Chapter Eight.“Love sought is good, but love unsought is better.”John Beaton came slowly up the height which hid for the moment the spot where the bairns had gathered, and Robin followed with his bag on his shoulder. Confusion reigned triumphant. Some of the little ones had become tired and fretful, and the elder girls were doing what they could to comfort and encourage them. But by far the greater number were as lively as when they set out in the morning, and by no means in haste to end their day of pleasure. Up the shelving side of one of the great grey stones they were clambering, and then, with shrill shrieks and laughter, springing over the other side to the turf below. Not the slightest heed was given to the voice of the mistress, heard amid the din, expostulating, warning, threatening “broken banes and bluidy noses, ere a’ was dane.” This was what Robin saw, and it was “a sight worth seeing.”What John Beaton saw was Allison Bain standing apart, with Marjorie in her arms, and he saw nothing else for a while. Even Robin, with his bag on his shoulder, stopped a moment to gaze at “our lass,” as he called her in a whisper to his friend. She looked a very different lass from “our Allie” in the manse kitchen, with her downcast eyes, and her silence, and her utter engrossment with the work of the moment. Her big mutch had fallen off, and a mass of bright hair lay over the arm which the child had clasped about her neck. The air had brought a wonderful soft colour to her cheeks, and her lips were smiling, and so were her eyes, as she watched the wild play of the bairns, and her darling’s delight in it. There was not a sign of stooping or weariness.“Though Davie says she carried Maysie every step of the way,” said Robert to his friend. “Man! John! It might be Diana herself!”But John said nothing, and Robin had no time for more, for the bairns had descried him and his bag, and were down on him, as he said, like a pack of hungry wolves.So John shook hands with the mistress, “in a dazed-like way,” she said afterward, and at the first moment had scarce a word for Marjorie, who greeted him with delight.“John, this is my Allie,” said she, laying her hand on her friend’s glowing cheek, “and, Allie, this is Mrs Beaton’s John, ye ken.”Allie glanced round at the new-comer, but she was too busy gathering back the wisp of hair that the wind was blowing about her face to see the hand which he held out to her, and the smile had gone quite out of her eyes when she raised them to his face.“They minded me o’ Crummie’s een,” John told his mother long afterward.The schoolmistress sat down upon a stone, thankful that her labours were over, and that the guiding home of the bairns had fallen into stronger hands than hers. And as she watched the struggle for the booty which came tumbling out of the bag, she was saying to herself:“I hae heard it said o’ John Beaton that he never, a’ his days, looket twice in the face o’ a bonny lass as gin there were onything to be seen in it mair than ordinar. But I doot, after this day,thatcan never be said o’ him again. His time is come or I’m mista’en,” added she with grim satisfaction. “Noo we’ll see what’s in him.”“And now, Maysie,” said Robin, coming back when the “battle of the baps” was over, “I’m to have the charge o’ you all the way home, my mother said. Allie has had enough o’ ye by this time. And we have Peter Gilchrist’s cart, full o’ clean straw, where ye can sit like a wee queen among her courtiers. So come awa’, my bonny May.”But Allison had something to say to that proposal.“No, no! I’ll not lippen her to you and your cairt; your mother could never expect such a thing o’ me,” said she, clasping the child.“Well, all I can say is, these were my orders, and ye maun take the responsibility of disobedience. What say ye, Maysie?”“Oh! Allie, it would be fine to go with the ither bairns in the cairt.”“But, my dearie, your mother never could have meant anything like that. It would never, never do. Tired! No, I’m no’ tired yet. And if I were ever so tired—”“Will ye lippen her to me? I have carried Marjorie many a time,” said John Beaton, coming forward and holding out his arms.Allison raised her eyes to his for an instant, and then—not with a smile, but with a sudden faint brightening of the whole face, better to see than any smile, John thought—she put the child in his arms.“Ay, I think I may lippen her to you, since ye have carried her before.”So the child was wrapped warmly, and was well content.“And as ye have the cairt, and I’m not needed with the bairns, I’ll awa’ hame, where my work is waiting me,” said Allison to Robin, and she lost no time.They saw her appearing and disappearing, as she kept her way among the heather for a while; and then John Beaton said, with a long breath, that they would need to go. So the mistress was made comfortable in the cart with as many of the little ones as could be packed into it, and Robin took the reins. The rest of them went down the hill in a body, and all got safely home at last. And the happiest of them all was Marjorie when John laid her tired, but smiling and content, upon her little couch.“Oh, mother! it’s fine to be like the other bairns. I have had such a happy day. And, mother,” she whispered, as her mother bent over her, undoing her wraps, “you’ll need to ask John to stay to tea.”But John would not stay. He must take tea with his mother this first night, he said, which Marjorie owned was but right. So he went away. He came back again to worship, however, after Marjorie was in bed.Peter Gilchrist was there too, and Saunners Crombie. It was a way the folk o’ the little kirk had, to time their business at the smithy or the mill, so as to be able to drop in at the usual hour for family worship at the manse. At such times there was rather apt to be “lang worship,” not always so welcome to the tired lads as to the visitors, and to-night Jack and Davie murmured audibly to their mother when the chapter was given out.For the chapter was about Jacob seeking for his father’s blessing, and the lads felt that Peter and Saunners might keep on to any length about him. And so it proved. Decided opinions were expressed and maintained as eagerly as though each one present had a personal interest in the matter. Peter Gilchrist had his misgivings about Jacob. He was “a pawkie lad” in Peter’s estimation—“nae just fair forth the gait in his dealings with his brother, and even waur (worse) with his old blind father, to whom he should have thought shame to tell lees in that graceless way.”Saunners, on the other hand, was inclined to take Jacob’s part, and to make excuses for him as being the one who was to inherit the promise, and the blame was by him laid at the door “of the deceiving auld wife, Rebekah, by whom he had evidently been ill brocht up”; and so they “summered and wintered” the matter, as Jack said they would be sure to do, and for a while there seemed little prospect of coming to the end of it. But it mattered less to Jack or to Davie either, as they soon were fast asleep.The minister put in a word now and then, and kept them to the point when they were inclined to wander, but the two had the weight of the discussion to themselves. As for John Beaton, he never opened his lips till it was time to raise the psalm; and whether he had got the good of the discussion, or whether he had heard a word of it, might well be doubted, judging by the look of his face when Mrs Hume put the psalm-book into his hand.It was time to draw to an end, for there were several sleepers among them before the chapter was done. Allison had made a place for Davie’s sleepy head upon her lap, and then after a little her Bible slipped from her hand, and she was asleep herself. It had been a long day to her, and her walk and the keen air of the hills had tired her, and she slept on amid the murmur of voices—not the uneasy slumber of one who sleeps against her will; there was no struggle against the power that held her, no bowing or nodding, or sudden waking up to a sense of the situation, so amusing to those who are looking on. Sitting erect, with the back of her mutch just touching the angle made by the wall and the half-open door, she slumbered on peacefully, no one taking heed of her, or rather no one giving token of the same.After a time her mistress noticed her, and thought, “Allison has over-wearied herself and ought to be in her bed,” and she wished heartily that the interest of the two friends in Jacob and his misdeeds might speedily come to an end, at least for the present. And then, struck by the change which slumber had made on the beautiful face of the girl, she forgot the talk that was going on, and thought only of Allison. The gloom which so often shadowed her face was no longer there, nor the startled look, half fear and half defiance, to which the gloom sometimes gave place when she perceived herself to be observed. Her lips, slightly apart, had lost the set look which seemed to tell of silence that must be kept, whatever befell. The whole expression of the face was changed and softened. It looked very youthful, almost childlike, in its repose.“That is the way she must have looked before her trouble came upon her, whatever it may have been,” thought Mrs Hume with a sigh. And then she said softly to the minister: “I doubt it is growing late, and the bairns are very weary.”“Yes, it is time to draw to a close.” So he ended the discussion with a few judicious words, and then read the remaining verses of the chapter and gave out the psalm.Sometimes, on receiving such a hint from the mother, it was his way to “omit the singing for a night.” But this was John Beaton’s first night among them, and the lads and their mother would, he thought, like the singing. And so he read the psalm and waited in silence for John to begin, and then Mrs Hume turned toward him.A little withdrawn from the rest, John sat with his head upon his hand, and his eyes fixed on the face of Allison Bain. His own face was pale, with a strange look upon it, as though he had forgotten where he was, and had lost himself in a dream. Mrs Hume was startled.“John,” said she softly, putting the book into his hand.And then, instead of the strong, full tones which were naturally to be expected when John Beaton opened his lips, his voice rose, full, but soft and clear, and instinctively the tones of Robin and his mother were modulated to his. As for the others, they did not sing at all. For John was not singing the psalm which the minister had read, nor was he even looking at the book. But softly, as a mother might sing to her child, the words came:“Jehovah hear thee in the dayWhen trouble He doth send,And let the name of Jacob’s GodThee from all ill defend.“Oh! let Him help send from aboveOut of His sanctuary,From Sion His own holy hill,Let Him give strength to thee.”Allison’s eyes were open by this time. She seemed to be seeing something which no one else saw, and a look of peace was on her face, which Mrs Hume had never seen on it before. “She must have been dreaming.” Then the singing went on:“Let Him remember all thy gifts,Accept thy sacrifice,Grant thee thy heart’s wish, and fulfilThy thoughts and counsels wise.”And then John’s voice rose full and clear, and so did the voices of the others, each carrying a part, in a way which made even the minister wonder:“In thy salvation we will joy,In our God’s name we willLift up our banner, and the LordThy prayers all fulfil.”Then the books were closed, and the minister prayed, and without a word or a look to any one, except only sleepy Davie, Allison rose and went away. But in her heart she was repeating:“Grant thee thy heart’s wish and fulfilThy thoughts and counsels wise.In thy salvation we will joy—”“Maybe the Lord has minded on me, and sent me this word. I will take it for a sign.”The two friends went out into the dark, as Saunners said, “strengthened by the occasion,” but it was not of Jacob, nor his blessing nor his banishment that they “discoorsed” together as they jogged along, sitting among the straw in Peter’s cart. Peter was inclined to be sleepy after the long day, and had he been alone he would have committed himself to the sense and judgment of his mare Tibbie, and slept all the way home. But his friend “wasna ane o’ the sleepy kind,” as he said, and he had something to say.“What ailed John Beaton the nicht, think ye? He’s ready eneuch to put in his word for ordinar, but he never opened his mouth through a’ the exerceese, and was awa’ like a shot ere ever we were off our knees, with not a word to onybody, though he’s but just hame.”“Ay, that was just it. He would be thinkin’ o’ his mither, puir bodie, at hame her lane.”“Ay, that micht account for his haste, and it micht weel hae keepit him at hame a’thegither, to my thinkin’. But that needna hae keepit his mouth shut since he was there. It’s no’ his way to hide his licht aneath a bushel as a general thing.”“It wad be a peety gin he did that. Licht is needed among us,” said Peter, who admired in his friend the gift of easy speaking, which he did not possess himself.“Oh! ay, that’s what I’m sayin’. And what for had he naething to say the nicht? I doot it’s nae just as it should be with him, or he wad hae been readier with his word.”“There’s sic a thing as being ower-ready wi’ ane’s word. There’s a time to keep silence an’ a time to speak, according to Solomon. But word or no word I’m no’ feart for John Beaton.”“Weel, I canna just say that I’m feart for him mysel’; and as ye say, he’s maybe whiles ower-ready to put in his word wi’ aulder folk. But gaein’ here and there among a kind o’ folk, he has need to be watchfu’ and to use his privileges when he has the opportunity.”“We a’ need to be watchful.”“Ay, do we, as ye say. But there are folk for whom ower-muckle prosperity’s nae benefit.”“There’s few o’ us been tried wi’ ower-muckle prosperity of late, I’m thinkin’. And as for John, if a’ tales be true, he has had his share o’ the ither thing in his day.”“Weel, I hae been hearin’ that John Beaton has had a measure o’ prosperity since he was here afore, and if it’s good for him it will bide wi’ him. He kens Him that sent it, and who has His e’e on him.”“Ay, ay; it’s as ye say. But prosperity or no prosperity, I’m no’ feart for John.”“Weel, I canna just say that I’m feart for him mysel’. Gin he is ane o’ His ain, the Lord will keep a grip o’ him, dootless. It’s no’ that I’m feart, but he has never taken the richt stand among us, as ye ken. And ye ken also wha says, ‘Come oot from among them and be ye separate.’ He ay comes to the kirk when he’s here. But we’ve nae richt hold on him. And where he gaes, or what he does at ither places, wha kens? I hae ay fear o’ folk that are ‘neither cauld nor het.’”Fortunately the friends had reached the spot where their ways parted, and Peter, being slow of speech, had not his answer ready, so Saunners went home content at having said his say, and more content still at having had the last word.All this time John Beaton was striding about the lanes in the darkness, as much at a loss as his friend, Saunners Crombie, as to what had happened to him. He had not got the length of thinking about it yet. He was just “dazed-like,” as the schoolmistress would have said—confused, perplexed, bewildered, getting only a glimpse of what might be the cause of it all, and the consequences.If he had known—if it had come into his mind, that the sorrowful eyes which were looking at him out of the darkness—the soft, brown eyes, like Crummie’s, which had met his first on the hilltop, might have power over him to make or to undo, as other eyes had wrought good or evil in the lives of other men, he would have laughed at the thought and scorned it.He had had a long day of it. Since three in the morning he had walked the thirty miles that lay between Nethermuir and Aberdeen, to say nothing of the rumble in Peter Gilchrist’s cart to the Stanin’ Stanes, and the walk home again with little Marjorie in his arms. No wonder that he was a little upset, he told himself. He was tired, and it was time he was in his bed. So with a glance at the moon which was showing her face from behind a cloud—she had a queer look, he thought—he turned homeward.He stepped lightly, and opened the door softly, lest his mother should be disturbed so late. A foolish thought of his, since he knew that “his very step had music in’t” to her ears.“Well, John?” said she, as he paused a moment at her door. And when he did not answer at once, she asked, “Is it well with you, John?”“Surely, mother. Why should you ask?”“And they were glad to see you at the manse?”“Oh! yes, mother. They’re ay kind, as ye ken.”“Ay, they’re ay kind. And did you see—Allison Bain?”“Allison Bain!” repeated John, dazed-like still. “Ay, I saw her—at the Stanin’ Stanes, as I told you.”“Yes, you told me. And all’s well with you, John?”“Surely, mother,” repeated John, a little impatiently. “What should ail me?” And then he added, “I’m tired with my long tramp, and I’ll away to my bed. Good-night, mother.”He touched with his strong, young fingers the wrinkled hand that lay on the coverlid, and the touch said more to her than a kiss or a caress would have said to some mothers.“Sleep sound!” said she.But the charm did not work, for when daylight came he had not closed his eyes.
“Love sought is good, but love unsought is better.”
“Love sought is good, but love unsought is better.”
John Beaton came slowly up the height which hid for the moment the spot where the bairns had gathered, and Robin followed with his bag on his shoulder. Confusion reigned triumphant. Some of the little ones had become tired and fretful, and the elder girls were doing what they could to comfort and encourage them. But by far the greater number were as lively as when they set out in the morning, and by no means in haste to end their day of pleasure. Up the shelving side of one of the great grey stones they were clambering, and then, with shrill shrieks and laughter, springing over the other side to the turf below. Not the slightest heed was given to the voice of the mistress, heard amid the din, expostulating, warning, threatening “broken banes and bluidy noses, ere a’ was dane.” This was what Robin saw, and it was “a sight worth seeing.”
What John Beaton saw was Allison Bain standing apart, with Marjorie in her arms, and he saw nothing else for a while. Even Robin, with his bag on his shoulder, stopped a moment to gaze at “our lass,” as he called her in a whisper to his friend. She looked a very different lass from “our Allie” in the manse kitchen, with her downcast eyes, and her silence, and her utter engrossment with the work of the moment. Her big mutch had fallen off, and a mass of bright hair lay over the arm which the child had clasped about her neck. The air had brought a wonderful soft colour to her cheeks, and her lips were smiling, and so were her eyes, as she watched the wild play of the bairns, and her darling’s delight in it. There was not a sign of stooping or weariness.
“Though Davie says she carried Maysie every step of the way,” said Robert to his friend. “Man! John! It might be Diana herself!”
But John said nothing, and Robin had no time for more, for the bairns had descried him and his bag, and were down on him, as he said, like a pack of hungry wolves.
So John shook hands with the mistress, “in a dazed-like way,” she said afterward, and at the first moment had scarce a word for Marjorie, who greeted him with delight.
“John, this is my Allie,” said she, laying her hand on her friend’s glowing cheek, “and, Allie, this is Mrs Beaton’s John, ye ken.”
Allie glanced round at the new-comer, but she was too busy gathering back the wisp of hair that the wind was blowing about her face to see the hand which he held out to her, and the smile had gone quite out of her eyes when she raised them to his face.
“They minded me o’ Crummie’s een,” John told his mother long afterward.
The schoolmistress sat down upon a stone, thankful that her labours were over, and that the guiding home of the bairns had fallen into stronger hands than hers. And as she watched the struggle for the booty which came tumbling out of the bag, she was saying to herself:
“I hae heard it said o’ John Beaton that he never, a’ his days, looket twice in the face o’ a bonny lass as gin there were onything to be seen in it mair than ordinar. But I doot, after this day,thatcan never be said o’ him again. His time is come or I’m mista’en,” added she with grim satisfaction. “Noo we’ll see what’s in him.”
“And now, Maysie,” said Robin, coming back when the “battle of the baps” was over, “I’m to have the charge o’ you all the way home, my mother said. Allie has had enough o’ ye by this time. And we have Peter Gilchrist’s cart, full o’ clean straw, where ye can sit like a wee queen among her courtiers. So come awa’, my bonny May.”
But Allison had something to say to that proposal.
“No, no! I’ll not lippen her to you and your cairt; your mother could never expect such a thing o’ me,” said she, clasping the child.
“Well, all I can say is, these were my orders, and ye maun take the responsibility of disobedience. What say ye, Maysie?”
“Oh! Allie, it would be fine to go with the ither bairns in the cairt.”
“But, my dearie, your mother never could have meant anything like that. It would never, never do. Tired! No, I’m no’ tired yet. And if I were ever so tired—”
“Will ye lippen her to me? I have carried Marjorie many a time,” said John Beaton, coming forward and holding out his arms.
Allison raised her eyes to his for an instant, and then—not with a smile, but with a sudden faint brightening of the whole face, better to see than any smile, John thought—she put the child in his arms.
“Ay, I think I may lippen her to you, since ye have carried her before.”
So the child was wrapped warmly, and was well content.
“And as ye have the cairt, and I’m not needed with the bairns, I’ll awa’ hame, where my work is waiting me,” said Allison to Robin, and she lost no time.
They saw her appearing and disappearing, as she kept her way among the heather for a while; and then John Beaton said, with a long breath, that they would need to go. So the mistress was made comfortable in the cart with as many of the little ones as could be packed into it, and Robin took the reins. The rest of them went down the hill in a body, and all got safely home at last. And the happiest of them all was Marjorie when John laid her tired, but smiling and content, upon her little couch.
“Oh, mother! it’s fine to be like the other bairns. I have had such a happy day. And, mother,” she whispered, as her mother bent over her, undoing her wraps, “you’ll need to ask John to stay to tea.”
But John would not stay. He must take tea with his mother this first night, he said, which Marjorie owned was but right. So he went away. He came back again to worship, however, after Marjorie was in bed.
Peter Gilchrist was there too, and Saunners Crombie. It was a way the folk o’ the little kirk had, to time their business at the smithy or the mill, so as to be able to drop in at the usual hour for family worship at the manse. At such times there was rather apt to be “lang worship,” not always so welcome to the tired lads as to the visitors, and to-night Jack and Davie murmured audibly to their mother when the chapter was given out.
For the chapter was about Jacob seeking for his father’s blessing, and the lads felt that Peter and Saunners might keep on to any length about him. And so it proved. Decided opinions were expressed and maintained as eagerly as though each one present had a personal interest in the matter. Peter Gilchrist had his misgivings about Jacob. He was “a pawkie lad” in Peter’s estimation—“nae just fair forth the gait in his dealings with his brother, and even waur (worse) with his old blind father, to whom he should have thought shame to tell lees in that graceless way.”
Saunners, on the other hand, was inclined to take Jacob’s part, and to make excuses for him as being the one who was to inherit the promise, and the blame was by him laid at the door “of the deceiving auld wife, Rebekah, by whom he had evidently been ill brocht up”; and so they “summered and wintered” the matter, as Jack said they would be sure to do, and for a while there seemed little prospect of coming to the end of it. But it mattered less to Jack or to Davie either, as they soon were fast asleep.
The minister put in a word now and then, and kept them to the point when they were inclined to wander, but the two had the weight of the discussion to themselves. As for John Beaton, he never opened his lips till it was time to raise the psalm; and whether he had got the good of the discussion, or whether he had heard a word of it, might well be doubted, judging by the look of his face when Mrs Hume put the psalm-book into his hand.
It was time to draw to an end, for there were several sleepers among them before the chapter was done. Allison had made a place for Davie’s sleepy head upon her lap, and then after a little her Bible slipped from her hand, and she was asleep herself. It had been a long day to her, and her walk and the keen air of the hills had tired her, and she slept on amid the murmur of voices—not the uneasy slumber of one who sleeps against her will; there was no struggle against the power that held her, no bowing or nodding, or sudden waking up to a sense of the situation, so amusing to those who are looking on. Sitting erect, with the back of her mutch just touching the angle made by the wall and the half-open door, she slumbered on peacefully, no one taking heed of her, or rather no one giving token of the same.
After a time her mistress noticed her, and thought, “Allison has over-wearied herself and ought to be in her bed,” and she wished heartily that the interest of the two friends in Jacob and his misdeeds might speedily come to an end, at least for the present. And then, struck by the change which slumber had made on the beautiful face of the girl, she forgot the talk that was going on, and thought only of Allison. The gloom which so often shadowed her face was no longer there, nor the startled look, half fear and half defiance, to which the gloom sometimes gave place when she perceived herself to be observed. Her lips, slightly apart, had lost the set look which seemed to tell of silence that must be kept, whatever befell. The whole expression of the face was changed and softened. It looked very youthful, almost childlike, in its repose.
“That is the way she must have looked before her trouble came upon her, whatever it may have been,” thought Mrs Hume with a sigh. And then she said softly to the minister: “I doubt it is growing late, and the bairns are very weary.”
“Yes, it is time to draw to a close.” So he ended the discussion with a few judicious words, and then read the remaining verses of the chapter and gave out the psalm.
Sometimes, on receiving such a hint from the mother, it was his way to “omit the singing for a night.” But this was John Beaton’s first night among them, and the lads and their mother would, he thought, like the singing. And so he read the psalm and waited in silence for John to begin, and then Mrs Hume turned toward him.
A little withdrawn from the rest, John sat with his head upon his hand, and his eyes fixed on the face of Allison Bain. His own face was pale, with a strange look upon it, as though he had forgotten where he was, and had lost himself in a dream. Mrs Hume was startled.
“John,” said she softly, putting the book into his hand.
And then, instead of the strong, full tones which were naturally to be expected when John Beaton opened his lips, his voice rose, full, but soft and clear, and instinctively the tones of Robin and his mother were modulated to his. As for the others, they did not sing at all. For John was not singing the psalm which the minister had read, nor was he even looking at the book. But softly, as a mother might sing to her child, the words came:
“Jehovah hear thee in the dayWhen trouble He doth send,And let the name of Jacob’s GodThee from all ill defend.“Oh! let Him help send from aboveOut of His sanctuary,From Sion His own holy hill,Let Him give strength to thee.”
“Jehovah hear thee in the dayWhen trouble He doth send,And let the name of Jacob’s GodThee from all ill defend.“Oh! let Him help send from aboveOut of His sanctuary,From Sion His own holy hill,Let Him give strength to thee.”
Allison’s eyes were open by this time. She seemed to be seeing something which no one else saw, and a look of peace was on her face, which Mrs Hume had never seen on it before. “She must have been dreaming.” Then the singing went on:
“Let Him remember all thy gifts,Accept thy sacrifice,Grant thee thy heart’s wish, and fulfilThy thoughts and counsels wise.”
“Let Him remember all thy gifts,Accept thy sacrifice,Grant thee thy heart’s wish, and fulfilThy thoughts and counsels wise.”
And then John’s voice rose full and clear, and so did the voices of the others, each carrying a part, in a way which made even the minister wonder:
“In thy salvation we will joy,In our God’s name we willLift up our banner, and the LordThy prayers all fulfil.”
“In thy salvation we will joy,In our God’s name we willLift up our banner, and the LordThy prayers all fulfil.”
Then the books were closed, and the minister prayed, and without a word or a look to any one, except only sleepy Davie, Allison rose and went away. But in her heart she was repeating:
“Grant thee thy heart’s wish and fulfilThy thoughts and counsels wise.In thy salvation we will joy—”
“Grant thee thy heart’s wish and fulfilThy thoughts and counsels wise.In thy salvation we will joy—”
“Maybe the Lord has minded on me, and sent me this word. I will take it for a sign.”
The two friends went out into the dark, as Saunners said, “strengthened by the occasion,” but it was not of Jacob, nor his blessing nor his banishment that they “discoorsed” together as they jogged along, sitting among the straw in Peter’s cart. Peter was inclined to be sleepy after the long day, and had he been alone he would have committed himself to the sense and judgment of his mare Tibbie, and slept all the way home. But his friend “wasna ane o’ the sleepy kind,” as he said, and he had something to say.
“What ailed John Beaton the nicht, think ye? He’s ready eneuch to put in his word for ordinar, but he never opened his mouth through a’ the exerceese, and was awa’ like a shot ere ever we were off our knees, with not a word to onybody, though he’s but just hame.”
“Ay, that was just it. He would be thinkin’ o’ his mither, puir bodie, at hame her lane.”
“Ay, that micht account for his haste, and it micht weel hae keepit him at hame a’thegither, to my thinkin’. But that needna hae keepit his mouth shut since he was there. It’s no’ his way to hide his licht aneath a bushel as a general thing.”
“It wad be a peety gin he did that. Licht is needed among us,” said Peter, who admired in his friend the gift of easy speaking, which he did not possess himself.
“Oh! ay, that’s what I’m sayin’. And what for had he naething to say the nicht? I doot it’s nae just as it should be with him, or he wad hae been readier with his word.”
“There’s sic a thing as being ower-ready wi’ ane’s word. There’s a time to keep silence an’ a time to speak, according to Solomon. But word or no word I’m no’ feart for John Beaton.”
“Weel, I canna just say that I’m feart for him mysel’; and as ye say, he’s maybe whiles ower-ready to put in his word wi’ aulder folk. But gaein’ here and there among a kind o’ folk, he has need to be watchfu’ and to use his privileges when he has the opportunity.”
“We a’ need to be watchful.”
“Ay, do we, as ye say. But there are folk for whom ower-muckle prosperity’s nae benefit.”
“There’s few o’ us been tried wi’ ower-muckle prosperity of late, I’m thinkin’. And as for John, if a’ tales be true, he has had his share o’ the ither thing in his day.”
“Weel, I hae been hearin’ that John Beaton has had a measure o’ prosperity since he was here afore, and if it’s good for him it will bide wi’ him. He kens Him that sent it, and who has His e’e on him.”
“Ay, ay; it’s as ye say. But prosperity or no prosperity, I’m no’ feart for John.”
“Weel, I canna just say that I’m feart for him mysel’. Gin he is ane o’ His ain, the Lord will keep a grip o’ him, dootless. It’s no’ that I’m feart, but he has never taken the richt stand among us, as ye ken. And ye ken also wha says, ‘Come oot from among them and be ye separate.’ He ay comes to the kirk when he’s here. But we’ve nae richt hold on him. And where he gaes, or what he does at ither places, wha kens? I hae ay fear o’ folk that are ‘neither cauld nor het.’”
Fortunately the friends had reached the spot where their ways parted, and Peter, being slow of speech, had not his answer ready, so Saunners went home content at having said his say, and more content still at having had the last word.
All this time John Beaton was striding about the lanes in the darkness, as much at a loss as his friend, Saunners Crombie, as to what had happened to him. He had not got the length of thinking about it yet. He was just “dazed-like,” as the schoolmistress would have said—confused, perplexed, bewildered, getting only a glimpse of what might be the cause of it all, and the consequences.
If he had known—if it had come into his mind, that the sorrowful eyes which were looking at him out of the darkness—the soft, brown eyes, like Crummie’s, which had met his first on the hilltop, might have power over him to make or to undo, as other eyes had wrought good or evil in the lives of other men, he would have laughed at the thought and scorned it.
He had had a long day of it. Since three in the morning he had walked the thirty miles that lay between Nethermuir and Aberdeen, to say nothing of the rumble in Peter Gilchrist’s cart to the Stanin’ Stanes, and the walk home again with little Marjorie in his arms. No wonder that he was a little upset, he told himself. He was tired, and it was time he was in his bed. So with a glance at the moon which was showing her face from behind a cloud—she had a queer look, he thought—he turned homeward.
He stepped lightly, and opened the door softly, lest his mother should be disturbed so late. A foolish thought of his, since he knew that “his very step had music in’t” to her ears.
“Well, John?” said she, as he paused a moment at her door. And when he did not answer at once, she asked, “Is it well with you, John?”
“Surely, mother. Why should you ask?”
“And they were glad to see you at the manse?”
“Oh! yes, mother. They’re ay kind, as ye ken.”
“Ay, they’re ay kind. And did you see—Allison Bain?”
“Allison Bain!” repeated John, dazed-like still. “Ay, I saw her—at the Stanin’ Stanes, as I told you.”
“Yes, you told me. And all’s well with you, John?”
“Surely, mother,” repeated John, a little impatiently. “What should ail me?” And then he added, “I’m tired with my long tramp, and I’ll away to my bed. Good-night, mother.”
He touched with his strong, young fingers the wrinkled hand that lay on the coverlid, and the touch said more to her than a kiss or a caress would have said to some mothers.
“Sleep sound!” said she.
But the charm did not work, for when daylight came he had not closed his eyes.
Chapter Nine.“The honest man, howe’er so poor,Is king of men for a’ that.”John Beaton’s father had been John Beaton also, and so hadhisfather before him. The first John had farmed a three-cornered nook of land, which had found a place among the grey stones scattered closely over a certain part of the high coast that looks down upon one of the narrow bays setting in from the North Sea.He must have been a strong man, this John, for on this bit of land he lived and laboured for sixty years and more, and on it he brought up, and then sent out, to make a place for themselves, in their own, or in other land’s, five strong sons and four fair daughters. And he had so brought them up that never, as long as he lived, did he, or any one else, hear aught of son or daughter to cause him to bow his good grey head before the face of man.One son, neither the eldest nor the youngest, stayed near home. First he had broken stones on one of the great highways which they were stretching through Scotland about that time. Then he learned to cut and dress the grey granite of his native hills, and then to build it into houses, under another man’s eye, and at another man’s bidding. After a time he took his turn, first as overseer, and then as master-builder, and succeeded, and men began to speak of him as a rising man, and one well-to-do in the world. All this was before he had got beyond middle life.Then he married a woman “much above him,” it was said, but that was a mistake. For though Marion Sinclair came of a good stock, and had all her life lived in a home well placed and well plenished, among folk who might have thought themselves, and whom others might have thought to be John Beaton’s superiors, yet no man or woman of them all had a right to look down on John Beaton. He stood firm on his own feet, in a place which his own hand had won. No step had he ever taken which he had needed to go back upon, nor had he ever had cause to cast down his eyes before the face of man because of any doubtful deed done, or false word spoken.And Marion Sinclair, no longer in her first youth, might well go a proud and happy bride to the home of a man wise and strong, far-seeing, honest, and successful—one who loved her dearly, as a man of middle age may love, who in his youth has told himself that he had neither will nor time for such sweet folly.With all his strong and sterling qualities he was regarded by the world in general, as, perhaps, a little hard and self-opinioned. But he was never hard to her, or to the one son who was born to them. He exacted what was his due from the rest of the world, but he was always soft and yielding to them in all things. He was proud of his success and of his good name in the countryside, and he offended some of those who came into contact with him by letting his pride in all this be too plainly seen. But he was prouder far of his wife, and his happy home, and of his young son, with whom, to his thought, no prince in all the land could compare.And so it went well with him, till one day the end came suddenly. A broken bank, a dishonoured name, scathe and scorn to some—to him among the rest—who was, God knows, neither in deed nor in thought guilty of the sin which had brought ruin upon thousands.He made a gallant stand for his good name and his well-earned fortune, and for his fellow-sufferers; but he was an old man by this time, and he died of it.Mrs Beaton had never all her life been a strong woman, and had never needed to think and act for herself in trying circumstances. She had not the skill to plan nor the strength to execute, and it was too late to begin now. But she could endure, and she did so, with long patience; and though her face grew thin and white, she gave no sign of anger, or discontent, or of breaking down under her troubles, as all her little world had believed she would surely do.Amid the din and dulness of the great town in which they first took refuge for a while, she made a home for her son, and waited patiently to see what his young strength might do for them both, and never, by word or look, made his struggle for standing room in the crowd harder for him, or his daily disappointment worse to bear.He fought his way to standing room at last—standing room at a high desk in a dark office, at work which he had still to learn, and which, though he loathed it, he might have learned to do in time if it had not “floored him” first.“Mother,” he cried one night in despair, “let us get away from this place—anywhere, where there is room to breathe. I will work with my hands as my father did before me. There are still surely stones to break somewhere up there in the north. We’ll get fresh air at least.”So, without a word of doubt or of expostulation, she made haste to get ready, while they had yet the means of going, and they went north together, where they found, indeed, fresh air, and for a time they found nothing else. But fresh air was something to rejoice in, since it brought back the colour to the lad’s cheeks and lightened the heart of the mother, and they kept up one another’s courage as well as might be.A chance to earn their bread, that was all John wanted, and it came at last; but it was dry bread only for a while.“What can you do? And what are you willing to do?” said a man who was the overseer of other men, and whom John had seen several times at the place where his work was done. John answered:“I am willing to do anything. And I think I could break stones.”“I think I see you!” said the man with a shrug.“I only wish I had a chance to show you. I think I might even chip awa’ at cutting them, to as good purpose as some of those lads yonder.”“Here, Sandy,” said the overseer. “Gie this lad your hammer, and let him try his hand, for the fun o’ the thing.”The man laughed, but John Beaton was in earnest. In a minute his coat was off, and he set to work with a will. He needed a hint or two, and he got them, with a little banter thrown in. The lad stuck to his work, and could, as his friend said, “do no’ that ill.” He had perhaps inherited the power to do the work, since he could do it, he thought, and he asked leave to come again in the morning.“Ye hae earned your shilling,” said the overseer, when it was time to go, and he held one out to John. He hardly expected the lad to take it, but he took it gladly, and looked at it, the man thought, in a curious way.“Is it the first shilling ye ever earned?” said he.“The very first! May I come back to-morrow?”“O, ay! gin ye like; but I should think that this is hardly the kind o’ work ye’re best fitted for.”“One must take what one can get,” said John.That was the beginning. He went again, and as hands happened to be scarce at the time, he was kept on, and his wages were raised as his skill and his strength increased. By and by he was offered permanent work on a mill that was to be built in a country place at some distance. It would take months to build, and he would be sure of work for that time; so he took his mother with him, and what household stuff they had left, and lived in a tiny room in a cottage for a while.Not very far from the new mill was Nethermuir, a quiet place, out of the way, where they might live, they said to one another, unknown and forgotten. And here, after many thoughts about it, they resolved to make themselves a home.At the end of the street on which stood the missionary kirk and manse, was a small house which had once been of the better sort, but which had been vacant for some time, and had fallen into disrepair. The thatch was rotten and the roof had partly fallen in, but the foundation was firm, and the walls were thick and strong. This house John leased for seven years, at a very small rent, and by his own strength, and skill, and will, with some help from his fellow-workmen, he made of it such a house as was not unworthy of being a home for his mother; and in it, while her son went here and there as his work called him, she lived content.Terrible as the blow was which took from them husband and father and home, it might have been worse in the end had John Beaton died a rich man. So said some of the lookers-on, who long before that time had declared that his son, having all his life long got more of his own will than was good for him, was in a fair way to become a “spoiled laddie” at last.Some said it who envied the lad, and others said it who loved him well, and it is possible that they were not far wrong in the belief. John the younger was a “bonny lad,” tall and strong, sweet-tempered and light-hearted, a favourite with all. But he was open to temptation like the rest of his kind, even more so than many, and not all of those who gathered round him in his prosperous days were of the sort likely to influence him for good. He went through the first years at the university without getting much good from it, it was said. He had disappointed his father greatly, as well as his teachers; but though he had been foolish and idle, he had not disgraced himself by anything beyond idleness and folly. Whether he would have gone through the course without doing worse, might be questioned.The chance was not given him. His father died, and instead of inheriting what would have been called wealth among those who were his friends, he found himself penniless, having his own bread, and possibly his mother’s also, to win. And seeing there was good stuff in the lad, his mother’s helplessness and desolation might be the saving of him, said one of his mother’s humble friends.They had friends—yes, many of them—but some of them had suffered loss as they themselves had suffered, and had no power to help except with kind words. Others who had the power to help had not the will, or only the will to help in their own way. Others added to their offers advice that could not be followed, or they hurt the sore hearts of the lad and his mother with words which implied censure on the dead, because he had not foreseen and provided against the coming of evil days. And so, seeing no help among “kenned folk,” the two went out, “not knowing whither they went.”They had gone away bravely enough, and even through the dark days which came first, it cannot be said that they quite lost heart or hope. As long as his mother was content, John told himself, he did not care what fell to him to do or to endure; and as long as John was well, and within reach of hand or voice, it was well with the mother. It was not till the first months were over that John’s heart seemed to fail. When the mill was finished, instead of going with the men to other work in another direction, he remained in Nethermuir, hoping to find something to do in the neighbourhood, so that he might be near his mother. He found enough to do for a time in making the little house a comfortable and even beautiful home for her. Then he prepared the neglected bit of ground around it for a garden and took pleasure in doing it. It was work which he liked, and which he knew how to do, but it put nothing into the family purse, which was getting low, and something must be done to replenish it.He worked for a few weeks in harvest in the narrow fields of Peter Gilchrist, and to good purpose, though the work was new to him; and he made friends with Peter himself, which was something. But the harvest wore over and winter was coming on, and then he wrote to Jamie Dunn, his first friend, saying he was now ready and willing to go wherever he should be sent.But in his heart he knew that for the only work which was left to him to do, he was neither ready nor willing, nor for the kind of life which he saw stretching a long, weary way before him.He could do as his father had done before him, he told his mother cheerfully, and who had done better than he? But to himself he owned that this was to be doubted. He could never do as his father had done; he was not the man his father had been, or he could never have played the fool, wasting his time and losing his opportunities, as he had done. He had been spoiled with softness, with idle days, and the pleasant things of life, which he could not forget, and which, like a weakling, he was in his secret heart longing for still. And even his father had not won what men called success, and a firm footing among his fellows, till the best part of his life was over.But his father had been content through all his days as they came, and with his day’s work and his day’s wages. And his father had known his own strength and could bide his time. As for his son, John told himself that he was neither strong nor wise. He knew, or he feared at this time, that only the thought of his mother and her need of him kept him from despair.He called it despair, poor lad, not knowing what he said. The depths of despair came to him with the thought of enlisting as a common soldier, to go away and live his life with as little exercise of his own will as the musket he carried, and to death and a nameless grave. Or it meant to sail away before the mast, a slave to some tyrant who held the power of life and death, because he held the power of the lash. And it might have come to one or other of these possibilities with him, if it had not been for his mother and her need of him.For the dead level of the life which he saw stretching out before him seemed even worse to him than that—the life of ceaseless, ill-remunerated labour, the companionship of men grown dull through a changeless routine of toilsome days, or debased through ignorance or self-indulgence, a life and a companionship with which he might at last grow content, being no stronger or wiser than other men.These were dark days for the young man. At last he took his mother’s gently spoken words of counsel to heart, and opened the box in which she had secretly packed his college-books, and where they had lain hidden all this time. But the sight of them, and the associations they called up, made him heartsick and ashamed, and it was only by the exercise of strong self-restraint that he made himself pretend to take some interest in them for his mother’s sake. After this he fell into the way of taking long walks in all directions, and did a turn of work here and there as he could get it, and generally came home hungry, and tired, and ready for his bed, so that no reading could be expected of him.But the days were growing short, and the dark hours many and long, and the mother’s heart “grew wae” for her son many a time. By and by something happened.It was a good thing for the minister’s Davie that John Beaton was within sound of the voices of the lad’s terrified companions the day that he fell into “Burney’s Pot,” and it was a good thing also for John. The little lad was nearly gone when he was pulled out of the water, and having no knowledge of his home or name, since his young companions had taken to their heels as soon as they saw Davie safe, John took him home to his mother, and together they did what could be done for his help.This was the beginning. Davie was allowed to fall asleep in Mrs Beaton’s bed, and in the gloaming John carried him home wrapped in a blanket, and then he saw the minister and his wife and Marjorie. It was the beginning for John of more than can well be told.His manner of life from that time was changed. Not that he went often to the manse at first, though the door was always open to him, and a welcome awaiting him. But the life he saw there, the words he heard, and the spirit that showed in all that was done, or said, or planned, in great things and in small, came like a new revelation to him; and the more he saw and thought of it all, the less he thought about his own loss and his changed life and his unhopeful prospects.He had more days of leisure that winter than well pleased him, but not one of them was spent in wandering aimlessly about the dreary hills. He had company, most days, wherever he went. If he had not Robin or Jack, there was always Davie, who seemed to think he had a special claim upon him. Davie had not yet been promoted to a seat in the parish school, but was beginning to think himself, at eight, too big a boy for Mistress Jamieson’s rule, since he could say the Catechism from end to end, proofs and petitions and all. With Davie trotting along at his side, John had little chance for brooding. Besides, he had taken to his books again, and meant to employ his leisure and make up for lost time if such a thing might be. It was not likely that he would have much use for Latin or Logic in the life that lay before him, he told himself; but he might as well make the most of the idle days, and keep his mind from stagnation.And he had less of leisure after a while. It was about this time that he began to try his hand at the making of “headstones” for the kirkyard. Chance put such work in his way, and being ready of hand and quick of eye, and having long patience and much need of a job, he set to work with a will. He did not succeed in pleasing himself, but he pleased his employer, which answered the purpose; and he did more at the work, at odd times, when he could get nothing else to do.The life which he saw lived in the manse did something for him, and the Word as it was held forth in the little kirk did more; but that came long afterward. The minister was the busiest of men, either among his books or among his people, or in his garden or his land; but he was never too busy for a cheery word to John, or for help or counsel to any one who needed them. And the same might be said of the minister’s wife. She was active and had enough to do at home, but she was glad to help those who needed help anywhere. She had good sense and good judgment, and was ready with sweet words or sharp words, as the case presented seemed to demand. She was firm where firmness seemed to be required, but had long patience and unfailing gentleness in her dealings with the weak and even with the wilful; and as the days passed, John took heed of her words and ways with ever-growing interest.She had not an easy life, but she had usually firm health and she had a cheerful nature, and the peace of God was in her heart. So she “stood in her lot” strong and unafraid, whatever might befall.She was a loving mother to her sons, but her rule was firm as well as gentle. There was no need in that house to appeal to the father’s stronger will where obedience was not promptly given. It was a serious matter indeed that needed an appeal to their father. To the lads their mother’s word was law. Not that the law was not forgotten sometimes, or even wilfully broken in times of strong temptation. But confession of sins, though not always prompt, was, in course of time, quite certain. She had their confidence entirely. It was an unhappy boy, indeed, who carried about, for even a few days, a sinful or sorrowful secret hidden from his mother.In among these lads John came as another brother, and Mrs Hume was kind and gracious in her intercourse with him. She was faithful also, and told him of faults and failings which his own mother never acknowledged, and helped him to correct them, as, even had she seen them, his own mother might have hesitated to do. It was, indeed, a good day for John when the door of the manse was opened to him.And then there was Marjorie, poor little soul, who was nearly nine, and who looked like six, a fair, weak little creature, who could only walk a step or two at a time, and who was yet as eager to know, and to do, and to be in the midst of things as the strongest of them all. “Another brother,” she called their new friend, who had more sense and patience than Robin or Jack, and who could carry her so easily and strongly without being tired. It was a happy day for Marjorie when John came in to see her. It was better than a new book, she thought, to hear him talk.“And a new book is so soon done with,” said Marjorie, who did not see very many new books, and who had usually learned them by heart before she had had them many days. But John had always something to tell her. He told her about new places and new people, and he had seen the sea, and had sailed on it. He had been in London and had seen the king and the queen, “like the travelled cat,” as Robin said. And there was no end to the stories he could tell her that she had never heard before. She was never tired of listening to him, and hailed his coming with delight, and long before he had come to feel quite at ease with the mother, John had learned to love dearly the eager, gentle little creature, from whose eyes the joy at his coming chased the look of pain and weariness.As for the friendship which grew more slowly, but quite as surely, between John and the elder boys of the manse, it cannot be said whether he or they benefited most by it. To Robin and Jack, John seemed a far wiser and stronger man than he knew himself to be—a man of wider experience, higher aims, and firmer purpose. And their belief in him, their silent yet evident admiration of all his words and ways, their perfect trust in his discretion and sympathy, did as much for him as for them, and helped him to strive for the attainment of all the good gifts which they believed him to possess.He helped them in many ways. He helped them at their work and kept them back from taking part in many a “ploy,” which, though only foolish, and not so very wrong, were still both foolish and wrong to them, because in engaging in them they would waste their time, and—being the minister’s sons—set a bad example to the rest of the lads, and, worst of all, vex their father and their mother. And they could bear to be restrained by him, because, in the carrying out of all harmless fun, they profited by many a hint from John, and sometimes even by his help. But they all agreed that the less said about this matter among the neighbours the better for all concerned.John had been in Nethermuir several months before he saw the inside of the little kirk. He knew little about the folk who worshipped there, except that they were said to be “a queer kin’ o’ folk, who set themselves up as better than their neebors, and wiser than a’ their teachers.” Differing, as they seemed to do, both in preaching and in practice, from the kirk of the nation, they were doubtless wrong, thought John. But whatever they were, they were folk in whom he took no interest, and with whom he had nothing at all to do. So when he had gone to the kirk at all, he had gone to the parish kirk to please his mother, who was not always able to go so far herself. Sometimes he had permitted himself to go even farther than the kirk, coming back when the service was half over to sit for a while on a fallen headstone, as Allison did afterward when her turn came.On fine days his mother went with him, and then it was different. He sat with the rest and listened to what the minister had to say, with no inclination to find fault. Indeed there was no fault to be found from John’s point of view or from the minister’s. It cannot be averred that in what was said there was either “food or physic for the soul of man.” But not knowing himself to be in especial need of either the one or the other, John missed nothing to which he had been accustomed all his days to listen in the kirk.“We had a good discourse,” his mother would say, as they went slowly home together, and John always assented. “Yes, mother, we had a good discourse.”So John went most days to please his mother. But there came a day of rain, and sleet, and bitter east wind, when, if her conscience would have permitted, Mrs Beaton would have refrained from making her usual suggestion about the propriety of honouring the Sabbath-day by going to the kirk. As for John, he was no more afraid of the rain, and the sleet, and the east wind than he was afraid of the summer sunshine; but when he proposed to go to hear Mr Hume, the sound of the sleet and the rain on the windows silenced any objection she might have had to his going “once in a way, the day being wild and wintry,” and she even added a hope that he might “hear something to do him good.”This was at the very beginning of his acquaintance with the minister and his family. If he had waited for a while, till the charm of their friendliness and genuine kindness had wrought, till the time came when he had seen with his own eyes, and heard with his own ears that which proved his new friend to be different in some ways from the most of those to whom he had all his life looked up as leaders and teachers, yet not unworthy also to teach and to lead, John might have been better prepared to get the good which his mother hoped for him. And yet he might not. At any rate, it was to that dark day in the little kirk that, in the years which came afterward, he looked back as the beginning of “good” to him.“A dismal hole,” he called it, as he went in among the first and sat down in a corner. It was scarcely barer or more dingy and dim than the rest of the kirks in country places were in those days; but it was very small, and it had windows only on one side. On that dark day it was dismal, and it could not have been beautiful at any time. The chill of the sleet and the wild east wind had got into it, and John wondered at the folk who should choose, of their own free will, to pass two hours, or even three, in the damp and gloom and dreariness. “There will be few here to-day,” thought he.But they came one after another, and by twos and threes, and there was the stamping of wet shoes, and the shaking out of wet plaids, and many a sneeze, and many a “hoast” (cough). And still more came, some of them with familiar faces from the neighbouring streets, and some from beyond the hills, miles away. Peter Gilchrist was there, of course, and Saunners Crombie, and an old woman or two, who would better have kept the house, John thought, on such a day. And by and by the kirk was well filled. John would have liked to see the minister’s seat. It was close to the door, and so was the one in which he sat; but a little porch, which protected the door, came between. He heard the clatter of the boys’ feet as they came in, and once he heard their mother’s “quietly, boys,” gently but firmly uttered, and by that time the minister was in the pulpit, and the service began.It was just to be like other services in other kirks, John thought at first. There was a psalm read, and a remark was made on a verse here and there, and then they sang. He had a certain enjoyment in the singing, because he had never heard anything like it before. The sleet or something else had kept the usual precentor at home, and Saunners Crombie filled the office for the time. He had the singing mostly to himself for the first verse, because no one knew what tune he meant to sing, and some of those who joined, trying to do their best, “went out of it a’thegither,” as Saunners said angrily afterward. The second verse went better. The minister’s boys took it up and their mother, and were joined by “the discordant crowd,” as John called them while he listened; and though he might have done good service on the occasion, he never opened his lips.Then came the “long prayer,” in which John certainly did not join. But he listened, and after a little he wondered. It was “like all the prayers,” he said to himself at first—confession, petition, thanksgiving. Yet it was a little different. The words came with a certain power. It was as if he who prayed saw the face of Him whom he addressed, a living Person whom he knew and had proved, and not an awful unknown Being hidden in light unapproachable, or in dimness or darkness. He was speaking to One whose promise had been given, and many times made good unto those who trusted Him. And to him who was asking, evidently the promise was sure, the Word unchangeable.“All good things! Why, a man who believed that need be afraid of nothing,” said John to himself.Then a chapter from the New Testament was read. It was the one in Corinthians about charity, from every verse of which a sermon might be preached, the minister said; but he only lingered a minute on the verse which speaks of the charity “which thinketh no evil,” and by the little stir that went through the congregation, John thought that perhaps a word on that subject might be specially needed.Then came the sermon, and John listened intently. But he did not like it. He told his mother, when he went home, that he had heard the folk saying about the kirk door that they had had a grand sermon. “And they should ken,” said John with a shrug.“The text? Oh! it was a fine text: ‘Christ the power of God, and the wisdom of God unto salvation.’ It was like no sermon I ever heard before,” said John, “and I am not sure that I ever wish to hear another of the same kind.”John did not go to the manse that week, and he had no intention of going to the kirk on Sunday, but when Sunday came he changed his mind and was there with the rest. He sat in his corner and listened, and wondered, and grew angry by turns.“Is not my Word like as a fire? saith the Lord, and like a hammer that breaketh the rock in pieces?”That was the text and that was the way in which the Word came to John Beaton, and he would have none of it—for a time.To his mother, who went to the kirk with him after a while, it came in another way. It was not new to her. It was just what she had been hearing all her life, she said, only the minister made it clearer and plainer than ever it had been made to her before. Or it might be that her heart was more open to receive the Word than it used to be in former days, when both heart and hands were full of the good things of this life, which, she said, had contented her to the forgetting of the Giver’s greater gifts.She had never been a woman of many words, and even to her son she rarely spoke of these things. But as time went on she grew sweeter and gentler day by day, he thought. He left her with less anxiety when he went away, and he found her always when he came home peaceful and content. For the peace of God was with her.
“The honest man, howe’er so poor,Is king of men for a’ that.”
“The honest man, howe’er so poor,Is king of men for a’ that.”
John Beaton’s father had been John Beaton also, and so hadhisfather before him. The first John had farmed a three-cornered nook of land, which had found a place among the grey stones scattered closely over a certain part of the high coast that looks down upon one of the narrow bays setting in from the North Sea.
He must have been a strong man, this John, for on this bit of land he lived and laboured for sixty years and more, and on it he brought up, and then sent out, to make a place for themselves, in their own, or in other land’s, five strong sons and four fair daughters. And he had so brought them up that never, as long as he lived, did he, or any one else, hear aught of son or daughter to cause him to bow his good grey head before the face of man.
One son, neither the eldest nor the youngest, stayed near home. First he had broken stones on one of the great highways which they were stretching through Scotland about that time. Then he learned to cut and dress the grey granite of his native hills, and then to build it into houses, under another man’s eye, and at another man’s bidding. After a time he took his turn, first as overseer, and then as master-builder, and succeeded, and men began to speak of him as a rising man, and one well-to-do in the world. All this was before he had got beyond middle life.
Then he married a woman “much above him,” it was said, but that was a mistake. For though Marion Sinclair came of a good stock, and had all her life lived in a home well placed and well plenished, among folk who might have thought themselves, and whom others might have thought to be John Beaton’s superiors, yet no man or woman of them all had a right to look down on John Beaton. He stood firm on his own feet, in a place which his own hand had won. No step had he ever taken which he had needed to go back upon, nor had he ever had cause to cast down his eyes before the face of man because of any doubtful deed done, or false word spoken.
And Marion Sinclair, no longer in her first youth, might well go a proud and happy bride to the home of a man wise and strong, far-seeing, honest, and successful—one who loved her dearly, as a man of middle age may love, who in his youth has told himself that he had neither will nor time for such sweet folly.
With all his strong and sterling qualities he was regarded by the world in general, as, perhaps, a little hard and self-opinioned. But he was never hard to her, or to the one son who was born to them. He exacted what was his due from the rest of the world, but he was always soft and yielding to them in all things. He was proud of his success and of his good name in the countryside, and he offended some of those who came into contact with him by letting his pride in all this be too plainly seen. But he was prouder far of his wife, and his happy home, and of his young son, with whom, to his thought, no prince in all the land could compare.
And so it went well with him, till one day the end came suddenly. A broken bank, a dishonoured name, scathe and scorn to some—to him among the rest—who was, God knows, neither in deed nor in thought guilty of the sin which had brought ruin upon thousands.
He made a gallant stand for his good name and his well-earned fortune, and for his fellow-sufferers; but he was an old man by this time, and he died of it.
Mrs Beaton had never all her life been a strong woman, and had never needed to think and act for herself in trying circumstances. She had not the skill to plan nor the strength to execute, and it was too late to begin now. But she could endure, and she did so, with long patience; and though her face grew thin and white, she gave no sign of anger, or discontent, or of breaking down under her troubles, as all her little world had believed she would surely do.
Amid the din and dulness of the great town in which they first took refuge for a while, she made a home for her son, and waited patiently to see what his young strength might do for them both, and never, by word or look, made his struggle for standing room in the crowd harder for him, or his daily disappointment worse to bear.
He fought his way to standing room at last—standing room at a high desk in a dark office, at work which he had still to learn, and which, though he loathed it, he might have learned to do in time if it had not “floored him” first.
“Mother,” he cried one night in despair, “let us get away from this place—anywhere, where there is room to breathe. I will work with my hands as my father did before me. There are still surely stones to break somewhere up there in the north. We’ll get fresh air at least.”
So, without a word of doubt or of expostulation, she made haste to get ready, while they had yet the means of going, and they went north together, where they found, indeed, fresh air, and for a time they found nothing else. But fresh air was something to rejoice in, since it brought back the colour to the lad’s cheeks and lightened the heart of the mother, and they kept up one another’s courage as well as might be.
A chance to earn their bread, that was all John wanted, and it came at last; but it was dry bread only for a while.
“What can you do? And what are you willing to do?” said a man who was the overseer of other men, and whom John had seen several times at the place where his work was done. John answered:
“I am willing to do anything. And I think I could break stones.”
“I think I see you!” said the man with a shrug.
“I only wish I had a chance to show you. I think I might even chip awa’ at cutting them, to as good purpose as some of those lads yonder.”
“Here, Sandy,” said the overseer. “Gie this lad your hammer, and let him try his hand, for the fun o’ the thing.”
The man laughed, but John Beaton was in earnest. In a minute his coat was off, and he set to work with a will. He needed a hint or two, and he got them, with a little banter thrown in. The lad stuck to his work, and could, as his friend said, “do no’ that ill.” He had perhaps inherited the power to do the work, since he could do it, he thought, and he asked leave to come again in the morning.
“Ye hae earned your shilling,” said the overseer, when it was time to go, and he held one out to John. He hardly expected the lad to take it, but he took it gladly, and looked at it, the man thought, in a curious way.
“Is it the first shilling ye ever earned?” said he.
“The very first! May I come back to-morrow?”
“O, ay! gin ye like; but I should think that this is hardly the kind o’ work ye’re best fitted for.”
“One must take what one can get,” said John.
That was the beginning. He went again, and as hands happened to be scarce at the time, he was kept on, and his wages were raised as his skill and his strength increased. By and by he was offered permanent work on a mill that was to be built in a country place at some distance. It would take months to build, and he would be sure of work for that time; so he took his mother with him, and what household stuff they had left, and lived in a tiny room in a cottage for a while.
Not very far from the new mill was Nethermuir, a quiet place, out of the way, where they might live, they said to one another, unknown and forgotten. And here, after many thoughts about it, they resolved to make themselves a home.
At the end of the street on which stood the missionary kirk and manse, was a small house which had once been of the better sort, but which had been vacant for some time, and had fallen into disrepair. The thatch was rotten and the roof had partly fallen in, but the foundation was firm, and the walls were thick and strong. This house John leased for seven years, at a very small rent, and by his own strength, and skill, and will, with some help from his fellow-workmen, he made of it such a house as was not unworthy of being a home for his mother; and in it, while her son went here and there as his work called him, she lived content.
Terrible as the blow was which took from them husband and father and home, it might have been worse in the end had John Beaton died a rich man. So said some of the lookers-on, who long before that time had declared that his son, having all his life long got more of his own will than was good for him, was in a fair way to become a “spoiled laddie” at last.
Some said it who envied the lad, and others said it who loved him well, and it is possible that they were not far wrong in the belief. John the younger was a “bonny lad,” tall and strong, sweet-tempered and light-hearted, a favourite with all. But he was open to temptation like the rest of his kind, even more so than many, and not all of those who gathered round him in his prosperous days were of the sort likely to influence him for good. He went through the first years at the university without getting much good from it, it was said. He had disappointed his father greatly, as well as his teachers; but though he had been foolish and idle, he had not disgraced himself by anything beyond idleness and folly. Whether he would have gone through the course without doing worse, might be questioned.
The chance was not given him. His father died, and instead of inheriting what would have been called wealth among those who were his friends, he found himself penniless, having his own bread, and possibly his mother’s also, to win. And seeing there was good stuff in the lad, his mother’s helplessness and desolation might be the saving of him, said one of his mother’s humble friends.
They had friends—yes, many of them—but some of them had suffered loss as they themselves had suffered, and had no power to help except with kind words. Others who had the power to help had not the will, or only the will to help in their own way. Others added to their offers advice that could not be followed, or they hurt the sore hearts of the lad and his mother with words which implied censure on the dead, because he had not foreseen and provided against the coming of evil days. And so, seeing no help among “kenned folk,” the two went out, “not knowing whither they went.”
They had gone away bravely enough, and even through the dark days which came first, it cannot be said that they quite lost heart or hope. As long as his mother was content, John told himself, he did not care what fell to him to do or to endure; and as long as John was well, and within reach of hand or voice, it was well with the mother. It was not till the first months were over that John’s heart seemed to fail. When the mill was finished, instead of going with the men to other work in another direction, he remained in Nethermuir, hoping to find something to do in the neighbourhood, so that he might be near his mother. He found enough to do for a time in making the little house a comfortable and even beautiful home for her. Then he prepared the neglected bit of ground around it for a garden and took pleasure in doing it. It was work which he liked, and which he knew how to do, but it put nothing into the family purse, which was getting low, and something must be done to replenish it.
He worked for a few weeks in harvest in the narrow fields of Peter Gilchrist, and to good purpose, though the work was new to him; and he made friends with Peter himself, which was something. But the harvest wore over and winter was coming on, and then he wrote to Jamie Dunn, his first friend, saying he was now ready and willing to go wherever he should be sent.
But in his heart he knew that for the only work which was left to him to do, he was neither ready nor willing, nor for the kind of life which he saw stretching a long, weary way before him.
He could do as his father had done before him, he told his mother cheerfully, and who had done better than he? But to himself he owned that this was to be doubted. He could never do as his father had done; he was not the man his father had been, or he could never have played the fool, wasting his time and losing his opportunities, as he had done. He had been spoiled with softness, with idle days, and the pleasant things of life, which he could not forget, and which, like a weakling, he was in his secret heart longing for still. And even his father had not won what men called success, and a firm footing among his fellows, till the best part of his life was over.
But his father had been content through all his days as they came, and with his day’s work and his day’s wages. And his father had known his own strength and could bide his time. As for his son, John told himself that he was neither strong nor wise. He knew, or he feared at this time, that only the thought of his mother and her need of him kept him from despair.
He called it despair, poor lad, not knowing what he said. The depths of despair came to him with the thought of enlisting as a common soldier, to go away and live his life with as little exercise of his own will as the musket he carried, and to death and a nameless grave. Or it meant to sail away before the mast, a slave to some tyrant who held the power of life and death, because he held the power of the lash. And it might have come to one or other of these possibilities with him, if it had not been for his mother and her need of him.
For the dead level of the life which he saw stretching out before him seemed even worse to him than that—the life of ceaseless, ill-remunerated labour, the companionship of men grown dull through a changeless routine of toilsome days, or debased through ignorance or self-indulgence, a life and a companionship with which he might at last grow content, being no stronger or wiser than other men.
These were dark days for the young man. At last he took his mother’s gently spoken words of counsel to heart, and opened the box in which she had secretly packed his college-books, and where they had lain hidden all this time. But the sight of them, and the associations they called up, made him heartsick and ashamed, and it was only by the exercise of strong self-restraint that he made himself pretend to take some interest in them for his mother’s sake. After this he fell into the way of taking long walks in all directions, and did a turn of work here and there as he could get it, and generally came home hungry, and tired, and ready for his bed, so that no reading could be expected of him.
But the days were growing short, and the dark hours many and long, and the mother’s heart “grew wae” for her son many a time. By and by something happened.
It was a good thing for the minister’s Davie that John Beaton was within sound of the voices of the lad’s terrified companions the day that he fell into “Burney’s Pot,” and it was a good thing also for John. The little lad was nearly gone when he was pulled out of the water, and having no knowledge of his home or name, since his young companions had taken to their heels as soon as they saw Davie safe, John took him home to his mother, and together they did what could be done for his help.
This was the beginning. Davie was allowed to fall asleep in Mrs Beaton’s bed, and in the gloaming John carried him home wrapped in a blanket, and then he saw the minister and his wife and Marjorie. It was the beginning for John of more than can well be told.
His manner of life from that time was changed. Not that he went often to the manse at first, though the door was always open to him, and a welcome awaiting him. But the life he saw there, the words he heard, and the spirit that showed in all that was done, or said, or planned, in great things and in small, came like a new revelation to him; and the more he saw and thought of it all, the less he thought about his own loss and his changed life and his unhopeful prospects.
He had more days of leisure that winter than well pleased him, but not one of them was spent in wandering aimlessly about the dreary hills. He had company, most days, wherever he went. If he had not Robin or Jack, there was always Davie, who seemed to think he had a special claim upon him. Davie had not yet been promoted to a seat in the parish school, but was beginning to think himself, at eight, too big a boy for Mistress Jamieson’s rule, since he could say the Catechism from end to end, proofs and petitions and all. With Davie trotting along at his side, John had little chance for brooding. Besides, he had taken to his books again, and meant to employ his leisure and make up for lost time if such a thing might be. It was not likely that he would have much use for Latin or Logic in the life that lay before him, he told himself; but he might as well make the most of the idle days, and keep his mind from stagnation.
And he had less of leisure after a while. It was about this time that he began to try his hand at the making of “headstones” for the kirkyard. Chance put such work in his way, and being ready of hand and quick of eye, and having long patience and much need of a job, he set to work with a will. He did not succeed in pleasing himself, but he pleased his employer, which answered the purpose; and he did more at the work, at odd times, when he could get nothing else to do.
The life which he saw lived in the manse did something for him, and the Word as it was held forth in the little kirk did more; but that came long afterward. The minister was the busiest of men, either among his books or among his people, or in his garden or his land; but he was never too busy for a cheery word to John, or for help or counsel to any one who needed them. And the same might be said of the minister’s wife. She was active and had enough to do at home, but she was glad to help those who needed help anywhere. She had good sense and good judgment, and was ready with sweet words or sharp words, as the case presented seemed to demand. She was firm where firmness seemed to be required, but had long patience and unfailing gentleness in her dealings with the weak and even with the wilful; and as the days passed, John took heed of her words and ways with ever-growing interest.
She had not an easy life, but she had usually firm health and she had a cheerful nature, and the peace of God was in her heart. So she “stood in her lot” strong and unafraid, whatever might befall.
She was a loving mother to her sons, but her rule was firm as well as gentle. There was no need in that house to appeal to the father’s stronger will where obedience was not promptly given. It was a serious matter indeed that needed an appeal to their father. To the lads their mother’s word was law. Not that the law was not forgotten sometimes, or even wilfully broken in times of strong temptation. But confession of sins, though not always prompt, was, in course of time, quite certain. She had their confidence entirely. It was an unhappy boy, indeed, who carried about, for even a few days, a sinful or sorrowful secret hidden from his mother.
In among these lads John came as another brother, and Mrs Hume was kind and gracious in her intercourse with him. She was faithful also, and told him of faults and failings which his own mother never acknowledged, and helped him to correct them, as, even had she seen them, his own mother might have hesitated to do. It was, indeed, a good day for John when the door of the manse was opened to him.
And then there was Marjorie, poor little soul, who was nearly nine, and who looked like six, a fair, weak little creature, who could only walk a step or two at a time, and who was yet as eager to know, and to do, and to be in the midst of things as the strongest of them all. “Another brother,” she called their new friend, who had more sense and patience than Robin or Jack, and who could carry her so easily and strongly without being tired. It was a happy day for Marjorie when John came in to see her. It was better than a new book, she thought, to hear him talk.
“And a new book is so soon done with,” said Marjorie, who did not see very many new books, and who had usually learned them by heart before she had had them many days. But John had always something to tell her. He told her about new places and new people, and he had seen the sea, and had sailed on it. He had been in London and had seen the king and the queen, “like the travelled cat,” as Robin said. And there was no end to the stories he could tell her that she had never heard before. She was never tired of listening to him, and hailed his coming with delight, and long before he had come to feel quite at ease with the mother, John had learned to love dearly the eager, gentle little creature, from whose eyes the joy at his coming chased the look of pain and weariness.
As for the friendship which grew more slowly, but quite as surely, between John and the elder boys of the manse, it cannot be said whether he or they benefited most by it. To Robin and Jack, John seemed a far wiser and stronger man than he knew himself to be—a man of wider experience, higher aims, and firmer purpose. And their belief in him, their silent yet evident admiration of all his words and ways, their perfect trust in his discretion and sympathy, did as much for him as for them, and helped him to strive for the attainment of all the good gifts which they believed him to possess.
He helped them in many ways. He helped them at their work and kept them back from taking part in many a “ploy,” which, though only foolish, and not so very wrong, were still both foolish and wrong to them, because in engaging in them they would waste their time, and—being the minister’s sons—set a bad example to the rest of the lads, and, worst of all, vex their father and their mother. And they could bear to be restrained by him, because, in the carrying out of all harmless fun, they profited by many a hint from John, and sometimes even by his help. But they all agreed that the less said about this matter among the neighbours the better for all concerned.
John had been in Nethermuir several months before he saw the inside of the little kirk. He knew little about the folk who worshipped there, except that they were said to be “a queer kin’ o’ folk, who set themselves up as better than their neebors, and wiser than a’ their teachers.” Differing, as they seemed to do, both in preaching and in practice, from the kirk of the nation, they were doubtless wrong, thought John. But whatever they were, they were folk in whom he took no interest, and with whom he had nothing at all to do. So when he had gone to the kirk at all, he had gone to the parish kirk to please his mother, who was not always able to go so far herself. Sometimes he had permitted himself to go even farther than the kirk, coming back when the service was half over to sit for a while on a fallen headstone, as Allison did afterward when her turn came.
On fine days his mother went with him, and then it was different. He sat with the rest and listened to what the minister had to say, with no inclination to find fault. Indeed there was no fault to be found from John’s point of view or from the minister’s. It cannot be averred that in what was said there was either “food or physic for the soul of man.” But not knowing himself to be in especial need of either the one or the other, John missed nothing to which he had been accustomed all his days to listen in the kirk.
“We had a good discourse,” his mother would say, as they went slowly home together, and John always assented. “Yes, mother, we had a good discourse.”
So John went most days to please his mother. But there came a day of rain, and sleet, and bitter east wind, when, if her conscience would have permitted, Mrs Beaton would have refrained from making her usual suggestion about the propriety of honouring the Sabbath-day by going to the kirk. As for John, he was no more afraid of the rain, and the sleet, and the east wind than he was afraid of the summer sunshine; but when he proposed to go to hear Mr Hume, the sound of the sleet and the rain on the windows silenced any objection she might have had to his going “once in a way, the day being wild and wintry,” and she even added a hope that he might “hear something to do him good.”
This was at the very beginning of his acquaintance with the minister and his family. If he had waited for a while, till the charm of their friendliness and genuine kindness had wrought, till the time came when he had seen with his own eyes, and heard with his own ears that which proved his new friend to be different in some ways from the most of those to whom he had all his life looked up as leaders and teachers, yet not unworthy also to teach and to lead, John might have been better prepared to get the good which his mother hoped for him. And yet he might not. At any rate, it was to that dark day in the little kirk that, in the years which came afterward, he looked back as the beginning of “good” to him.
“A dismal hole,” he called it, as he went in among the first and sat down in a corner. It was scarcely barer or more dingy and dim than the rest of the kirks in country places were in those days; but it was very small, and it had windows only on one side. On that dark day it was dismal, and it could not have been beautiful at any time. The chill of the sleet and the wild east wind had got into it, and John wondered at the folk who should choose, of their own free will, to pass two hours, or even three, in the damp and gloom and dreariness. “There will be few here to-day,” thought he.
But they came one after another, and by twos and threes, and there was the stamping of wet shoes, and the shaking out of wet plaids, and many a sneeze, and many a “hoast” (cough). And still more came, some of them with familiar faces from the neighbouring streets, and some from beyond the hills, miles away. Peter Gilchrist was there, of course, and Saunners Crombie, and an old woman or two, who would better have kept the house, John thought, on such a day. And by and by the kirk was well filled. John would have liked to see the minister’s seat. It was close to the door, and so was the one in which he sat; but a little porch, which protected the door, came between. He heard the clatter of the boys’ feet as they came in, and once he heard their mother’s “quietly, boys,” gently but firmly uttered, and by that time the minister was in the pulpit, and the service began.
It was just to be like other services in other kirks, John thought at first. There was a psalm read, and a remark was made on a verse here and there, and then they sang. He had a certain enjoyment in the singing, because he had never heard anything like it before. The sleet or something else had kept the usual precentor at home, and Saunners Crombie filled the office for the time. He had the singing mostly to himself for the first verse, because no one knew what tune he meant to sing, and some of those who joined, trying to do their best, “went out of it a’thegither,” as Saunners said angrily afterward. The second verse went better. The minister’s boys took it up and their mother, and were joined by “the discordant crowd,” as John called them while he listened; and though he might have done good service on the occasion, he never opened his lips.
Then came the “long prayer,” in which John certainly did not join. But he listened, and after a little he wondered. It was “like all the prayers,” he said to himself at first—confession, petition, thanksgiving. Yet it was a little different. The words came with a certain power. It was as if he who prayed saw the face of Him whom he addressed, a living Person whom he knew and had proved, and not an awful unknown Being hidden in light unapproachable, or in dimness or darkness. He was speaking to One whose promise had been given, and many times made good unto those who trusted Him. And to him who was asking, evidently the promise was sure, the Word unchangeable.
“All good things! Why, a man who believed that need be afraid of nothing,” said John to himself.
Then a chapter from the New Testament was read. It was the one in Corinthians about charity, from every verse of which a sermon might be preached, the minister said; but he only lingered a minute on the verse which speaks of the charity “which thinketh no evil,” and by the little stir that went through the congregation, John thought that perhaps a word on that subject might be specially needed.
Then came the sermon, and John listened intently. But he did not like it. He told his mother, when he went home, that he had heard the folk saying about the kirk door that they had had a grand sermon. “And they should ken,” said John with a shrug.
“The text? Oh! it was a fine text: ‘Christ the power of God, and the wisdom of God unto salvation.’ It was like no sermon I ever heard before,” said John, “and I am not sure that I ever wish to hear another of the same kind.”
John did not go to the manse that week, and he had no intention of going to the kirk on Sunday, but when Sunday came he changed his mind and was there with the rest. He sat in his corner and listened, and wondered, and grew angry by turns.
“Is not my Word like as a fire? saith the Lord, and like a hammer that breaketh the rock in pieces?”
That was the text and that was the way in which the Word came to John Beaton, and he would have none of it—for a time.
To his mother, who went to the kirk with him after a while, it came in another way. It was not new to her. It was just what she had been hearing all her life, she said, only the minister made it clearer and plainer than ever it had been made to her before. Or it might be that her heart was more open to receive the Word than it used to be in former days, when both heart and hands were full of the good things of this life, which, she said, had contented her to the forgetting of the Giver’s greater gifts.
She had never been a woman of many words, and even to her son she rarely spoke of these things. But as time went on she grew sweeter and gentler day by day, he thought. He left her with less anxiety when he went away, and he found her always when he came home peaceful and content. For the peace of God was with her.
Chapter Ten.“O! love will venture in where it daurna weel be seen;O! love will venture in where wisdom ance has been.”Saunners Crombie had not been mistaken when he told his friend that “a measure of prosperity” had, of late, come to John Beaton. A debt long due to his father had been paid to him, and the story which the debtor had to tell was worth many times the money to John and his mother.It was not the first good deed done in secret by the father which had since his death come to the knowledge of the son. Other stories had been told by friends and neighbours, and even by comparative strangers, of kind words spoken by him, and generous help given, which had healed sick hearts, and opened the way out of depths of despair to some who were sinners, and to some who were only sufferers. And now this man came to tell how he also had been helped—saved, he called it, and he told it with tears in his eyes, though more than a generation had passed since then.David Cunningham was the son of the minister of the parish where the first of the three Johns had lived, and where the second John and his brothers and sisters had been born. He had fallen into foolish ways first, and then into evil ways, and through some act of inexcusable folly, or worse, had, it seemed, shut upon himself the last door of hope for a life of well-doing. An offer of a clerkship in an East Indian house had been given him by a friend of his family, and a sum sufficient for his outfit had been advanced. This sum he had lost, or rather it had been claimed for the payment of a debt which he could not have confessed to his father without breaking the old man’s heart. It would have been utter ruin to the lad if John Beaton had not come to the rescue.This was before John was a rich man, or even had a prospect of riches, but he gave the money willingly, even gladly, to save the son of his father’s friend.“When you come home a rich man you can pay me, if I be living; and if I be dead, you can pay it to them who may come after me,” said he. And now David Cunningham had come home to pay his debt.“Every month from the very first,” he told John, “I put something away toward it, and a good many months passed before the full sum was saved. Then, when I wrote to your father that it was ready for him, he told me to invest it for him, and let it grow till I should come home again. That was five-and-thirty years ago, and it has grown well since then. It is yours now, and much pleasure and profit may you get out of it.”“There is no fear of that,” said John.“And I have a better wish than that for you,” said Mr Cunningham gravely. “May you have the chance and the heart to help to save some poor fellow as your father saved me.”“Thank you for the good wish. I will try to follow in my father’s steps,” said John. “But the money is my mother’s, and the pleasure of doing good with it will be hers.”“And if all I have heard of her be true, her pleasure will be to give pleasure to her son,” said his friend.“Yes; that is true, too,” said John.But as the money was well invested, it was to be allowed to remain where it was for the present. The income from it would secure to his mother a home more like that to which she was born than the one in which she had lived since her husband’s death, “though, God bless her, she has never murmured,” said her son.And John was triumphing in his heart. He saw, or he thought he saw, his way clear to the carrying out of several plans, which he had been dreaming about, but which he had hardly suffered himself to regard as possible till now. He had been in Aberdeen all the winter, working both with his head and his hands. He had fallen in with an old schoolfellow, who was in the second year of his university course, a cripple lad, who was altogether unfit for the kind of life enjoyed most by lads of his age when set free from their lectures and their hours of study. He was living a lonely life till John found him, and his visits to the lad’s rooms were good for them both.John had been reading steadily during the winter leisure of the years he had been in Nethermuir, and now he enjoyed greatly going over the ground with his friend, and gradually the knowledge came to him that he had grown in mind as well as in stature since the days when he had trifled with, or utterly neglected, the opportunities which had been given him. He could do now with ease and pleasure that which in those idle days had been a task and a burden. Gradually that which had been a vague longing, a half-acknowledged desire, became a settled purpose.It was to consult with his mother as to the carrying out of this purpose that he had come to Nethermuir at this time, and he had not meant to sleep until all his plans were laid before her. But when three days had passed—on the fourth he was to return to Aberdeen—not a word with regard to them had been uttered. John had not got out of the maze into which he had fallen when he first caught sight of Allison Bain, standing with loosened hair and smiling eyes, watching the mad play of the bairns, with little Marjorie in her arms.He had not forgotten his plans or his purposes. There were moments when he would have been willing to forget them, when he even tried to forget them and to smile at his thought of them, as he had sometimes smiled at a foolish dream in the light of the morning. He was not quite sure that he needed to speak to his mother at all. He might at least wait a while. Why should he trouble her by speaking about changes which might never come?And yet, had he not told his mother all his plans and even his thoughts all his life? Her word would make clear what course he should take. Her “single eye” would see the fine scheme he had been dreaming about in its true light. He could trust his mother’s wise simplicity more than his own ambitious desires, which could hardly be worthy, he thought, since they were the outcome of discontent.And why should he not be content as he was? He had fallen from no high estate. His father and his father’s father had wrought with their hands, and had been honoured of all who knew them. Why should he not be content to live as they lived, or to work his way upward to an easier life, as his father had done?“At any rate, I will have it out with my mother to-night,” said he.He was standing, when he came to this resolve, on the very spot where he first caught sight of Allison Bain. It was the second time he had stood there since that day, for no reason that he could have told to any one. He had come to the spot in the early morning after that first sleepless night. He needed a walk to stretch his legs, which were rather stiff after the long tramp of yesterday, he told his mother, when he came home to the breakfast he had kept waiting, and he told himself that he only chanced to take that road rather than another.He said nothing about it to Robert Hume. They had the night before agreed to take an early walk together. Robin was late; but happily, as he thought, he caught sight of John as he was disappearing over the first hilltop, and followed with no thought of finding himself in the way.But when he came to the head of the last hillock, and saw John standing where he had stood the day before, “looking at nothing,” as Robin told his mother afterward, he was seized with suddenshamefaced-ness, and turning, shot like an arrow down the brae.John had been less at the manse than he usually was while visiting his mother. He was to go there in the evening, and he must speak to his mother before he said anything about his half-formed plans to the minister or Mrs Hume, as he came home fully intending to do. So he turned homeward on the last afternoon; and as he walked he was saying to himself, with indignant contempt of his indecision, that after all he must be a poor creature, a fool, though he had never been in the way of thinking so till now.“Well, John lad,” said his mother, looking up as he came in.Her little maid had gone home for the day, and Mrs Beaton was sitting in her arm-chair “just waiting,” as she said.It was a nice little room. A bright fire burned in the grate, and a shining tea-kettle was steaming on the hob. The carpet on the floor was faded and worn, and the furniture was of the plainest; but there were a few pretty things in the room to brighten it, and over the mantel-piece was a portrait of John’s father, “taken at his best.” For some strange reason, which he himself did not understand, John paused at the door, and looked up at the strong, good face.The picture was not much as a work of art perhaps, but it was a striking likeness. There was the firm mouth, and the kind grey eyes, and the broad shoulders, rounded and stooping a little, after long years of labour, and the abundant dark hair, which had showed no silver threads until the last blow came to end all. A sudden pang smote John’s heart as he looked.“I was but a lad,” he said to himself. “I didna ken what he was till I lost him.”“You are growing like him, John,” said his mother softly.“Am I, mother? I doubt it is only your loving een that can see it.”“Are ye troubled, John?” were the words that rose to the mother’s lips, but they were not spoken. “Ye’re needing your tea, John,” said she instead.John laughed. “I’m needing something, and I’ll be glad of my tea in the meantime. No, you are not to rise. You are to sit still in your chair and tell me what to do.”Not that he needed telling. The skill, and the will, and the gentleness natural to a loving daughter had come to this mother’s son through long and loving service. So the little table was brought forward, on which all things were already arranged. The tea was “masket,” and the teapot covered with the “cosie,” and during the three minutes necessary and sufficient for its proper infusion, John went to his room, and the mother’s face grew grave while she waited.“He’s no’ at peace with himself. But he’ll tell me if he’s needing my help. God bless him and keep him this day—and forever and ay.”Then John came in and they had their tea, and spoke about other things, about the visit she had had in the afternoon from little Marjorie, whom Allison Bain had carried in her arms to see her, as she often did, and of how the child was growing stronger every day. And then they agreed together that little Annie Thorn, who had been coming in to help Mrs Beaton all these years, should come now to stay always, because it would be better in many ways for both mistress and maid. They spoke of other things besides; but it must be acknowledged that John said little, and was not so ready with assent or with response as he was wont to be when his mother had anything to say to him.After a time they fell into silence for a little, and then John said:“I have something to tell you, mother.”“Is it good news, John?” said his mother with a little flutter at her heart.“Part of it is good, surely. As for the rest—that may be good or bad, as you shall take it.”“I’m waiting, John.”For John’s head had drooped on his hand, and he sat thinking.“And you’re a wee anxious? But there is no occasion, mother dear. I have good news. I meant to tell you the night I came home. I could hardly wait till I got home to tell you. I dinna ken how I put it off,” added John hurriedly. “Mother, did you ever hear my father speak of a good turn he once did to one David Cunningham, a long time ago it must have been?”“No. He wasna one who was in the way of telling o’ the good turns he did, as ye ken. But I mind the name of Cunningham.”“This must have been before your day. Maybe a good while before it.” And John went on to tell the story of his father’s timely help to a foolish lad, and of the debt which the man wished to pay, according to his friend’s desire, to those who came after him. And when he had told all he knew about it, and how the money which his father had given had been increasing during all these years till it had become a sum so large that the interest alone would keep his mother in comfort for the rest of her life, his mother only said softly:“Well, John?” as though the something which he had had to say was still to be told.“Well, mother, I think it is your turn now. Wasna that grand of my father?”“It was like him. And is this David Cunningham able to spare all that money? It would be an ill thing to harm or harass him now after so long a time.”“I cannot say whether he be rich or poor; but I am certain sure that nothing will hinder him from paying his debt. He told me that the sight of my face had given him more pleasure than anything he had seen in Scotland yet,” said John laughing. “I would have brought him out to see you, if the doctor would have let him come. He is but a frail man, and must go south again till summer is fairly here. He said little about himself, but I know he is a married man.”“And he would be sorry to hear of your father’s losses at the last.”“Ay, that was he, and angry at the ill done him. If he had but known, he said, he could have helped to tide him over the worst of his troubles, and it might have prolonged his life.”“It was God’s will, and we must submit,” said Mrs Beaton softly.“Yes, it was God’s will.” Then John rose and set the table back into its place, and stirred the fire and sat down again.“Well, John?” said his mother in a little.“Well, mother! You are a rich woman again, in a small way.”“I have ay been a rich woman. If I had been asked would I have more, I would have said I am content. I am glad of this for your sake, John, if you are glad. But I think the message from your father, as it seems, is more to me than the money.”“Yes, mother, and to me as well.”“You had something to tell me, John,” said his mother, in a little.“I thought I had when I came home. Now I am not sure. There is something that we may speak about together, and you will help me to make up my mind one way or the other.”Mrs Beaton listened in silence as John went on to tell her what he had been doing and thinking for a while. He had not been idle since the building season ended. He had been in the employment of one of the builders of the town. He had been able to make himself useful to him—first by going over and putting to rights the books of the business, which had fallen into confusion, and afterward at more congenial work, where his knowledge of drawing, to which he had given much time when he was a boy, was brought into account with a success which had surprised himself. And now his employer had offered him a permanent place, with an opportunity to acquire the kind of knowledge of his work which would come but slowly to him while he worked only with his hands.He owned that he liked Mr Swinton, and that they got on well together. Yes, the prospect of success seemed reasonably certain if he were to give himself wholly to the work. And then he came to a pause.“Yes. It looks like that,” said his mother. She missed the eager hopefulness with which her son was wont to bring forward any new plan or prospect of his, and she thought it wiser to let him go on of his own accord to say his say than to question him. “Do you think well of it, mother? But there is one thing to be said which will please neither you nor me. I doubt in such a case we will need to say farewell to Nethermuir, and take up house in the town.”“Ay, we should both be sorry for that, but it could be done. You have more to say yet, John?”“I thought I might have more to say, but since you are content with things as they are, it might be as well to say nothing.”“Tell me what is in your mind, John. You needna doubt but I’ll take it reasonably, whatever it may be.”John laughed.“I have no fears for you, mother. It is for myself and my own discontents that I fear.”“Tell your mother, laddie.”Then he went on with his story. How he had taken to college work in earnest with Sandy Begg, how he had enjoyed it and been successful with it, and how the thought had come into his mind that after all he might go on again and redeem his character by doing now what he had failed to do when the way was made easy to him.“I think my father would be pleased, mother, if he could ken. When I think of him I canna forget that I gave him a sore heart at the time when his troubles were coming thick upon him. I would like to do as he wished me to do, now that the way seems open.”“Isthe way open?” asked his mother gravely. “If you take that way, all that you have been doing and learning for the last years will be an utter loss. I have ay liked to think of you as following in your father’s steps to overtake success as he did.”“I am not the man my father was, as no one should ken better than my mother.”“But if you were to fall in with this man’s offer, you could take the road your father took with fewer steps and less labour, and I might see you a prosperous man yet before I die. And all the good your father did, whether openly or in secret, would begin again in his son’s life, and some of it, at least, your mother might see. I canna but long for the like of that, John.”“I would try to do my best, mother. But my best would fall far short of what my father did.”“Oh, fie! John, laddie! What ails ye at yourself the nicht, man? Do I no’ ken my ain son by this time, think ye? Ay, do I. Better, maybe, than he kens himsel’.”“There can be small doubt of that, mother. Only your kind eyes see fewer faults and failings than he kens of himself. And, mother, I am afraid the man who had my father for his good friend has done me an ill turn. He has, in a measure, taken away the motive for my work, and so I can have little pleasure in it.”“But, John, you will have your ain life to live and your ain work to do when your mother is dead and gone. I have been pleased and proud to have my son for breadwinner, and to ken that he was pleased and proud for the same reason. But for all that, I am glad that you are set free to think of your ain life. You are wearing on, lad, and it would be a great gladness for me to see you in your ain house with wife and bairns about you before I die. Ye can let yourself think of it now, since I am off your hands.”“May ye live to see all you wish, mother. It winna be this while, though. There’s time enough for the like of that.”“Well, that’s true. There’s no’ to say much time lost at four-and-twenty. But I am growing an old Woman and frail, and I mayna have so very many years before me. And ye needna put marriage off till middle life as your father did. Though he ay said had we met sooner it might have been different even with him. And it would be a wonderful thing for me to see my son’s wife and bairns before I die,” repeated she softly.John rose and moved about the room. He had to do it with caution, for there was no space for more than two or three of his long, impatient strides between the four walls. His impulse was to rush out to the darkening lanes or even to the more distant hills, that he might have it out with himself there.For his mother’s words had moved him and a pair of wistful, brown eyes were looking at him from the dying embers and from the darkness without. He was saying to himself that the way lay straight before him if he chose to take it—the way to moderate success in life, a competence before his youth was past, and, as his mother had said, a wife and a happy home.And would all this content him? Who could say? No thought of these things had troubled him, or even come into his mind till now. And no such thoughts would have come now, he told himself, if it had not been for his mother’s words and a pair of bonny een. Should he let himself be influenced by a dream—a mere fancy?It would pass away, this folly. It must pass away. Would it be wise to let circumstances guide him to take the course which seemed for the time to be the easiest, the most direct to insure a measure of success? Should he be wise in putting out of his thoughts the hopes and plans which had been occupying him lately? No, he was fit for higher work than cutting stones or building or planning houses. He could not go back to such work now. Even his mother’s desire must be put aside when the work of his life was in question.And yet!—and yet his mother’s simple wisdom had never failed him since the day they had gone forth together from what had been the happiest of homes. She might be right, and he might be putting away the substance to please himself by chasing a shadow. So he said to himself, as she waited quietly with folded hands. He was anxious, uncertain, bewildered, as unlike himself, or as unlike his own idea of himself, as could well be. He was amazed and angry at his foolishness, and eager only to get away from his mother’s eyes.“I promised to go to the manse a while to-night, mother,” said he with his hand upon the door.“Yes, and quite right. The minister has clear vision and good sense, and will give you none but good advice. But bide a wee. You have told your mother nothing yet. Sit down and let me hear what you are thinking to do. Since we have begun, it will be wise to go through to the end. So that you truly ken your ain mind, I shall be content.”John was far from knowing his own mind. That was what ailed him. And he had been so sure of himself before he came home. And so sure also that he could persuade his mother to see as he did about that which he desired to bring to pass! He did not feel that he could do justice to himself of his plans and prospects at this moment.He sat down, however, and went over the matter from the beginning. He said something also about his hopes and plans for the future. He by no means meant to give up his work at present. He meant to work in the summer as he had hitherto done, and go on with his reading in the winter. If he and Mr Swinton were to come to an agreement, it would be all the easier for him. He had no fear but that he could get on with both work and reading till he had got through with the college at least.“But, O John! it will be a lang look to the end! I can hardly hope to see it, though that would matter little if it were the best thing for you. But what is to come after?” asked his mother with a sigh.John could not tell her that. But there was nothing more certain than that when he should be “thoroughly furnished,” the right work would be found—the very highest work—and a kind of life which would suit him, though he might not grow rich in it.“John,” said his mother gravely, “I hardly think all that would help you to live a better life than your father lived. It is not thekindof work that matters; it is the way it is done. Your father did his duty in the sight of God and man, and went far beyond what folk whiles call duty, never letting his left hand ken what his right hand was doing. And I have ay hoped that ye might follow in his steps. It is like a slight on your father, John, when ye speak of higher work.”“Mother! you cannot really think that of me! And, mother, you must mind that my father meant me to do as I wish to do. It is only to begin a little later than he hoped. And there is no fear but I shall see my work when I am ready for it.”“And yet there is many a man in Scotland with a store o’ book learning who has done little work, or only ill work, for God and man. And even with a good-will the opportunity doesna ay come.”“Well, never mind, mother. There is no pressing need to decide now, at least till summer is over. We will wait to see what may happen.” He did not speak cheerfully, however.“John,” said his mother earnestly, “are ye sure that your heart is set on this? What has come to you? Has anything happened to unsettle you, lad? Tell your mother, John.”John laughed as he rose and then stooped down and kissed her.“Nothing has happened. It is quite possible that you are right and that I am wrong. We will just wait and see, and decide the matter later. Even if we have to leave Nethermuir, it need not be till summer is over. I am sorry that I have troubled you with this now. You will vex yourself thinking about it all.”“’Deed I’ll do nothing of the kind. I’ll just leave it all in better hands than either yours or mine. And as to your troubling me— Who has a lad a right to trouble if it be not his ain mother? And when a’ is said, our way is laid out before us by Him who kens a’ and cares for a’. Why should I trouble myself taking thought to-day for the things o’ to-morrow? Go your ways to the manse, John, and I’ll bide still and think about it all.”But the visit to the manse was not so satisfactory as usual. There were other people there, and though John had a few minutes alone with Mr Hume in the study, there was no time to enter fully into the matter which he had at heart, and on which, he sincerely believed, he wished for the minister’s opinion and counsel, and so he said nothing about it.Robin went down-stairs with him, and while he was making ready the lantern to light the way to an outhouse, where Davie had a puppy which his friend must see, John stood waiting by the kitchen-door. In her accustomed corner sat Allison, spinning in the light of the lamp which hung high above her head. She raised her eyes and smiled when John came in, but she gave no other answer to his greeting, and went on with her spinning, apparently quite unconscious of his presence. As for him, he found nothing to say to her, though the lighting of the lantern seemed to take a good while. To himself he was saying:“I am glad I came. Of course I knew it was but a fancy and utterly foolish, and that: it would pass away. But it is well to know it. Yes, I’m glad I came in.”Could this be the stately maiden he had seen smiling in the sunshine on the hill, with wee Marjorie in her arms? There she sat in the shadow, with the accustomed gloom on her face, wearing the disguise of the big mutch with the set-up borders, tied with tape under the chin. An apron, checked in blue and white, held with its strings the striped, short gown close over the scanty petticoat of blue. John wondered whether her thoughts ever wandered away from the thread she was drawing from the head of flax so silently.“A decent, dull servant-lass, strong and wholesome, invaluable doubtless in her place, but just like any other lass of her kind.” That is what he said, and then he added:“She has bonny een.” Ay, wonderful soft een, with a world of sorrow and sweetness in them; and he waited with impatience till she should lift them to meet his again. But she did not. And though he let the lads pass out before him, and turned at the door to look back, there she sat, busy with her thread and her own thoughts, with never a thought of him.“A good lass,” he repeated as he followed the lads; but he could not quite ignore the sense of discomfiture that was on him, as he went down the lane with Robin at his side. He had enough to say to Robin. He had something to tell him about his winter’s work, and without meaning to do so, he gave him “an inkling,” as Robin called it to his mother, of the plans he had been making, and of the new course which was opening before him.But John said no more to his mother. It was late when, he came home that night, and there was no time for many words in the morning, for he had a long journey before him.
“O! love will venture in where it daurna weel be seen;O! love will venture in where wisdom ance has been.”
“O! love will venture in where it daurna weel be seen;O! love will venture in where wisdom ance has been.”
Saunners Crombie had not been mistaken when he told his friend that “a measure of prosperity” had, of late, come to John Beaton. A debt long due to his father had been paid to him, and the story which the debtor had to tell was worth many times the money to John and his mother.
It was not the first good deed done in secret by the father which had since his death come to the knowledge of the son. Other stories had been told by friends and neighbours, and even by comparative strangers, of kind words spoken by him, and generous help given, which had healed sick hearts, and opened the way out of depths of despair to some who were sinners, and to some who were only sufferers. And now this man came to tell how he also had been helped—saved, he called it, and he told it with tears in his eyes, though more than a generation had passed since then.
David Cunningham was the son of the minister of the parish where the first of the three Johns had lived, and where the second John and his brothers and sisters had been born. He had fallen into foolish ways first, and then into evil ways, and through some act of inexcusable folly, or worse, had, it seemed, shut upon himself the last door of hope for a life of well-doing. An offer of a clerkship in an East Indian house had been given him by a friend of his family, and a sum sufficient for his outfit had been advanced. This sum he had lost, or rather it had been claimed for the payment of a debt which he could not have confessed to his father without breaking the old man’s heart. It would have been utter ruin to the lad if John Beaton had not come to the rescue.
This was before John was a rich man, or even had a prospect of riches, but he gave the money willingly, even gladly, to save the son of his father’s friend.
“When you come home a rich man you can pay me, if I be living; and if I be dead, you can pay it to them who may come after me,” said he. And now David Cunningham had come home to pay his debt.
“Every month from the very first,” he told John, “I put something away toward it, and a good many months passed before the full sum was saved. Then, when I wrote to your father that it was ready for him, he told me to invest it for him, and let it grow till I should come home again. That was five-and-thirty years ago, and it has grown well since then. It is yours now, and much pleasure and profit may you get out of it.”
“There is no fear of that,” said John.
“And I have a better wish than that for you,” said Mr Cunningham gravely. “May you have the chance and the heart to help to save some poor fellow as your father saved me.”
“Thank you for the good wish. I will try to follow in my father’s steps,” said John. “But the money is my mother’s, and the pleasure of doing good with it will be hers.”
“And if all I have heard of her be true, her pleasure will be to give pleasure to her son,” said his friend.
“Yes; that is true, too,” said John.
But as the money was well invested, it was to be allowed to remain where it was for the present. The income from it would secure to his mother a home more like that to which she was born than the one in which she had lived since her husband’s death, “though, God bless her, she has never murmured,” said her son.
And John was triumphing in his heart. He saw, or he thought he saw, his way clear to the carrying out of several plans, which he had been dreaming about, but which he had hardly suffered himself to regard as possible till now. He had been in Aberdeen all the winter, working both with his head and his hands. He had fallen in with an old schoolfellow, who was in the second year of his university course, a cripple lad, who was altogether unfit for the kind of life enjoyed most by lads of his age when set free from their lectures and their hours of study. He was living a lonely life till John found him, and his visits to the lad’s rooms were good for them both.
John had been reading steadily during the winter leisure of the years he had been in Nethermuir, and now he enjoyed greatly going over the ground with his friend, and gradually the knowledge came to him that he had grown in mind as well as in stature since the days when he had trifled with, or utterly neglected, the opportunities which had been given him. He could do now with ease and pleasure that which in those idle days had been a task and a burden. Gradually that which had been a vague longing, a half-acknowledged desire, became a settled purpose.
It was to consult with his mother as to the carrying out of this purpose that he had come to Nethermuir at this time, and he had not meant to sleep until all his plans were laid before her. But when three days had passed—on the fourth he was to return to Aberdeen—not a word with regard to them had been uttered. John had not got out of the maze into which he had fallen when he first caught sight of Allison Bain, standing with loosened hair and smiling eyes, watching the mad play of the bairns, with little Marjorie in her arms.
He had not forgotten his plans or his purposes. There were moments when he would have been willing to forget them, when he even tried to forget them and to smile at his thought of them, as he had sometimes smiled at a foolish dream in the light of the morning. He was not quite sure that he needed to speak to his mother at all. He might at least wait a while. Why should he trouble her by speaking about changes which might never come?
And yet, had he not told his mother all his plans and even his thoughts all his life? Her word would make clear what course he should take. Her “single eye” would see the fine scheme he had been dreaming about in its true light. He could trust his mother’s wise simplicity more than his own ambitious desires, which could hardly be worthy, he thought, since they were the outcome of discontent.
And why should he not be content as he was? He had fallen from no high estate. His father and his father’s father had wrought with their hands, and had been honoured of all who knew them. Why should he not be content to live as they lived, or to work his way upward to an easier life, as his father had done?
“At any rate, I will have it out with my mother to-night,” said he.
He was standing, when he came to this resolve, on the very spot where he first caught sight of Allison Bain. It was the second time he had stood there since that day, for no reason that he could have told to any one. He had come to the spot in the early morning after that first sleepless night. He needed a walk to stretch his legs, which were rather stiff after the long tramp of yesterday, he told his mother, when he came home to the breakfast he had kept waiting, and he told himself that he only chanced to take that road rather than another.
He said nothing about it to Robert Hume. They had the night before agreed to take an early walk together. Robin was late; but happily, as he thought, he caught sight of John as he was disappearing over the first hilltop, and followed with no thought of finding himself in the way.
But when he came to the head of the last hillock, and saw John standing where he had stood the day before, “looking at nothing,” as Robin told his mother afterward, he was seized with suddenshamefaced-ness, and turning, shot like an arrow down the brae.
John had been less at the manse than he usually was while visiting his mother. He was to go there in the evening, and he must speak to his mother before he said anything about his half-formed plans to the minister or Mrs Hume, as he came home fully intending to do. So he turned homeward on the last afternoon; and as he walked he was saying to himself, with indignant contempt of his indecision, that after all he must be a poor creature, a fool, though he had never been in the way of thinking so till now.
“Well, John lad,” said his mother, looking up as he came in.
Her little maid had gone home for the day, and Mrs Beaton was sitting in her arm-chair “just waiting,” as she said.
It was a nice little room. A bright fire burned in the grate, and a shining tea-kettle was steaming on the hob. The carpet on the floor was faded and worn, and the furniture was of the plainest; but there were a few pretty things in the room to brighten it, and over the mantel-piece was a portrait of John’s father, “taken at his best.” For some strange reason, which he himself did not understand, John paused at the door, and looked up at the strong, good face.
The picture was not much as a work of art perhaps, but it was a striking likeness. There was the firm mouth, and the kind grey eyes, and the broad shoulders, rounded and stooping a little, after long years of labour, and the abundant dark hair, which had showed no silver threads until the last blow came to end all. A sudden pang smote John’s heart as he looked.
“I was but a lad,” he said to himself. “I didna ken what he was till I lost him.”
“You are growing like him, John,” said his mother softly.
“Am I, mother? I doubt it is only your loving een that can see it.”
“Are ye troubled, John?” were the words that rose to the mother’s lips, but they were not spoken. “Ye’re needing your tea, John,” said she instead.
John laughed. “I’m needing something, and I’ll be glad of my tea in the meantime. No, you are not to rise. You are to sit still in your chair and tell me what to do.”
Not that he needed telling. The skill, and the will, and the gentleness natural to a loving daughter had come to this mother’s son through long and loving service. So the little table was brought forward, on which all things were already arranged. The tea was “masket,” and the teapot covered with the “cosie,” and during the three minutes necessary and sufficient for its proper infusion, John went to his room, and the mother’s face grew grave while she waited.
“He’s no’ at peace with himself. But he’ll tell me if he’s needing my help. God bless him and keep him this day—and forever and ay.”
Then John came in and they had their tea, and spoke about other things, about the visit she had had in the afternoon from little Marjorie, whom Allison Bain had carried in her arms to see her, as she often did, and of how the child was growing stronger every day. And then they agreed together that little Annie Thorn, who had been coming in to help Mrs Beaton all these years, should come now to stay always, because it would be better in many ways for both mistress and maid. They spoke of other things besides; but it must be acknowledged that John said little, and was not so ready with assent or with response as he was wont to be when his mother had anything to say to him.
After a time they fell into silence for a little, and then John said:
“I have something to tell you, mother.”
“Is it good news, John?” said his mother with a little flutter at her heart.
“Part of it is good, surely. As for the rest—that may be good or bad, as you shall take it.”
“I’m waiting, John.”
For John’s head had drooped on his hand, and he sat thinking.
“And you’re a wee anxious? But there is no occasion, mother dear. I have good news. I meant to tell you the night I came home. I could hardly wait till I got home to tell you. I dinna ken how I put it off,” added John hurriedly. “Mother, did you ever hear my father speak of a good turn he once did to one David Cunningham, a long time ago it must have been?”
“No. He wasna one who was in the way of telling o’ the good turns he did, as ye ken. But I mind the name of Cunningham.”
“This must have been before your day. Maybe a good while before it.” And John went on to tell the story of his father’s timely help to a foolish lad, and of the debt which the man wished to pay, according to his friend’s desire, to those who came after him. And when he had told all he knew about it, and how the money which his father had given had been increasing during all these years till it had become a sum so large that the interest alone would keep his mother in comfort for the rest of her life, his mother only said softly:
“Well, John?” as though the something which he had had to say was still to be told.
“Well, mother, I think it is your turn now. Wasna that grand of my father?”
“It was like him. And is this David Cunningham able to spare all that money? It would be an ill thing to harm or harass him now after so long a time.”
“I cannot say whether he be rich or poor; but I am certain sure that nothing will hinder him from paying his debt. He told me that the sight of my face had given him more pleasure than anything he had seen in Scotland yet,” said John laughing. “I would have brought him out to see you, if the doctor would have let him come. He is but a frail man, and must go south again till summer is fairly here. He said little about himself, but I know he is a married man.”
“And he would be sorry to hear of your father’s losses at the last.”
“Ay, that was he, and angry at the ill done him. If he had but known, he said, he could have helped to tide him over the worst of his troubles, and it might have prolonged his life.”
“It was God’s will, and we must submit,” said Mrs Beaton softly.
“Yes, it was God’s will.” Then John rose and set the table back into its place, and stirred the fire and sat down again.
“Well, John?” said his mother in a little.
“Well, mother! You are a rich woman again, in a small way.”
“I have ay been a rich woman. If I had been asked would I have more, I would have said I am content. I am glad of this for your sake, John, if you are glad. But I think the message from your father, as it seems, is more to me than the money.”
“Yes, mother, and to me as well.”
“You had something to tell me, John,” said his mother, in a little.
“I thought I had when I came home. Now I am not sure. There is something that we may speak about together, and you will help me to make up my mind one way or the other.”
Mrs Beaton listened in silence as John went on to tell her what he had been doing and thinking for a while. He had not been idle since the building season ended. He had been in the employment of one of the builders of the town. He had been able to make himself useful to him—first by going over and putting to rights the books of the business, which had fallen into confusion, and afterward at more congenial work, where his knowledge of drawing, to which he had given much time when he was a boy, was brought into account with a success which had surprised himself. And now his employer had offered him a permanent place, with an opportunity to acquire the kind of knowledge of his work which would come but slowly to him while he worked only with his hands.
He owned that he liked Mr Swinton, and that they got on well together. Yes, the prospect of success seemed reasonably certain if he were to give himself wholly to the work. And then he came to a pause.
“Yes. It looks like that,” said his mother. She missed the eager hopefulness with which her son was wont to bring forward any new plan or prospect of his, and she thought it wiser to let him go on of his own accord to say his say than to question him. “Do you think well of it, mother? But there is one thing to be said which will please neither you nor me. I doubt in such a case we will need to say farewell to Nethermuir, and take up house in the town.”
“Ay, we should both be sorry for that, but it could be done. You have more to say yet, John?”
“I thought I might have more to say, but since you are content with things as they are, it might be as well to say nothing.”
“Tell me what is in your mind, John. You needna doubt but I’ll take it reasonably, whatever it may be.”
John laughed.
“I have no fears for you, mother. It is for myself and my own discontents that I fear.”
“Tell your mother, laddie.”
Then he went on with his story. How he had taken to college work in earnest with Sandy Begg, how he had enjoyed it and been successful with it, and how the thought had come into his mind that after all he might go on again and redeem his character by doing now what he had failed to do when the way was made easy to him.
“I think my father would be pleased, mother, if he could ken. When I think of him I canna forget that I gave him a sore heart at the time when his troubles were coming thick upon him. I would like to do as he wished me to do, now that the way seems open.”
“Isthe way open?” asked his mother gravely. “If you take that way, all that you have been doing and learning for the last years will be an utter loss. I have ay liked to think of you as following in your father’s steps to overtake success as he did.”
“I am not the man my father was, as no one should ken better than my mother.”
“But if you were to fall in with this man’s offer, you could take the road your father took with fewer steps and less labour, and I might see you a prosperous man yet before I die. And all the good your father did, whether openly or in secret, would begin again in his son’s life, and some of it, at least, your mother might see. I canna but long for the like of that, John.”
“I would try to do my best, mother. But my best would fall far short of what my father did.”
“Oh, fie! John, laddie! What ails ye at yourself the nicht, man? Do I no’ ken my ain son by this time, think ye? Ay, do I. Better, maybe, than he kens himsel’.”
“There can be small doubt of that, mother. Only your kind eyes see fewer faults and failings than he kens of himself. And, mother, I am afraid the man who had my father for his good friend has done me an ill turn. He has, in a measure, taken away the motive for my work, and so I can have little pleasure in it.”
“But, John, you will have your ain life to live and your ain work to do when your mother is dead and gone. I have been pleased and proud to have my son for breadwinner, and to ken that he was pleased and proud for the same reason. But for all that, I am glad that you are set free to think of your ain life. You are wearing on, lad, and it would be a great gladness for me to see you in your ain house with wife and bairns about you before I die. Ye can let yourself think of it now, since I am off your hands.”
“May ye live to see all you wish, mother. It winna be this while, though. There’s time enough for the like of that.”
“Well, that’s true. There’s no’ to say much time lost at four-and-twenty. But I am growing an old Woman and frail, and I mayna have so very many years before me. And ye needna put marriage off till middle life as your father did. Though he ay said had we met sooner it might have been different even with him. And it would be a wonderful thing for me to see my son’s wife and bairns before I die,” repeated she softly.
John rose and moved about the room. He had to do it with caution, for there was no space for more than two or three of his long, impatient strides between the four walls. His impulse was to rush out to the darkening lanes or even to the more distant hills, that he might have it out with himself there.
For his mother’s words had moved him and a pair of wistful, brown eyes were looking at him from the dying embers and from the darkness without. He was saying to himself that the way lay straight before him if he chose to take it—the way to moderate success in life, a competence before his youth was past, and, as his mother had said, a wife and a happy home.
And would all this content him? Who could say? No thought of these things had troubled him, or even come into his mind till now. And no such thoughts would have come now, he told himself, if it had not been for his mother’s words and a pair of bonny een. Should he let himself be influenced by a dream—a mere fancy?
It would pass away, this folly. It must pass away. Would it be wise to let circumstances guide him to take the course which seemed for the time to be the easiest, the most direct to insure a measure of success? Should he be wise in putting out of his thoughts the hopes and plans which had been occupying him lately? No, he was fit for higher work than cutting stones or building or planning houses. He could not go back to such work now. Even his mother’s desire must be put aside when the work of his life was in question.
And yet!—and yet his mother’s simple wisdom had never failed him since the day they had gone forth together from what had been the happiest of homes. She might be right, and he might be putting away the substance to please himself by chasing a shadow. So he said to himself, as she waited quietly with folded hands. He was anxious, uncertain, bewildered, as unlike himself, or as unlike his own idea of himself, as could well be. He was amazed and angry at his foolishness, and eager only to get away from his mother’s eyes.
“I promised to go to the manse a while to-night, mother,” said he with his hand upon the door.
“Yes, and quite right. The minister has clear vision and good sense, and will give you none but good advice. But bide a wee. You have told your mother nothing yet. Sit down and let me hear what you are thinking to do. Since we have begun, it will be wise to go through to the end. So that you truly ken your ain mind, I shall be content.”
John was far from knowing his own mind. That was what ailed him. And he had been so sure of himself before he came home. And so sure also that he could persuade his mother to see as he did about that which he desired to bring to pass! He did not feel that he could do justice to himself of his plans and prospects at this moment.
He sat down, however, and went over the matter from the beginning. He said something also about his hopes and plans for the future. He by no means meant to give up his work at present. He meant to work in the summer as he had hitherto done, and go on with his reading in the winter. If he and Mr Swinton were to come to an agreement, it would be all the easier for him. He had no fear but that he could get on with both work and reading till he had got through with the college at least.
“But, O John! it will be a lang look to the end! I can hardly hope to see it, though that would matter little if it were the best thing for you. But what is to come after?” asked his mother with a sigh.
John could not tell her that. But there was nothing more certain than that when he should be “thoroughly furnished,” the right work would be found—the very highest work—and a kind of life which would suit him, though he might not grow rich in it.
“John,” said his mother gravely, “I hardly think all that would help you to live a better life than your father lived. It is not thekindof work that matters; it is the way it is done. Your father did his duty in the sight of God and man, and went far beyond what folk whiles call duty, never letting his left hand ken what his right hand was doing. And I have ay hoped that ye might follow in his steps. It is like a slight on your father, John, when ye speak of higher work.”
“Mother! you cannot really think that of me! And, mother, you must mind that my father meant me to do as I wish to do. It is only to begin a little later than he hoped. And there is no fear but I shall see my work when I am ready for it.”
“And yet there is many a man in Scotland with a store o’ book learning who has done little work, or only ill work, for God and man. And even with a good-will the opportunity doesna ay come.”
“Well, never mind, mother. There is no pressing need to decide now, at least till summer is over. We will wait to see what may happen.” He did not speak cheerfully, however.
“John,” said his mother earnestly, “are ye sure that your heart is set on this? What has come to you? Has anything happened to unsettle you, lad? Tell your mother, John.”
John laughed as he rose and then stooped down and kissed her.
“Nothing has happened. It is quite possible that you are right and that I am wrong. We will just wait and see, and decide the matter later. Even if we have to leave Nethermuir, it need not be till summer is over. I am sorry that I have troubled you with this now. You will vex yourself thinking about it all.”
“’Deed I’ll do nothing of the kind. I’ll just leave it all in better hands than either yours or mine. And as to your troubling me— Who has a lad a right to trouble if it be not his ain mother? And when a’ is said, our way is laid out before us by Him who kens a’ and cares for a’. Why should I trouble myself taking thought to-day for the things o’ to-morrow? Go your ways to the manse, John, and I’ll bide still and think about it all.”
But the visit to the manse was not so satisfactory as usual. There were other people there, and though John had a few minutes alone with Mr Hume in the study, there was no time to enter fully into the matter which he had at heart, and on which, he sincerely believed, he wished for the minister’s opinion and counsel, and so he said nothing about it.
Robin went down-stairs with him, and while he was making ready the lantern to light the way to an outhouse, where Davie had a puppy which his friend must see, John stood waiting by the kitchen-door. In her accustomed corner sat Allison, spinning in the light of the lamp which hung high above her head. She raised her eyes and smiled when John came in, but she gave no other answer to his greeting, and went on with her spinning, apparently quite unconscious of his presence. As for him, he found nothing to say to her, though the lighting of the lantern seemed to take a good while. To himself he was saying:
“I am glad I came. Of course I knew it was but a fancy and utterly foolish, and that: it would pass away. But it is well to know it. Yes, I’m glad I came in.”
Could this be the stately maiden he had seen smiling in the sunshine on the hill, with wee Marjorie in her arms? There she sat in the shadow, with the accustomed gloom on her face, wearing the disguise of the big mutch with the set-up borders, tied with tape under the chin. An apron, checked in blue and white, held with its strings the striped, short gown close over the scanty petticoat of blue. John wondered whether her thoughts ever wandered away from the thread she was drawing from the head of flax so silently.
“A decent, dull servant-lass, strong and wholesome, invaluable doubtless in her place, but just like any other lass of her kind.” That is what he said, and then he added:
“She has bonny een.” Ay, wonderful soft een, with a world of sorrow and sweetness in them; and he waited with impatience till she should lift them to meet his again. But she did not. And though he let the lads pass out before him, and turned at the door to look back, there she sat, busy with her thread and her own thoughts, with never a thought of him.
“A good lass,” he repeated as he followed the lads; but he could not quite ignore the sense of discomfiture that was on him, as he went down the lane with Robin at his side. He had enough to say to Robin. He had something to tell him about his winter’s work, and without meaning to do so, he gave him “an inkling,” as Robin called it to his mother, of the plans he had been making, and of the new course which was opening before him.
But John said no more to his mother. It was late when, he came home that night, and there was no time for many words in the morning, for he had a long journey before him.