was some love trouble, I take it. He thought he could better forget the girl if he ran away from his country and his work. He has found out his mistake by this time, no doubt.” “You knew he was going to leave ‘The Line’ then?” “Yes, we let him go; and I heard say that he had shipped on an American line, sailing to Cuba, or New Orleans, or somewhere near the equator.” “Well, I shall try and find him.” “I wouldn’t, if I was you. He is sure to come back to his home again. He showed me a lock of the lassie’s hair. Man! a single strand of it would pull him back to Scotland sooner or later.” “But I have wronged him sorely. I did not mean to wrong him, but that does not alter the case.” “Not a bit. Love sickness is one thing; a wrong against a man’s good name or good fortune, is a different matter. I would find him and right him.” “That is what I want to do.” And so when the Circassia sailed out of Greenock for New York, Andrew Binnie sailed in her. “It is not a very convenient journey,” he said rather sadly, as he left Scotland behind him, “but wrong has been done, and wrong has no warrant, and I’ll never have a good day till I put the wrong right; so the sooner the better, for, as Mother says, ‘that which a fool does at the end a wise man does at the beginning.’”
“I cast my line in Largo Bay,
And fishes I caught nine;
There’s three to boil, and three to fry,
And three to bait the line,”
when she heard a sharp rap at her door. The rap was not made with the
hand; it was peremptory and unusual, and startled Janet. She put down the
plate she was wiping, ceased singing, and went to the door. The Master of
Braelands was standing there. He had his short riding-whip in his hand,
and Janet understood at once that he had struck her house door with the
handle of it. She was offended at this, and she asked dourly:—
“Well, sir, your bidding?”
“I came to see my wife. Where is she?”
“You ought to know that better than any other body. It is none of my
business.”
“I tell you she has left her home.”
“I have no doubt she had the best of good reasons for doing so.”
“She had no reason at all.”
Janet shrugged her shoulders, smiled with scornful disbelief, and looked
over the tossing black waters.
“Woman, I wish to go through your house, I believe my wife is in it.”
“Go through my house? No indeed. Do you think I’ll let a man
with a whip in his hand go through my house after a poor frightened bird
like Sophy? No, no, not while my name is Janet Binnie.”
“I rode here; my whip is for my horse. Do you think I would use it
on any woman?”
“God knows, I don’t.”
“I am not a brute.”
“You say so yourself.”
“Woman, I did not come here to bandy words with you.”
“Man, I’m no caring to hear another word you have to say; take
yourself off my door-stone,” and Janet would have shut the door in
his face, but he would not permit her.
“Tell Sophy to come and speak to me.”
“Sophy is not here.”
“She has no reason to be afraid of me.”
“I should think not.”
“Go and tell her to come to me then.”
“She is not in my house. I wish she was.”
“She isin your house.”
“Do you dare to call me a liar? Man alive! Do it again, and every
fisher-wife in Pittendurie will help me to give you your fairings.”
“Tush!! Let me see my wife.”
“Take yourself off my doorstep, or it will be the worse for you.”
“Let me see my wife.”
“Coming here and chapping on my door—on Janet Binnie’s
door!—with a horsewhip!”
“There is no use trying to deceive me with bad words. Let me pass.”
“Off with you! you poor creature, you! Sophy Traill had a bad
bargain with the like of you, you drunken, lying, savage-like,
wife-beating pretence o’ a husband!”
“Mother’ Mother!” cried Christina, coming hastily
forward; “Mother, what are you saying at all?”
“The God’s truth, Christina, that and nothing else. Ask the
mean, perfectly unutterable scoundrel how he got beyond his mother’s
apron-strings so far as this?”
Christina turned to Braelands. “Sir,” she said, “what’s
your will?”
“My wife has left her home, and I have been told she is in Mistress
Binnie’s house.”
“She is not. We know nothing about the poor, miserable lass, God
help her!”
“I cannot believe you.”
“Please yourself anent believing me, but you had better be going,
sir. I see Limmer Scott and Mistress Roy and a few more fishwives looking
this way.”
“Let them look.”
“Well, they have their own fashion of dealing with men who ill use a
fisher lass. Sophy was born among them.”
“You are a bad lot! altogether a bad lot!”
“Go now, and go quick, or we’ll prove to you that we are a bad
lot!” cried Janet. “I wouldn’t myself think anything of
putting you in a blanket and tossing you o’er the cliff into the
water.” And Janet, with arms akimbo and eyes blazing with anger, was
not a comfortable sight.
So, with a smile of derision, Braelands turned his back on the women,
walking with an affected deliberation which by no means hid the white
feather from the laughing, jeering fisher-wives who came to their door at
Janet’s call for them, and whose angry mocking followed him until he
was out of sight and hearing. Then there was a conclave in Janet’s
house, and every one told a different version of the Braelands trouble. In
each case, however, Madame was credited with the whole of the
sorrow-making, though Janet stoutly asserted that “a man who was
feared for his mother wasn’t fit to be a husband.”
“Madame’s tongue and temper is kindled from a coal out of
hell,” she said, “and that is the God’s truth; but she
couldn’t do ill with them, if Archie Braelands wasn’t a coward—a
sneaking, trembling coward, that hasn’t the heart in him to stand
between poor little Sophy and the most spiteful, hateful old sinner this
side of the brimstone pit.”
But though the birr and first flame of the village anger gradually cooled
down, Janet’s and Christina’s hearts were hot and heavy within
them, and they could not work, nor eat, nor sleep with any relish, for
thinking of the poor little runaway wife. Indeed, in every cottage there
was one topic of wonder and pity, and one sad lament when two or three of
the women came together: “Poor Sophy! Poor Sophy Braelands!”
It was noticeable, however, that not a single woman had a wrong thought of
Sophy. Madame could easily suspect the worst, but the “worst”
was an incredible thing to a fisher-wife. Some indeed blamed her for not
tholing her grief until her husband came back, but not a single heart
suspected her of a liaison with her old lover.
Archie, however, returned from his ineffectual effort to find her with
every suspicion strengthened. Madame could hardly have hoped for a visit
so completely in her favour, and after it Archie was entirely under her
influence. It is true he was wretchedly despondent, but he was also
furiously angry. He fancied himself the butt of his friends, he believed
every one to be talking about his affairs, and, day by day, his sense of
outrage and dishonour pressed him harder and harder. In a month he was
quite ready to take legal steps to release himself from such a doubtful
tie, and Madame, with his tacit permission, took the first step towards
such a consummation by writing with her own hand the notice which had
driven Sophy to despair.
While events were working towards this end, Sophy was helpless and
senseless in the Glasgow hospital. Archie’s anger was grounded on
the fact that she must know of his return, and yet she had neither come
back to her home nor sent him a line of communication. He told himself
that if she had written him one line, he would have gone to the end of the
earth after her. And anon he told himself that if she had been true to
him, she would have written or else come back to her home. Say she was
sick, she could have got some one to use the pen or the telegraph for her.
And this round of reasoning, always led into the same channel by Madame,
finally assumed not the changeable quality of argument, but the
positiveness of fact.
So the notice of her abandonment was sent by the press far and wide, and
yet there came no protest against it; for Sophy had brought to the
hospital nothing by which she could be identified, and as no hint of her
personal appearance was given, it was impossible to connect her with it.
Thus while its cruel words linked suspicion with her name in every
household where they went, she lay ignorantly passive, knowing nothing at
all of the wrong done her and of the unfortunate train of circumstances
which finally forced her husband to doubt her love and her honour. It was
an additional calamity that this angry message of severance was the first
thing that met her consciousness when she was at all able to act.
Her childish ignorance and her primitive ideas aided only too well the
impression of finality it gave. She put it beside all she had seen and
heard of her husband’s love for Marion Glamis, and the miserable
certainty was plain to her. She knew she was dying, and a quiet place to
die in and a little love to help her over the hard hour seemed to be all
she could expect now; the thought of Janet and Christina was her last
hope. Thus it was that Janet found her trembling and weeping on her
doorstep; thus it was she heard that pitiful plaint, “Take me in,
Janet! Take me in to die!”
Never for one moment did Janet think of refusing this sad petition. She
sat down beside her; she laid Sophy’s head against her broad loving
breast; she looked with wondering pity at the small, shrunken face, so wan
and ghostlike in the gray light. Then she called Christina, and Christina
lifted Sophy easily in her arms, and carried her into her own house.
“For we’ll give Braelands no occasion against either her or
Andrew,” she said. Then they undressed the weary woman and made her
a drink of strong tea; and after a little she began to talk in a quick,
excited manner about her past life.
“I ran away from Braelands at the end of July,” she said.
“I could not bear the life there another hour; I was treated before
folk as if I had lost my senses; I was treated when I was alone as if I
had no right in the house, and as if my being in it was a mortal wrong and
misery to every one. And at the long last the woman there kept Archie’s
letter from me, and I was wild at that, and sick and trembling all over;
and I went to Aunt Griselda, and she took Madame’s part and would
not let me stay with her till Archie came back to protect me. What was I
to do? I thought of my cousins in Edinburgh and went there, and could not
find them. Then there was only Ellen Montgomery in Glasgow, and I was ill
and so tired; but I thought I could manage to reach her.”
“And didn’t you reach her, dearie?”
“No. I got worse and worse; and when I reached Glasgow I knew
nothing at all, and they sent me to the hospital.”
“Oh, Sophy! Sophy!”
“Aye, they did. What else could be, Janet? No one knew who I was; I
could not tell any one. They weren’t bad to me. I suffered, but they
did what they could to help me. Such dreadful nights, Janet! Such long,
awful days! Week after week in which I knew nothing but pain; I could not
move myself. I could not write to any one, for my thoughts would not stay
with me; and my sight went away, and I had hardly strength to live.”
“Try and forget it, Sophy, darling,” said Christina. “We
will care for you now, and the sea-winds will blow health to you.”
She shook her head sadly. “Only the winds of heaven will ever blow
health to me, Christina,” she answered; “I have had my death
blow. I am going fast to them who have gone before me. I have seen my
mother often, the last wee while. I knew it was my mother, though I do not
remember her; she is waiting for her bit lassie. I shall not have to go
alone; and His rod and staff will comfort me, I will fear no evil.”
They kissed and petted and tried to cheer her, and Janet begged her to
sleep; but she was greatly excited and seemed bent on excusing and
explaining what she had done. “For I want you to tell Archie
everything, Janet,” she said. “I shall maybe never see him
again; but you must take care, that he has not a wrong thought of me.”
“He’ll get the truth and the whole truth from me, dearie.”
“Don’t scold him, Janet. I love him very much. It is not his
fault.”
“I don’t know that.”
“No, it is not. I wasn’t home to Braelands two days before
Madame began to make fun of my talk, and my manners, and my dress, and of
all I did and said. And she got Archie to tell me I must mind her, and try
to learn how to be a fine lady like her; and I could not—I could
not. And then she set Archie against me, and I was scolded just for
nothing at all. And then I got ill, and she said I was only sulky and
awkward; but I just could not learn the books I be to learn, nor walk as
she showed me how to walk, nor talk like her, nor do anything at all she
tried to make me do. Oh, the weary, weary days that I have fret myself
through! Oh, the long, painful nights! I am thankful they can never, never
come back.”
“Then don’t think of them now, Sophy. Try and rest yourself a
bit, and to-morrow you shall tell me everything.”
“To-morrow will be too late, can’t you see that, Janet? I must
clear myself to-night—now—or you won’t know what to say
to Archie.”
“Was Archie kind to you, Sophy?”
“Sometimes he was that kind I thought I must be in the wrong, and
then I tried again harder than ever to understand the weary books and do
what Madame told me. Sometimes they made him cross at me, and I thought I
must die with the shame and heartache from it. But it was not till Marion
Glamis came back that I lost all hope. She was Archie’s first love,
you know.”
“She was nothing of the kind. I don’t believe he ever cared a
pin for her. You had the man’s first love; you have it yet, if it is
worth aught. He was here seeking you, dearie, and he was distracted with
the loss of you.”
“In the morning you will send for him, Janet, very early; and though
I’ll be past talking then, you will talk for me. You will tell him
how Madame tortured me about the Glamis girl, how she kept my letters, and
made Mrs. Stirling think I was not in my right mind,” and so between
paroxysms of pain and coughing, she went over and over the sad story of
petty wrongs that had broken her heart, and driven her at last to
rebellion and flight.
“Oh! my poor lassie, why didn’t you come to Christina and me?”
“There was aye the thought of Andrew. Archie would have been angry,
maybe, and I could only feel that I must get away from Braelands. When
aunt failed me, something seemed to drive me to Edinburgh, and then on to
Glasgow; but it was all right, you see, I have saved you and Christina for
the last hour,” and she clasped Christina’s hand and laid her
head closer to Janet’s breast.
“And I would like to see the man or woman that will dare to trouble
you now, my bonnie bairn,” said Janet. There was a sob in her voice,
and she crooned kind words to the dying girl, who fell asleep at last in
her arms. Then Janet went to the door, and stood almost gasping in the
strong salt breeze; for the shock of Sophy’s pitiful return had hurt
her sorely. There was a full moon in the sky, and the cold, gray waters
tossed restlessly under it. “Lord help us, we must bear what’s
sent!” she whispered; then she noticed a steamboat with closely
reefed sails lying in the offing; and added thankfully, “There is
‘The Falcon,’ God bless her! And it’s good to think that
Andrew Binnie isn’t far away; maybe he’ll be wanted. I wonder
if I ought to send a word to him; if Sophy wants to see him, she shall
have her way; dying folk don’t make any mistakes.”
Now when Andrew came to anchor at Pittendurie, it was his custom to swing
out a signal light, and if the loving token was seen, Janet and Christina
answered by placing a candle in their windows. This night Janet put three
candles in her window. “Andrew will wonder at them,” she
thought, “and maybe come on shore to find out whatever their meaning
may be.” Then she hurriedly closed the door. The night was cold, but
it was more than that,—the air had the peculiar coldness that gives
sense of the supernatural, such coldness as precedes the advent of a
spirit. She was awed, she opened her mouth as if to speak, but was dumb;
she put out her hands—but who can arrest the invisible?
Sleep was now impossible. The very air of the room was sensitive.
Christina sat wide awake on one side of the bed, Janet on the other; they
looked at each other frequently, but did not talk. There was no sound but
the rising moans of the northeast wind, no light but the glow of the fire
and the shining of the full moon looking out from the firmament as from
eternity. Sophy slept restlessly like one in half-conscious pain, and when
she awoke before dawning, she was in a high fever and delirious; but there
was one incessant, gasping cry for “Andrew!”
“Andrew! Andrew! Andrew!” she called with fast failing breath,
“Andrew, come and go for Archie. Only you can bring him to me.”
And Janet never doubted at this hour what love and mercy asked for.
“Folks may talk if they want to,” she said to Christina,
“I am going down to the village to get some one to take a message to
Andrew. Sophy shall have her will at this hour if I can compass it.”
The men of the village were mostly yet at the fishing, but she found two
old men who willingly put out to “The Falcon” with the message
for her captain. Then she sent a laddie for the nearest doctor, and she
called herself for the minister, and asked him to come and see the sick
woman; “forbye, minister,” she added, “I’m
thinking you will be the only person in Pittendurie that will have the
needful control o’ temper to go to Braelands with the news.”
She did not specially hurry any one, for, sick as Sophy was, she believed
it likely Archie Braelands and a good doctor might give her such hope and
relief as would prolong her life a little while. “She is so young,”
she thought, “and love and sea-breezes are often a match for death
himself.”
The old men who had gone for Andrew were much too infirm to get close to
“The Falcon.” For with the daylight her work had begun, and
she was surrounded on all sides by a melee of fishing-boats. Some were
discharging their boxes of fish; others were struggling to get some point
of vantage; others again fighting to escape the uproar. The air was filled
with the roar of the waves and with the voices of men, blending in shouts,
orders, expostulations, words of anger, and words of jest.
Above all this hubbub, Andrew’s figure on the steamer’s bridge
towered large and commanding, as he watched the trunks of fish hauled on
board, and then dragged, pushed, thrown, or kicked, as near the mouth of
the hold as the blockade of trunks already shipped would permit. But,
sharp as a crack of thunder, a stentorian voice called out:—
“Captain Binnie wanted! Girl dying in Pittendurie wants him!”
Andrew heard. The meaning of the three lights was now explained. He had an
immediate premonition that it was Sophy, and he instantly deputed his
charge to Jamie, and was at the gunwale before the shouter had repeated
his alarm. To a less prompt and practised man, a way of reaching the shore
would have been a dangerous and tedious consideration; but Andrew simply
selected a point where a great wave would lift a small boat near to the
level of the ship’s bulwarks, and when this occurred, he leaped into
her, and was soon going shoreward as fast as his powerful stroke at the
oars could carry him.
When he reached Christina’s cottage, Sophy had passed beyond all
earthly care and love. She heeded not the tenderest words of comfort; her
life was inexorably coming to its end; and every one of her muttered words
was mysterious, important, wondrous, though they could make out nothing
she said, save only that she talked about “angels resting in the
hawthorn bowers.” Hastily Christina gave Andrew the points of her
sorrowful story, and then she suddenly remembered that a strange man had
brought there that morning some large, important-looking papers which he
had insisted on giving to the dying woman. Andrew, on examination, found
them to be proceedings in the divorce case between Archibald Braelands and
his wife Sophy Traill.
“Some one has recognised her in the train last night and then
followed her here,” he said pitifully. “They were in a gey
hurry with their cruel work. I hope she knows nothing about it.”
“No, no, they didn’t come till she was clean beyond the
worriments of this life. She did not see the fellow who put them in her
hands; she heard nothing he said to her.”
“Then if she comes to herself at all, say nothing about them. What
for should we tell her? Death will break her marriage very soon without
either judge or jury.”
“The doctor says in a few hours at the most.”
“Then there is no time to lose. Say a kind ‘farewell’
for me, Christina, if you find a minute in which she can understand it. I’m
off to Braelands,” and he put the divorce papers in his pocket, and
went down the cliff at a run. When he reached the house, Archie was at the
door on his horse and evidently in a hurry; but Andrew’s look struck
him on the heart like a blow. He dismounted without a word, and motioned
to Andrew to follow him. They turned into a small room, and Archie closed
the door. For a moment there was a terrible silence, then Andrew, with
passionate sorrow, threw the divorce papers down on the table.
“You’ll not require, Braelands, to fash folk with the like of
them; your wife is dying. She is at my sister’s house. Go to her at
once.”
“What is that to you? Mind your own business, Captain Binnie.”
“It is the business of every decent man to call comfort to the
dying. Go and say the words you ought to say. Go before it is too late.”
“Why is my wife at your sister’s house?”
“God pity the poor soul, she had no other place to die in! For
Christ’s sake, go and say a loving word to her.”
“Where has she been all this time? Tell me that, sir.”
“Dying slowly in the public hospital at Glasgow.”
“My God!”
“There is no time for words now; not a moment to spare. Go to your
wife at once.”
“She left me of her own free will. Why should I go to her now?”
“She did not leave you; she was driven away by devilish cruelty. And
oh, man, man, go for your own sake then! To-morrow it will be too late to
say the words you will weep to say. Go for your own sake. Go to spare
yourself the black remorse that is sure to come if you don’t go. If
you don’t care for your poor wife, go for your own sake!”
“I do care for my wife. I wished—”
“Haste you then, don’t lose a moment! Haste you! haste you! If
it is but one kind word before you part forever, give it to her. She has
loved you well; she loves you yet; she is calling for you at the grave’s
mouth. Haste you, man! haste you!”
His passionate hurry drove like a wind, and Braelands was as straw before
it. His horse stood there ready saddled; Andrew urged him to it, and saw
him flying down the road to Pittendurie before he was conscious of his own
efforts. Then he drew a long sigh, lifted the divorce papers and threw
them into the blazing fire. A moment or two he watched them pass into
smoke, and then he left the house with all the hurry of a soul anxious
unto death. Half-way down the garden path, Madame Braelands stepped in
front of him.
“What have you come here for?” she asked in her haughtiest
manner.
“For Braelands.”
“Where have you sent him to in such a black hurry?”
“To his wife. She is dying.”
“Stuff and nonsense!”
“She is dying.”
“No such luck for my house. The creature has been dying ever since
he married her.”
“You have been killing her ever since he married her.
Give way, woman, I don’t want to speak to you; I don’t want to
touch the very clothes of you. I think no better of you than God Almighty
does, and He will ask Sophy’s life at your hands.”
“I shall tell Braelands of your impertinence. It will be the worse
for you.”
“It will be as God wills, and no other way. Let me pass. Don’t
touch me, there is blood on your hands, and blood on your skirts; and you
are worse—ten thousand times worse—than any murderer who ever
swung on the gallows-tree for her crime! Out of my way, Madame Braelands!”
She stood before him motionless as a white stone with passion, and yet
terrified by the righteous anger she had provoked. Words would not come to
her, she could not obey his order and move out of his way, so Andrew
turned into another path and left her where she stood, for he was
impatient of delay, and with steps hurried and stumbling, he followed the
husband whom he had driven to his duty.
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