Marie Verine was a good girl, but she was not beautiful or clever. She lived with her mother in one flat of an ordinary-looking house in a small Swiss town. Had they been poorer or richer there might have been something picturesque about their way of life, but, as it was, there was nothing. Their pleasures were few and simple; yet they were happier than most people are—but this they did not know.
'It is a pity we are not richer and have not more friends,' Madame Verine would remark, 'for then we could perhaps get Marie a husband; as it is, there is no chance.'
Madame Verine usually made this remark to the Russian lady who lived upstairs. The Russian lady had a name that could not be pronounced; she spoke many languages, and took an interest in everything. She would reply—
'No husband! It is small loss. I have seen much of the world.'
Marie had seen little of the world, and she did not believe the Russian lady. She never said anything about it, except at her prayers, and then she used to ask the saints to pray for her that she might have a husband.
Now, in a village about half a day's journey from the town where Marie dwelt, there lived a young girl whose name was Céleste. Her mother had named her thus because her eyes were blue as the sky above, and her face was round as the round moon, and her hair and eyelashes were like sunbeams, or like moonlight when it shines in yellow halo through the curly edges of summer clouds. The good people of this village were a hard-working, hard-headed set of men and women. While Céleste's father lived they had waxed proud about her beauty, for undoubtedly she was a credit to the place; but when her parents died, and left her needy, they said she must go to the town and earn her living.
Céleste laughed in her sleeve when they told her this, because young Fernand, the son of the inn-keeper, had been wooing and winning her heart, in a quiet way, for many a day; and now she believed in him, and felt sure that he would speak his love aloud and take her home to his parents. To be sure, it was unknown in that country for a man who hadmoney to marry a girl who had none; but Fernand was strong to work and to plan; Céleste knew that he could do what he liked.
It was the time when the April sun smiles upon the meadow grass till it is very green and long enough to wave in the wind, and all amongst it the blue scilla flowers are like dewdrops reflecting the blue that hangs above the gnarled arms of the still leafless walnut trees. The cottage where Céleste lived was out from the village, among the meadows, and to the most hidden side of it young Fernand came on the eve of the day on which she must leave it for ever. Very far off the snow mountains had taken on their second flush of evening red before he came, and Céleste had grown weary waiting.
'Good-bye,' said Fernand. He was always a somewhat stiff and formal young man, and to-night he was ill at ease.
'But,' cried Céleste—and here she wept—'you have made me love you. I love no one in the world but you.'
'You are foolish,' said he. 'It is, of course, a pity that we must part, but it cannot be helped. You have no dowry, not even a small one. It would be unthrifty for the son of an innkeeper to marry a girl without a sou. My parents would not allow me to act so madly!' and his manner added—'nor would I be so foolish myself.'
Next day Céleste went up to the town, and went into the market-place to be hired as a servant.
This was the day of the spring hiring. Many servants were wanting work, and they stood in the market-place. All around were the old houses of the square; there was the church and the pastor's house, and the house and office of the notary, and many other houses standing very close together, with high-peaked roofs and gable windows. The sun shone down, lighting the roofs, throwing eaves and niches into strong shadow, gleaming upon yellow bowls and dishes, upon gay calicoes, upon cheese and sausages, on all bright things displayed on the open market-stalls, and upon the faces of the maid-servants who stood to be hired. Many ladies of the town went about seeking servants: among them was Madame Verine, and the Russian lady and Marie were with her. When they came in front of Céleste they all stopped.
'Ah, what eyes!' said the Russian lady—'what simple, innocent, trustful eyes! In these days how rare!'
'She is like a flower,' said Marie.
Now, they quickly found out that Céleste knew very little about the work she would have to do; it was because of this she had not yet found a mistress.
'I myself would delight to teach her,' cried the Russian lady.
'And I,' cried Marie. So Madame Verine took her home.
They taught Céleste many things. Marie taught her to cook and to sew; the Russian lady taught her to write and to cipher, and was surprised at the progress she made, especially in writing. Céleste was the more interesting to them because there was just a shade of sadness in her eye. One day she told Marie why she was sad; it was the story of Fernand, how he had used her ill.
'What a shame!' cried Marie, when the brief facts were repeated.
'It is the way of the country,' said the Russian lady. 'These Swiss peasants, who have so fair a reputation for sobriety, are mercenary above all: they have no heart.'
Céleste lived with Madame Verine for one year. At the end of that time Madame Verine arose one morning to find the breakfast was not cooked, nor the fire lit. In the midst of disorder stood Céleste, with flushed cheeks and startled eyes, and a letter in her hand.
'Ah, madam,' she faltered, 'what a surprise! The letter, it is from monsieur the notary, who lives in the market-place, and to me, madam—to me!'
When Madame Verine took the letter she found told therein that an aunt of Céleste, who had lived far off in the Jura, was dead, and had left to Célestea little fortune of five thousand francs, which was to be paid to her when she was twenty-one, or on her marriage day.
'Ah,' cried Céleste, weeping, 'can it be true? Can it be true?'
'Of course, since monsieur the notary says so.'
'Ah, madam; let me run and see monsieur the notary. Let me just ask him, and hear from his lips that it is true!'
So she ran out into the town, with her apron over her head, and Marie made the breakfast.
The Russian lady came down to talk it over. 'The pretty child is distraught, and atso smalla piece of good fortune!' said she.
But when Céleste came in she was more composed. 'It is true,' she said, with gentle joy, and she stood before them breathless and blushing.
'It will be three years before you are twenty-one,' said Madame Verine; 'you will remain with me.'
'If you please, madam, no,' said Céleste, modestly casting down her eyes; 'I must go to my native village.'
'How!' they cried. 'To whom will you go?'
Céleste blushed the more deeply, and twisted her apron. 'I have good clothes; I have saved my year's wages. I will put up at the inn. The wife of the innkeeper will be a mother to me now I can pay for my lodging.'
At which Madame Verine looked at the Russian lady, and that lady looked at her, and said behind her hand, 'Such a baby, and so clever! It is the mere instinct of wisdom; it cannot be called forethought.'
It is to be observed that, all the world over, however carefully a mistress may guard her maid-servant, no great responsibility is felt when the engagement is broken. Madame Verine shrugged her shoulders and got another servant. Céleste went down to her village.
After that, when Marie walked in the market-place, she used to like to look at the notary's house, and at him, if she could espy him in the street. The house was a fine one, and the notary, in spite of iron-grey hair and a keen eye, good-looking; but that was not why Marie was interested; it was because he and his office seemed connected with the romance of life—with Céleste's good fortune.
When summer days grew long, Madame Verine, her friend and daughter, took a day's holiday, and out of good nature they went to see Céleste.
'Céleste lives like a grand lady now,' cried the innkeeper's wife, on being questioned. 'She will have me take her coffee to her in bed each morning.'
'The wages she has saved will not hold out long,' said the visitors.
'When that is finished she gives us her note ofhand for the money she will get when she is married. She has shown us the notary's letter. It is certainly a tidy sum she will have, and our son has some thoughts of marrying.'
They saw Céleste, who was radiant; they saw young Fernand, who was paying his court to her. They returned home satisfied.
It was not long after that when one morning Céleste came into Madame Verine's house; she was weeping on account of the loss of some of her money. She had come up to town, she said, to buy her wedding clothes, for which the notary had been so good as to advance her a hundred francs, but her pocket had been picked in the train. The money was gone—quite gone—alas!
So tearful was she that they lent her some money—not much, but a little. Then she dried her eyes, and said she would also get some things on credit, promising to pay in a month, for it was then she was to be married. At the end of the day she came back gaily to show her treasures.
'When the rejoicings of your wedding are over,' said Madame Verine, 'and your husband brings you to town to claim the money, you may stay here in the upper room of this house—it is an invitation.'
In a month came the wedding pair, joyful and blooming. The Russian lady made them a supper.They lodged in an attic room that Madame Verine rented. In the morning they went out, dressed in their best, to see the notary.
An hour later Madame Verine sat in her little salon. The floor was of polished wood; it shone in the morning light; so did all the polished curves of the chairs and cabinets. Marie was practising exercises on the piano.
They heard a heavy step on the stair. The bridegroom came into the room, agitated, unable to ask permission to enter. He strode across the floor and sat down weakly before the ladies.
They thought he had been drinking wine, but this was not so, although his eye was bloodshot and his voice unsteady.
'Can you believe it!' he cried, 'the notary never wrote letters to her; there was no aunt; there is no money!'
'It is incredible,' said Madame Verine, and then there was a pause of great astonishment.
'It is impossible!' cried the Russian lady, who had come in.
'It is true,' said the bridegroom hoarsely; and he wept.
And now Céleste herself came into the house. She came within the room, and looked at the ladies, who stood with hands upraised, and at her weeping husband. If you have ever enticed a rosy-facedchild to bathe in the sea, and seen it stand half breathless, half terrified, yet trying hard to be brave, you know just the expression that was on the face of the child-like deceiver. With baby-like courage she smiled upon them all.
Now the next person who entered the room was the notary himself. He was a gentleman of manners; he bowed with great gallantry to the ladies, not excepting Céleste.
'She is a child, and has had no chance to learn the arts of cunning,' cried the Russian lady, who had thought that she knew the world.
The notary bowed to her in particular. 'Madam, the true artist is born, not made.'
Then he looked at Céleste again. There were two kinds of admiration in his glance—one for her face, the other for her cleverness. He looked at the weeping husband with no admiration at all, but the purpose in his mind was steady as his clear grey eye, unmoved by emotion.
'I have taken the trouble to walk so far,' said he, 'to tell this young man what, perhaps, I ought to have mentioned when he was at my office. Happily, the evil can be remedied. It is the law of our land that if the fortune has been misrepresented, a divorce can be obtained.'
Céleste's courage vanished with her triumph. She covered her face. The husband had turnedround; he was looking eagerly at the notary and at his cowering bride.
'Ah, Heaven!' cried the two matrons, 'must it be?'
'I have walked so far to advise,' said the notary.
All this time Marie was sitting upon the piano-stool; she had turned it half-way round so that she could look at the people. She was not pretty, but, as the morning light struck full upon her face, she had the comeliness that youth and health always must have; and more than that, there was the light of a beautiful soul shining through her eyes, for Marie was gentle and submissive, but her mind and spirit were also strong; the individual character that had grown in silence now began to assert itself with all the beauty of a new thing in the world. Marie had never acted for herself before.
She began to speak to the notary simply, eagerly, as one who could no longer keep silence.
'It would be wrong to separate them, monsieur.'
Madame Verine chid Marie; the notary, no doubt just because he was a man and polite, answered her.
'This brave young fellow does not deserve to be thus fooled. I shall be glad to lend him my aid to extricate himself.'
'He does deserve it,' cried Marie. 'Long ago he pretended to have love for her, just for the pleasureof it, when he had not—that is worse than pretending to have money! And in any case, it is awickedlaw, monsieur, that would grant a divorce when they are married, and—look now—left to himself he will forgive her, but he is catching at what you say. You have come here to tempt him! You dare not go on, monsieur!'
'Dare not, mademoiselle?' said the notary, with a superior air.
'No, monsieur. Think of what the good God and the holy saints would say! This poor girl has brought much punishment on herself, but—ah, monsieur, think of the verdict of Heaven!'
'Mademoiselle,' said the notary haughtily, 'I was proposing nothing but justice; but it is no affair of mine.' And with that he went out brusquely—very brusquely for a gentleman of such polite manners.
'I am astonished at you, Marie,' said Madame Verine. This was true, but it was meant as a reproach.
'She is beside herself with compassion,' said the Russian lady; 'but that is just what men of the world despise most.'
Then Marie went to her room weeping, and the two ladies talked to Céleste till her soft face had hard lines about the mouth and her eyes were defiant. Young Fernand slipped out and went again to the market-place.
'I come to ask your aid, monsieur the notary.'
'I do not advise you.'
'But, monsieur, to whom else can I apply?'
'I am too busy,' said the notary.
Fernand and Céleste walked back to their village, hand in hand, both downcast, both peevish, but still together.
Now the notary was not what might be called a bad man himself, but he believed that the world was very bad. He had seen much to confirm this belief, and had not looked in the right place to find any facts that would contradict it. This belief had made him hard and sometimes even dishonest in his dealings with men; for what is the use of being good in a world that can neither comprehend goodness nor admire it? On the whole, the notary was much better satisfied with himself than with human nature around him, although, if he had only known it, he himself had grown to be the reflex—the image as in a mirror—of what he thought other men were; it is always so. There was just this much truth in him at the bottom of his scorn and grumbling—he flattered himself that if he could see undoubted virtue he could admire it; and there was in him that possibility of grace.
After he left Madame Verine's door he thought with irritation of the girl who had rebuked him. Then he began to remember that she was only awoman and very young, and she had appealed to his heart—ah, yes, he had a heart. After all, he was not sure but that her appeal was charming. Then he thought of her with admiration. This was not the result of Marie's words—words in themselves are nothing; it is the personality of the speaker that makes them live or die, and personality is strongest when nourished long in virtue and silence and prayer. When it came to pass that the notary actually did the thing Marie told him to do, he began to think of her even with tenderness in his heart.
Now a very strange thing happened. In about a week the notary called on Madame Verine a second time; he greeted her with all ceremony, and then he sat down on a little stiff chair and explained his business in his own brief, dry way.
Marie was not there. The littlesalon, all polished and shining, gave faint lights and shadows in answer to every movement of its inmates. Madame Verine, in a voluminous silk gown, sat all attention, looking at the notary; she thought he was a very fine man, quite a great personage, and undoubtedly handsome.
'Madam,' began he, 'I am, as you know, at middle age, yet a bachelor, and the reason, to be plain with you, is that I have not believed in women. Pardon me, I would not be rude, but I am a business man. I have no delusions left, yet it has occurred to me that a young woman who would makethe lives of the saints her rule of life—I do not believe in such things myself, but—in short, madam, I ask for your daughter in marriage.'
He said it as if he was doing quite a kind thing, as, indeed, he thought he was. Madame Verine thought so too, and with great astonishment, and even some apologies, gave away her daughter with grateful smiles.
Marie was married to the notary, and he made her very happy. At first she was happy because he had good manners and she had such a loving heart that she loved him. After a few years he found out that she was too good for him, and then he became a better man.
Betty Lamb was a comely girl; she was big to look at, being tall and strong. She was never plump; she was never well clothed, not even in the best days of her youth. She had been brought up in the work-house; after that she belonged to no one. Her mind was a little astray: she had strong, rude, strange ideas of her own; she would not be humble and work day in, day out, like other folk, and for that reason she never throve in the world. She lived here and there, and did this and that. All the town knew her; she was just 'Betty Lamb'; no one expected aught of her.
It was a small town in the west of Scotland. On different sides of it long lanes of humble cottages straggled out into the fields; the cottages had grey stone walls and red tiled roofs. There were new grey churches in the town, and big buildings, and streets of shops. The people in those days thought these very fine; they thought less about the real glory ofthe town—a ruined abbey which stood upon an open heath just beyond the houses.
Three walls, two high gothic windows with the slender mullions unbroken, a few stately columns broken off at different heights from the ground, and one fragment of the high arch of the nave standing up against the sky in exquisite outline—these formed the ruin. It was built of the red sandstone that in its age takes upon it a delicate bloom of pink and white; it looked like a jewel in the breast of the grey hill country. Furze grew within the ruin and for acres on all sides. Sheep and goats came nibbling against the old altar steps. A fringe of wallflower and grass grew upon the top of the highest arch and down the broken fragments of the wall.
All around the stately hills looked down upon the town and the ruin, and the sky that bent over was more often than not full of cloud, soft and grey.
Betty Lamb was getting on to middle age, about thirty, when she had a baby. They had put her again in the poorshouse, but she rose when her baby was but a day old and went away from the place.
It was summer time then; the sky relented somewhat; there was sunshine between the showers, and sometimes a long fair week of silvery weather, when a white haze of lifting moisture rose ever, like incense, from the hills, and the light shone white upon the yellow bloom of the furze.
Betty Lamb found the ambry niche in the wall of the ruin at the side of the place where the altar had been. She laid her baby there. That was his cradle, and by sunlight and moonlight she was heard singing loud songs to him. The people were afraid of going too near her at that time. 'It is dangerous,' said they, 'to touch an animal when she has her young with her.'
As years went on Betty Lamb and her little boy spent summer after summer upon the moor. The child was not christened, unless, indeed, the dew falling from the sacred stones and the pity of God for fatherless innocents had christened him. In this world, at least, his name was written in no book of life, for he had no name.
He grew to be a little lithe lad. Then it was that in every pickle of mischief where a little lad could be this elf-child, with his black eyes and curly auburn hair, was to be found. So maddening indeed were his naughty tricks that the townspeople spoke not so often of beating him, as they would have beaten a human child, but of wringing his neck like a young thing that had no right to live. Yet it was more often in word than in deed that punishment of any sort was inflicted, for the preliminary stage was perforce, 'first catch your boy,' and that was far from easy.
Even when the catching was accomplished the beating did not always come. One day the ministerof the Kirk looked out upon his glebe. His favourite cow, with a bridle in her mouth, was being galloped at greatest speed around the field, Betty's lad standing tip-toe upon her back. The minister, with the agility which unbounded wrath gave him, caught the boy' and swung his cane.
'I am going to thrash you,' said he.
'Ay, ye maun do that.' The small face was drawn to the aspect of a grave judge—'ye maun do that; it's yer juty.'
The minister, who had looked upon his intention rather in the light of natural impulse, felt the less inclination for the task. 'Are you not afraid of being beaten?' he asked.
'Aweel'—an air of profound reflection—'I'm thinking I can even it ony day wi' ridin' on a coo's back when she'll rin like yon.'
The sunlight of habitual benevolence began to break through the cloud of wrath upon the good minister's face. 'If I let you off, laddie, what will you do for me in return?'
An answering gleam of generosity broke upon the sage face of the child. 'I'll fair teach ye how to dae't ye'sel'.'
The lad grew apace. The neighbours said that he showed 'a caring' for his mother, but no one held toward him a helping hand. They were so sure that no good could come of him or of her. The mother hadtaken to drink, and one day it was found that the lad was gone. Just as he had often slipped from the grasp of one or other of the angry townsmen, dodged, darted, and disappeared for the moment, so now it seemed that he had slipped from the grasp of the town, run quickly and disappeared. No one knew why he had gone, or whither, or to what end.
Betty Lamb remained in the town, a fine figure of a woman, but bowed in the shoulders, dirty, and clad in rags. At last, when her strong defiance of poverty and need would no longer serve her, she was seen to go about from door to door in the early dawn, raking among the ashes for such articles as she chose to put in an old sack and carry upon her back. The townsfolk honestly thought that all had been done that could be done to make a decent woman of her, and now in her old age she must needs go down to the gutter.
One day a man came to the town with circus pictures and a bucket of paste. He pasted his pictures upon all the blank spaces of walls which he could find. Great was the joy of the children who stood and stared, their little hearts made glad by novelty and colour. Great was the surprise of the older folk, who said, 'It is a new thing in the world when so great a show as this comes out of the accustomed track of shows to erect its tent in our small town!' Yet so it was; from some whim of the manager, or ofsome one who had the ear of the manager, the thing was decreed.
Upon these circus pictures there figured, in a series of many wonderful harlequin attitudes, a certain Signor Lambetti. Very foreign was the curl of his hair and the waxen ends of his moustache; very magnificent was his physique; he wore the finest of silken tights and crimson small clothes, and medals were depicted hanging upon his breast.
When at length the circus came for that one night's entertainment and the huge tent was set up upon the common not far from the old red ruin, all the town flocked to see the brilliant spectacle. The minister was there, and what was more, his wife and daughters too; they were far grander than he was, and wore silken furbelows and fringed shawls. The minister paid for the best seats for them to sit in. All the shopkeepers were there; every man, woman and child in all the town who could find as much as sixpence to pay for standing room was there. But the strangest circumstance was that before the show began a man went out from the brightly-lit doorway and called in a loud voice to the beggars and little ragged boys and girls who had come to survey the tent on the outside, and he brought them all in and gave them a good part of the tent to sit in, although they had not sixpence to pay, nor even a penny.
Ah! in those days it was a very grand sight.There were elephants who performed tricks, and camels who walked about with men and bundles on their backs just as they do in eastern deserts, and there were wonderful ladies who dressed and behaved like fairies, and who rode standing tip-toe on the backs of horses and jumped through swinging rings. But the crowd had not read the circus bills and the newspapers from all the neighbouring cities for nothing. They were a canny Scotch crowd; they were not to be taken in by mere glitter, no, not the smallest barefoot boy nor the most wretched beggar, for they knew very well that the real crisis of the evening was to be the appearance of Signor Lambetti, and the word 'wonderful' was not to be spoken until his feats began to be performed.
At length he came outside the curtain upon which all eyes had long been fixed. The curl of his hair and the waxed ends of his moustache proved him to be beyond doubt from foreign parts. He was indeed a most grand and handsome gentleman. His dress was, if anything, more superb than it had been in the pictures; all his well-formed muscles showed through the silken gauze that he wore. His velvet trappings were trimmed with gold lace and his medals shone like gold.
He walked upon a tight rope away up in the peaked roof of the tent; he held a wand in his hand by which to balance himself and in the other hand acup of tea which he drank in the very middle of his walk; tossing it off, bowing to the crowd below, and bringing the cup and saucer to the other end in safety.
The crowd gave deep sighs, partly of satisfaction for being permitted to see so wonderful a sight, partly out of relief for the safety of the performer. 'Ay me,' they said to one another, 'did ye ever see the licht o' that?' It meant more from them than the loudest clamour of applause, yet they applauded also.
Then Signor Lambetti, looking quite as fresh and jaunty as at first, ascended a small platform, standing out upon it in the full light of all the lamps. He made a little speech to the effect that he was now going to perform a feat which was so difficult and dangerous that hitherto he had kept it solely for the benefit of crowned heads, before whom on many occasions he had had the privilege of appearing. He said, in an airy way, that the reason he did the town the honour of beholding this most wonderful of all his feats was merely that he had taken a liking to the place.
'Ay, but he's grond,' said the little barefoot boys to one another as they huddled against the front of the stand allotted to them. 'Ay me, but he's grond'; and all the rest of the townsfolk said the same to themselves or each other, but they expressedit in all the different ways of that dignified caution common to the Scotch.
There was a series of swings, one trapeze fixed higher than another, like a line of gigantic steps, to the very pinnacle of the tent. 'The Signor' announced that he was going to swing himself up upon these hanging bars until he reached the topmost, and from that he would leap through the air down, down into the lighted abyss below, and catch a rope that was stretched at the foot of the Grand Stand.
Merely to hear him tell what he was going to do made the crowd draw breath with thrills of joyful horror.
Up and up he went, swinging himself with lissome grace, raising each trapeze with the force of his swing until he could reach the one above it.
He looked smaller as he travelled higher in his wonderful flying progress. The little boys had not breath left now even to say, 'Ay me, but he's grond.' There was silence among all the crowd.
To every one in all that crowd—to all except one—the spectacle was that of a strange man performing a strange feat; one poor woman present saw a different sight, one alone in all that crowd knew that the acrobat was not a stranger.
In a corner of the beggars' gallery sat Betty Lamb. Dirty and clothed in rags as she was, she held up her head at this hour with the old queenlydefiance of her youthful days. Her eyes, bleared and sunken, had descried her son; her mother's heart, mad though all pronounced her to be, had vibrated to the first sound of her son's voice. She knew him as certainly as if she had seen him standing before her again, the little lad of past years, or the infant cradled in the ambry of the ruined chancel.
The monarchs of whom Lambetti had been glibly speaking were not more noble in rank or more surrounded with glory in the thought of Betty Lamb than was this hero of the circus, and he her son! What constitutes glory? Is it not made up of the glare of lamps and the wearing of shining clothes, the shout of a thousand voices in applause, the glance of a thousand eyes in admiration, and the renown that spreads into the newspapers? In the mind of Betty Lamb there was no room for gradations; she knew glory, she knew shame; she herself had sunk to shame; but now that was past, her son had attained to glory, and her soul went out, as it were, from the circumstances of her own degradation and accepted his glory as her own.
They said (the townsfolk said) that Betty Lamb had not lacked opportunity. Ah well, God knows better than we what to each soul may be its opportunity.
Betty Lamb watched her son in his perilous upward flight, and, for the first time in her life,prayed that Heaven would forgive her misdeeds. By some inborn instinct she assumed that it was this prayer she must pray in order to obtain that desire of her eyes, his safety. When he reached the highest swing, when he made his leap from that awful height and caught the lower rope, there had come a change in Betty Lamb's soul. It had seemed hours, nay, years to her, the space of time in which he was swinging himself up and leaping down. Perhaps, half-witted as she had been, this was in reality her life, not the other that for sixty years she had been visibly living. She saw that his eye was fixed upon her; she knew that the kisses were thrown to her. She rose and walked erect, in her heart a new sense of responsibility and of the value of life.
Next day in Betty Lamb's cellar-room a shadow darkened the doorway, and her son stood before her. He did not kiss her—that had not been their way, even when he was an infant and she had sung her songs to him in the lonely ruin—but he bowed to her with all the foreign graces that he had learned, just as if she were one of the queens before whom he had performed. She feasted her eyes upon him.
He looked round upon the cellar. 'You must not live here any longer,' said he.
For the first time in her life humility reigned in her heart and she resigned her gypsy freedom. 'I'mthinking,' she replied modestly, 'that it's nae fit for the mither of sich as ye are noo.'
With the minister Lambetti left money that would defray the expenses of a decent habitation for his mother, and, to the wonder of all, from that day forth the mother lived in it decently. She was even charitable with her little store; she was even known to raise the fallen.
When she was dead Lambetti was dead too. He had lived his life fast, and, if gold be of worth, it seemed as if he had lived it to some purpose. Lambetti left money to the town, money for two purposes which in due time the long-headed townsmen carried into effect. An asylum was built upon the moor; it is called 'Betty Lamb's Home for the Young and the Aged.' The old Abbey also was walled in; lawns and flower beds were spread about the broken stones, and where the walls might totter they were supported. The honour of this change too is ascribed to the famous son of Betty Lamb, who had no name but his mother's.
A man was standing on one of the highroads in the south of Gloucestershire. He was a man of science; his tools and specimens were in his hand, and he was leaning against the wayside paling, enjoying a well-earned rest. A long flock of birds fluttered over the autumn fields; beneath them a slow ploughman trudged with his horses, breaking the yellow stubble. The sky hung low, full of sunshine yet full of haze—an atmosphere of blue flame, and the earth was bright with the warm autumn colours of woods and hedgerow.
Just as the birds were flying past, a young woman came by upon the road, treading with quick powerful step upon the fallen leaves. She was a poor woman; her beauty, which would have been almost perfect in a simpler gown, was marred by garments cut in cheap conformity to fashionable dress. It could not behidden, however, and her large symmetrical figure, swinging as she walked, attracted the attention of the man; as he stood there, leaning against the paling, he felt by no means disinclined to while away his hour of rest by a few soft words with the comely stranger. If he had put his thoughts into words, he would have held it as good luck that she had come to amuse his leisure, thinking very little about luck as it concerned her. His dog lying at his feet stirred to look at the woman, and the man, following the same instinct of nature, accosted her.
'Can you tell me, my girl, what time it is?'
She stopped short and looked at him. 'That I can't, sir,' she said in clear hearty tones, and turned to continue her walk.
'But tell me what time you think it is, my good girl; I am not good at reading the sun.'
She turned again, and looked at him with a longer pause, but, if there was suspicion or disapproval in her thoughts, she expressed nothing in her face.
'Yer a gent; I'd 'a thought ye'd 'a had a watch.'
'But mine is at the watchmaker's getting mended,' he said with a smile. He was neither young nor handsome, but he was clever, and that goes further than either in dealing with a woman.
She still stood staring at him in rude independence.
'The shadows is longer 'an they was a while by; mebbe it's three.'
He sighed and shifted his position wearily against the paling, as though faint with fatigue.
'You can't tell me of any place near where I can get something to eat? I have been working hard since daybreak, and now I am out of my reckoning, and tired and hungry.' He glanced down at his tools and earth-stained clothes.
He won his wish; the woman, who would not have tarried a moment for selfish pleasure, remained out of generous pity.
'I've the piece mother put up, mebbe it's big enou' for we two.'
'But I could not think of taking your luncheon,' he exclaimed, with a gallantry that was meant to be impressive, but was quite lost on his practical companion. She proceeded to open her parcel and examine the contents to see whether or not there was enough for two. He also examined it critically with his eyes, in some alarm at her prompt response to his appeal, but the thick slices of bread and meat, if not dainty, were clean, and of excellent quality.
She took the largest and thickest bit and thrust it into his hand, very much as a mother would feed her child with the portion she considered its fair share.
''Ere, ye may 'ev that, fur I shan't want it.'
'You are very kind,' he said, with a touch of sarcasm too fine for her.
It appeared that, having taken out the food, she thought well to make her own meal, for she went a few steps farther on, and, sitting down on the grass with her back to the paling, began to eat. A large tuft of weeds grew midway between him and her. Truly we can foresee consequences but a very little way in our dealings with a fellow-creature, and this man, as he stood munching his bread, uncertain how to proceed in winning favour from the bold beauty, was hardly pleased with the result of his encounter. His dog went and laid its head upon her knee, and she fed it with crumbs; its master, after watching them a minute, stepped out on the road with the intention of sitting down between them and the weeds. As he did so he caught sight, as he thought, of a man seated in the very place he intended to occupy. So strong was the impression that he started and stared; but again, as before, there was no one to be seen. The sunshine was bright upon all things; the palings were so far apart that he could see everything in the fields behind; there was no one far or near but the ploughman at half a field's distance, and they two, and the dog.
The woman turned coolly round and looked through the paling, as if she supposed he had seen something behind her. 'Was't a haër?' she asked, eyeing him with interest; 'ye ain't feared o' the like o' that?'
'No, it was not a hare; I did not see a hare.'
'What was't ye seed then?' she asked, looking at him with bold determination.
'What did I see?' he repeated vaguely, 'I saw nothing.'
'Thought ye looked as if ye'd seed something',' she remarked incredulously, and then went on eating and feeding the dog, as indifferent to his presence as she was to the presence of the weeds.
'Are you going far to-night?' he asked at length, thinking he would make more progress toward friendship before he sat down.
'To th' town.'
'Indeed, as far as that! Which town, may I ask?' he said, with mechanical politeness, for his mind was running on what he had seen.
'Yer a fool and noä mistake,' she replied with emphasis. 'There's but one town wi'in a walk.'
'On the contrary, I am considered a man of great learning,' he replied, with more eager self-assertion than he could hitherto have believed possible under the circumstances.
'Is't larning ye've got?' she asked, with much greater interest than she had before evinced.
'Yes; I am a man who spends his life seeking for knowledge.'
'Are ye wiser ner parson?'
'Very much wiser,' replied the man of science, with honest conviction.
She looked much more impressed than he had hoped; and thinking that he had made himself sufficiently interesting, he began to speak about her own affairs, supposing they would please her better.
'You are not a married woman?' he said, looking at her ringless hand.
'Married or no,' she replied, 'it's nowt to you.'
'I beg your pardon; everything which concerns such a beautiful woman must be of interest to me.'
At that she laughed outright in hard derision, and went on eating her bread and meat.
'But won't you tell me if you are married or not?' he pleaded, pursuing a subject which he thought must interest her. He was surprised to see the sudden expression of womanly sorrow that came over her face, giving her eyes new depth and light. She answered him sadly, looking past him into the sunny distance—
'No, nor like to be.'
'I must disagree with you there. If you are not married yet, I am sure you will be very soon. I never saw a more likely lassie than yourself.'
Manlike, he was quite unconscious of the consummate impertinence of the form this compliment had taken; but afterwards he realised it when his idle words recurred to his mind.
She turned her eyes full upon him, and said with energy: 'Ye know nowt at all about it;' and then added more meditatively, 'neither do parson.'
She had been so absorbed in her thoughts for a few minutes that she had ceased to stroke the dog, and, resenting this, it raised its silky head from her lap and laid it upon her breast. Thus reminded, she smiled down into the eyes of the dog and caressed it, pressing its head closer against her bosom. The man stood a few paces away, watching these two beautiful creatures as they sat in the hazy autumn sunlight, with their background of weeds and moss-grown paling. He felt baffled and perplexed, for he knew that he stood apart, excluded from their companionship by something he could not define. So intolerable did this feeling become that he resolved to break through it, and made a hasty movement to sit down beside them; but, as he stepped forward, he was suddenly aware that there was another man in the place he would have taken, embracing and protecting the girl. He swore a loud oath, and flung himself backwards to stand by the hedge on the opposite side of the road, that he might the better review the situation. It was all as it had been before—that quiet autumn landscape—only the woman appeared much interested in his sudden movements.
'What was't ye seed; was't a snaïke?' she inquired loudly, at the same time moving her skirts to look for that dangerous reptile.
'No,' he shouted, putting his whole energy into the word.
'What was't ye seed, cutting them capers as if ye was shot, an' saying o' words neyther fit fur heaven above nor earth beneath?'
So loudly did she ask, and so resolutely did she wait for an answer, that he was forced into speech. 'I don't know,' he said, with another oath, milder than the first.
'Well, sure enow,' she said, still speaking loudly, ''ere's somethin' awful queer, ye says yer a man that's got larning more ner parson, an' ye sees somethin', an' can't tell what ye's seed. That's twice this short while; are ye often took bad the like o' that?'
The bold derision of this speech fell without effect upon its object, because he perceived a gleam of mischievous intelligence in her eyes which she had intended to conceal, but she was no adept in the art of concealment. The conviction that the woman knew perfectly what he had seen and did not in reality despise him for his conduct, took the sting from her jeers but did not make his position pleasanter. The repeated shock to his nerves had produced a chilly feeling of depression and almost fear, which he could not immediately shake off, and he stood back against the opposite hedge, with his half-eaten bread in his hand, conscious that he looked and felt more like a whipped schoolboy than, as he had fondly imagined when he first stopped the woman, the hero of a rural love scene. That was nothing; he was, ashe had described himself, a man who devoted his life to the search for knowledge, and personal consciousness was almost lost in the intense curiosity which the circumstances had aroused in him. With the trained mind of one accustomed to investigation, he instantly perceived that his only clue to the explanation of the phenomenon lay in the personality of the woman. His one eager desire was to probe her thought through and through, but how was he to approach the interior portals of a mind guarded by a will as free and strong as his own? He would fain have bound down her will with strong cords and analysed the secrets of her mind with ruthless vivisection. But how? His tact, trained by all the subtleties of a life cast in cultured social relations, was unequal to the occasion, and, fearing to lose ground by a false step, he remained silent.
The woman finished eating and shook herself free of the crumbs. He supposed, almost with a sense of desperation, that she was about to leave him before he could begin his inquiry, but instead of moving she motioned him to come near, and he went, and stood on the road in front of her.
'Ye says yer a man o' larning, an' I b'lieves ye, she began.
He was about to reply that he was only a seeker after truth, but he was checked by the knowledge that she would accept no answer she could not understand. He fell back on the truth as it was to her, and said simply, 'Yes.'
'I wants to ask ye two questions; will ye answer like an honest man?'
She had laid aside all her loud rudeness, and was speaking with intense earnestness—an earnestness that won his entire respect.
'I will indeed answer you honestly, if I can answer.'
'Then tell me this—What's the soäl o' a man?'
He stood with lips sealed, partly by surprise at the question, and partly by self-acknowledged ignorance of the answer.
'The soäl o' a man,' she repeated more distinctly, 'ye knows what I mean surely?'
Yes, he knew what she meant, but he knew also that his own most honest convictions hovered between a materialist philosophy and faith in the spiritual unseen. If at that moment he could have decided between the two he would gladly have done so, for the sake of the eager woman sitting at his feet, but he knew that he did not know which was the truth.
She, still labouring under the impression that she had not made her meaning plain, endeavoured to explain. 'Ye knows when a man dies, there's two parts to him; one they buries, and one goes—' she pointed upward with her thumb, not irreverently, butas merely wishing to indicate a fact without the expense of words.
'Yes, I understand what you mean,' he said slowly, 'and under that theory, the soul——'
'Under what?' she said sharply.
'I mean that if you say the soul is divided from the body at death——'
'But it is—ain't it?' she interrupted.
'Yes, it is,' he said, feeling that it was better to perjure himself than to shake her faith.
'Go on,' she said, 'for parson says the soäl is the thing inside that thinks; but when a man's luny, ye knows—off his head like—has he no soäl then? I've looked i' the Catechis', an' i' Bible, an' i' Prayer-book, an' fur the life o' me, I doän't know.'
'I don't wonder at that,' he said, with mechanical compassion, casting about in his mind for some possible motive for her extraordinary vehemence.
He felt as certain, standing there, that this was a true woman, true to all the highest attributes of her nature, as if he had been able to weigh all the acts of her life and find none of them wanting. In the midst of his perplexity he found time to ask himself whence he had this knowledge. Did he read it in the lines of her face, or was it some unseen influence of her mind upon his own? He had only time to question, not to answer, for she looked up in his face with the trust and expectation of a child, awaiting his words.
He spoke. 'You say when a man dies he is divided into two parts—the body that rots and the part "that lives elsewhere."' He was speaking very slowly and distinctly. 'If that part of a man which lives goes to Heaven, where everything is quite different from this, he could have no use for most of his thoughts—what we call opinions, for they are formed on what he sees, and hears, and feels here. Look here!'—he held out his arm and moved it up and down from the elbow—'there are nerves and muscles; behind them is something we call life—we don't know what it is. And behind your thoughts and feeling there is the same life—we don't know what it is. The part of you that you say goes to Heaven must be that life. If you ask me what I think, I think the greater part of what you call mind is part of your body. If your body can live a spirit life, so can it; but it would need as much changing first.'
It was most extraordinary to him to see the avidity with which she drank in his words, and also the intelligence with which she seemed to master them, for she cried—
'What's i' the soäl then? When yewillto do a thing agen all costs, is that i' the soäl?'
'Certainly the spirit must be the self, and the will, as far as we know, is that self—more that self than anything else is.' He spoke in the pleasedtone of a schoolmaster who finds that the mind beneath his touch is being moulded into the right shape; and besides he supposed he could question her next.
'Iknowedthat,' she said, with an intensity of conviction that confounded her listener, 'Iknowedthe soäl was will.'
'It must be intelligence, and will, and probably memory,' he said, beguiled into the idea that she was interested in the nicety of his theory, 'but not in any sense that activity of mind which shows itself in the opinions most men conceive so important.'
But of this she took no heed. 'When a man's off his head or par'lysed, wi' no more life in him than babe unborn—yet when he's living and not dead—where's his soäl then? Parson he says the soäl's sleeping inside him afore going to glory, like a grub afore it turns into a fly; but I asked him how he knowed, and he just said he knowed, an' I mun b'lieve, and that's no way to answer an honest woman.'
'He did not really know.'
'Well, tell what you knows,' she said.
'Indeed, I do not know anything about it.'
'Ye doän't know!'
'I do not know.'
The animation of hope slowly faded from her face, giving place to a look of bitter disappointment.It was as if a little child, suddenly denied some darling wish, should have strength to restrain its tears and mutely acquiesce in the inevitable.
'Then there's nowt to say,' she said, rising, sullen in the first moment of pain.
'But you'll tell me why you have asked?' he begged; 'I am very sorry indeed that I cannot answer.'
'Noä, I'll not tell ye, fur it's no concern o' yours; but thank ye kindly, sir, all the same. Yer an honest man. Good-day.'
With that she walked resolutely away, nor would she accept his offer of payment for the food she had given. He stood and watched her, feeling checkmated, until he saw her exchange greetings with the ploughman, who reached the end of his furrow as she passed the side of the field. Seeing this, he took up his specimens and walked slowly in the same direction, waiting for the ploughman's next return. As he stood at the hedge he noticed that the labourer, who appeared to be a middle-aged man of average intelligence, surveyed him with more than ordinary interest.
'Good-day,' he said.
'Good-day, sir.' There was a clank of the chains, a shout and groan to the horses, and they stopped beside the hedge.
'Can you tell me the name of the young woman who passed down the road just now?'
'Jen Wilkes, sir; "Jen o' the glen" they calls 'er, for she lives in the holler down there, a bit by on the town road, out of West Chilton.'
'She has not lived here long, surely; she seems a north country woman by her speech.'
'Very like, sir; it's a while by sin' she came with 'er mother to live i' Chilton.'
It was evident that the ploughman had much more to say, and that he wished to say it, but his words did not come easily.
'Can you tell me anything more about her?' The man rubbed his coarse beard down upon his collar, and clanked his chains, and made guttural sounds to his horses, which possibly explained to them the meaning he did not verbally express. Then he looked up and made a facial contortion, which clearly meant that there was more to be said concerning Jen if any one could be found brave enough to say it.
'I feel assured she is everything that is good and respectable.'
At this the ploughman could contain himself no longer, but heaving up one shoulder and looking round to see that there was no one to hear, he blurted out—''Ave you seen 'er shadder, sir?'
'Her what?'
''Er shadder. I seen you so long with 'er on the road I thought maybe you'd tried to 'ave a kiss.Gentlemen mostly thinks a sight of Jen's looks; an' it ain't no harm as I knows on to kiss a tidy girl, if y'ain't married, or th' missus don't object.'
'And if I did, what has that to do with it? What do you mean by her shadow?'
'Oh, I dunno; I h'ain't seen nothing myself; but they says, whenever any has tried to be friendly with 'er, they's seed something not just o' the right sort. They calls it 'er shadder—but I dunno, I h'ain't seen nothing myself.'
When we are suddenly annoyed, by whatever cause, we are apt to vent our annoyance upon the person nearest to us; and at this unlooked-for corroboration of his unpleasant vision, the gentleman said rudely, 'You're not such a fool as to believe such confounded trash as that, are you?'
'No sir, I'm no fool,' said the ploughman sulkily, starting his horses to go up the furrow. In vain the other called out an attempted apology, and tried to delay him; the accustomed shout and clank of the chains was all he got in answer. The birds that had settled upon the field rose again at the return of the horses, and curveted in a long fluttering line above their heads. The man on the road turned reluctantly away, and, too perplexed almost for thought, walked off to catch his home-bound train.
The man of science, Skelton by name, passed some seven days in business and pleasure at home among men of his own class, and then, impelled by an intolerable curiosity, he went to seek the home of the woman with whom he had so strange a meeting. Concerning the mad delusion from which he had suffered in her presence, his mind would give him no rest. Some further effort he must make to understand the cause of an experience which he could not reason from his memory. The effort might be futile; he could form no plan of action; yet he found himself again upon the highroad which led from the nearest station to the village of West Chilton.
The autumn leaf that had bedecked the trees was lying upon the ground, its brightness soiled and tarnished. The cloud rack hung above, a vault of gloom in which the upper winds coursed sadly.
'This is the field,' said Skelton within himself. 'The ploughman has finished his work, but the crows are still flapping about it. I wonder if they are the same crows! That is the clump of weeds by which she sat; it was as red as flame then, but now it is colourless as the cinders of a fire that is gone out.'
His words were like straws, showing the current of his thoughts.
Just then in the west the cloud masses in the horizon, being moved by the winds, rent asunder, exposing the land to the yellow blaze of the setting sun. The distant hills stood out against the glow in richer blue, and far and near the fields took brighter hues—warm brown of earth ready to yield the next harvest, yellow of stubble lands at rest, bright green of slopes that fed the moving cows. There were luminous shadows, too, that gathered instantly in the copses, as if they were the forms of dryads who could sport unseen in the murk daylight, but must fly under each shrub for refuge in the sudden sunshine. Close at his feet lay the patch of cabbages—purple cabbages they were, throwing back from each glossy leaf and stalk infinite gradations of crimson light. Parts of the leaves were not glossy but were covered with opaque bloom of tender blue, and here and there a leaf had been broken, disclosing scarlet veins. They were very beautiful—Skelton stood looking down into their depth of colour.
It had been difficult for him to conjecture a possible cause for the phantom he had thought he saw a week before, but one theory which had floated in his mind had been that from these cabbages, which had lain a trifle too long in sun and moisture; gases might have arisen which had disturbed his senses. It was true that his theory did not account for other instances of the same optical delusion to which thetalk of the ploughman had seemed to point, but Skelton could not bring himself to attach much importance to his words. He meditated on them now as he stood.
'I dare not go to the young woman and ask her to show me her "shadder." If she knew I was here she would only try to defeat my purpose. Icanonly interview her neighbours; and this first rustic whom I questioned shut himself up like an oyster; if all the rest act in this way, what can I do? And if I can hear all the vulgar superstition there is to be heard, will there be in the whole of it the indication of a single fact?'
So he mused by the road-side while the sun hung in the dream temple of fire made by the chasm of cloud. Then the earth moved onward into the night, and he walked on upon his curious errand.
The darkness of evening had already fallen, and he was still about a mile from the village when he discerned a woman coming towards him on the road. It was the very woman about whom his mind was occupied. There was a house at one side; the gate leading to it was close to him, and, not wishing to be recognised at the moment, he turned in through it to wait in the darkness of some garden shrubs till she had passed.
But she did not pass. She came up, walking more and more slowly, till she stood on the road outsidethe gate. She looked up and down the road with a hesitating air, and then, clasping her hands behind her, leaned back against a heavy gate-post and composed herself to wait. There was light enough to see her, for there was a moon behind the clouds, and also what was left of the daylight in the west was glimmering full upon her. The house was close to the road—apparently an old farmstead—turning blank dark walls and roofs to them, so that it was evidently uninhabited or else inhabited only at the other side. The young woman looked up at it, apparently not without distrust, but even to her keen scrutiny there was no sign of life. For the rest, the road lay through a glen, the village was out of sight, and the hills around them were like the hills in Hades—silent, shadowy and cold.
It seemed an unearthly thing that she should have come there to stand and lean against the gate, as if to shut him into his self-sought trap; and there was no impatience about this woman—she stood quite still in that dark, desolate place, as though she was perfectly contented to wait and wait—for what? how long?—these were the questions he asked himself. Was this dark house the abode of evil spirits with which she was in league? and if so, what result would accrue to him? There are circumstances which suggest fantastic speculations to the most learned man.
At length he heard a footfall. He could not tell where at first, but, as it approached, he saw a countryman in a carter's blouse coming across the opposite field. He got through the hedge and came toward the gate. Then the girl spoke in her strong voice and north-country accent, but Skelton would hardly have known the voice again, it was so soft and sad.
'I've been waiting on ye, Johnnie; some women thinks shame to be first at the trysting, but that's not me when I loves ye true.'
At this Skelton by an impulse of honour thought to pass out of ear-shot, and then another motive held him listening. He thought of the ghostly thing he had seen by this girl, of the wild tale the ploughman had told. The passion of investigation, which had grown lusty by long exercise, rose within him triumphing over his personal inclinations. Too much was at stake to miss a chance like this. Honour in this situation seemed like a flimsy sentiment. He waited for the answer of the girl's lover with breathless interest.
The man was evidently a fine young fellow, tall and strong, and when he spoke it was not without a touch of manly indignation in his tone.
'If you love me true, Jen, I can't think what the meaning of your doings is. It's two years since you came to live in the glen, and you can't say as you'venot understood my meaning plain since the first I saw you; it's to take you to church and take care of you as a woman ought to be took care of by a man. And you know I could do it, Jen, for my wages is good; but you've shied an' shied whenever you've seen me, and baulked an' baulked when you couldn't shy, so as no skittish mare is half so bad.'
'Because, Johnnie, I wouldn't ha' yer heart broke the way mine is. I loved ye too true for that.'
'But what's to hinder that we may be like other folks is? There's troubles comes to all, but we can bear them like the rest. What's to hinder? I thought there was some one else, an' that you didn't like. God knows, Jen, if that 'ad been the way, I'd never 'ev troubled you again; but last night when we heard your mother was took bad, an' mother an' me stepped round to see what we could do, an' you let on as you did 'ave a caring for me, I says,—"Let's be cried in the church," so as your mother could die happy, if die she must. But when you says, "no," and as you'd meet me here an' tell me why, I was content to wait an' come here; an' now what I want to know is—why? what's to hinder, Jen?'
'Ye knows as well as me the tales about me, Johnnie.'
'Tales!' said the young man passionately; 'what tales? All along I've knocked down any man as 'ud say a word against you.'
'Ay, but the women, Johnnie; ye couldn't knock them down; that's why a woman's tale's allus the worst.'
'An' what can they say? the worst is that if any man comes nigh you for a kiss or the like o' that—and no offence, Jen, but you're an uncommon tidy girl to kiss—he sees another man betwixt himself an' you. Fools they be to believe such trash! If you'd give me the leave—which I'm not the fellow to take without you say the word—I'd soon show as no shadder 'ud come betwixt.'
He came a step nearer, reproachful in his frank respect, as if he would claim the liberty he asked; but she drew back, holding up her hand to ward him off.
'I believe you half believe the nonsense yourself, Jen.'
'Heaven knows, Johnnie, I've reason to b'lieve it weel, none knows better ner me. It's that I've comed to tell ye to-night; an' there's nowt fur it but we mun part. An' if I trouble yer peace staying here i' the glen, I'll go away out o' yer sight. It wasn't a wish o' mine to bring ye trouble. None knows better ner me how hard trouble's to bear.'
Her voice trembled as if with some physical pain; he only answered by a sound of incredulous surprise.
'I'll tell ye the whole on't, Johnnie. Ye sees,we lived i' Yarm—mother and me. Mother, she sewed books fur a book-binding man; an' we'd a little coming in as father'd saved. Well, mother, she was feared lest I'd fall into rough ways like, an' she kep' me in a good bit, an' there was a man as helped i' the book-binding——' she stopped, and then said half under her breath—
'His name was Dan'el, Dan'el McGair, it was.'
'Go on, Jen.'
'He was a leän man and white to look at. He was very pious, and knowed lots o' things. Least, I don't know if he was pious, fur he didn't go to church, but he'd his own thoughts o' things, an' he was steady, an' kep' himself to himself. He niver telled me his thoughts o' things—he said it 'ud unsettle me like—but he taught me reading; an' mother, she liked his coming constant to see us. As fur as I knows, he was a good man; but I tell ye, Johnnie, that man had a will—whatsoever thing Dan'el McGair wanted, that thing he mun have, if he died i' the getting. He was about forty, an' I was nigh on twenty; it was after he'd taught me reading, an' whenever I'd go out here or there, or do this or that he didn't like, he'd turn as white as snow, an' tremble like a tree-stem i' the wind, an' dare me to do anything as he didn't like. Ye sees he allus had that power over mother to make her think like him, but I wouldn't give in to him. If I'dgived in—well, I doänt know what 'ud 'a comed. God knows what did come were bad enow.' She stopped speaking and toed the damp ground—crushing her boot into the frosty mud and drawing it backwards and forwards as she stood against the gate.