Winter Evening Tales

There is not in its own way a more distinctive and interesting bit of Scotland than the bleak Lothian country, with its wide views, its brown ploughed fields, and its dense swaying plantations of fir.  The Lammermoor Hills and the Pentlands and the veils of smoke that lie about Edinburgh are on its horizon, and within that circle all the large quietude of open grain fields, wide turnip lands, where sheep feed, and far-stretching pastures where the red and white cows ruminate.  The patient processes of nature breed patient minds; the gray cold climate can be read in the faces of the people, and in their hearts the seasons take root and grow; so that they have a grave character, passive, yet enduring; strong to feel and strong to act when the time is full ready for action.

Of these natural peculiarities Jean Anderson had her share.  She was a Lothian lassie of many generations, usually undemonstrative, but with large possibilities of storm beneath her placid face and gentle manner.  Her father was the minister of Lambrig and the manse stood in a very sequestered corner of the big parish, facing the bleak east winds, and the salt showers of the German ocean.  It was sheltered by dark fir woods on three sides, and in front a little walled-in garden separated it from the long, dreary, straight line of turnpike road.  But Jean had no knowledge of any fairer land; she had read of flowery pastures and rose gardens and vineyards, but these places were to her only in books, while the fields and fells that filled her eyes were her home, and she loved them.

She loved them all the more because the man she loved was going to leave them, and if Gavin Burns did well, and was faithful to her, then it was like to be that she also would go far away from the blue Lammermuirs, and the wide still spaces of the Lothians.  She stood at the open door of the manse with her lover thinking of these things, but with no real sense of what pain or deprivation the thought included.  She was tall and finely formed, a blooming girl, with warmly-colored cheeks, a mouth rather large and a great deal of wavy brown hair.  But the best of all her beauty was the soul in her face; its vitality, its vivacity and immediate response.

However, the time of love had come to her, and though her love had grown as naturally as a sapling in a wood, who could tell what changes it would make.  For Gavin Burns had been educated in the minister’s house and Jean and he had studied and fished and rambled together all through the years in which Jean had grown from childhood into womanhood.  Now Gavin was going to New York to make his fortune.  They stepped through the garden and into the long dim road, walking slowly in the calm night, with thoughtful faces and clasped hands.  There was at this last hour little left to say.  Every promise known to Love had been given; they had exchanged Bibles and broken a piece of silver and vowed an eternal fidelity.  So, in the cold sunset they walked silently by the river that was running in flood like their own hearts.  At the little stone bridge they stopped, and leaning over the parapet watched the drumly water rushing below; and there Jean reiterated her promise to be Gavin’s wife as soon as he was able to make a home for her.

“And I am not proud, Gavin,” she said; “a little house, if it is filled with love, will make me happy beyond all.”

They were both too hopeful and trustful and too habitually calm to weep or make much visible lament over their parting; and yet when Gavin vanished into the dark of the lonely road, Jean shut the heavy house door very slowly.  She felt as if she was shutting part of herself out of the old home forever, and she was shocked by this first breaking of the continuity of life; this sharp cutting of regular events asunder.  Gavin’s letters were at first frequent and encouraging, but as the months went by he wrote more and more seldom.  He said “he was kept so busy; he was making himself indispensable, and could not afford to be less busy.  He was weary to death on the Saturday nights, and he could not bring his conscience to write anent his own personal and earthly happiness on the Sabbath day; but he was sure Jean trusted in him, whether he wrote or not; and they were past being bairns, always telling each other the love they were both so sure of.”

Late in the autumn the minister died of typhoid fever, and Jean, heartbroken and physically worn out, was compelled to face for her mother and herself, a complete change of life.  It had never seemed to these two women that anything could happen to the father and head of the family; in their loving hearts he had been immortal, and though the disease had run its tedious course before their eyes, his death at the last was a shock that shook their lives and their home to the very centre.  A new minister was the first inevitable change, and then a removal from the comfortable manse to a little cottage in the village of Lambrig.

While this sad removal was in progress they had felt the sorrow of it, all that they could bear; and neither had dared to look into the future or to speculate as to its necessities.  Jean in her heart expected Gavin would at once send for them to come to America.  He had a fair salary, and the sale of their furniture would defray their traveling expenses.

She was indeed so sure of this journey, that she did not regard the cottage as more than a temporary shelter during the approaching winter.  In the spring, no doubt, Gavin would have a little home ready, and they would cross the ocean to it.  The mother had the same thought.  As they sat on their new hearthstone, lonely and poor, they talked of this event, and if any doubts lurked unconsciously below their love and trust they talked them away, while they waited for Gavin’s answer to the sorrowful letter Jean had sent him on the night of her father’s burial.

It was longer in coming than they expected.  For a week they saw the postman pass their door with an indifference that seemed cruel; for a week Jean made new excuses and tried to hold up her mother’s heart, while her own was sinking lower and lower.  Then one morning the looked-for answer came.  Jean fled to a room apart to read it alone; Mrs. Anderson sat down and waited, with dropped eyes and hands tightly clasped.  She knew, before Jean said a word, that the letter had disappointed her.  She had remained alone too long.  If all had been as they hoped the mother was certain Jean would not have deferred the good tidings a moment.  But a quarter of an hour had passed before Jean came to her side, and then when she lifted her eyes she saw that her daughter had been weeping.

“It is a disappointment, Jean, I see,” she said sadly.  “Never mind, dearie.”

“Yes, mother; Gavin has failed us.”

“We have been two foolish women, Jean.  Oh, my dear lassie, we should have lippened to God, and He would not have disappointed us!  What does Gavin Burns say?”

“It is what he does not say, that hurts me, mother.  I may as well tell you the whole truth.  When he heard how ill father was, he wrote to me, as if he had foreseen what was to happen.  He said, ’there will be a new minister and a break-up of the old home, and you must come at once to your new home here.  I am the one to care for you when your father is gone away; and what does it matter under what sun or sky if we are but together?’ So, then, mother, when the worst had come to us I wrote with a free heart to Gavin.  I said, ’I will come to you gladly, Gavin, but you know well that my mother is very dear to me, and where I am there she also must be.’  And he says, in this letter, that it is me he is wanting, and that you have a brother in Glasgow that is unmarried and who will be willing, no doubt, to have you keep his house for him.  There is a wale of fine words about it, mother, but they come to just this, and no more—­Gavin is willing to care for me, but not for you and I will not trust myself with a man that cannot love you for my sake.  We will stay together, mammy darling!  Whatever comes or goes we will stay together.  The man isna born that can part us two!”

“He is your lover, Jean.  A girl must stick to her lover.”

“You are my mother.  I am bone of your bone, and flesh of your flesh and love of your love.  May God forsake me when I forsake you!”

She had thrown herself at her mother’s knees and was clasping and kissing the sad face so dear to her, as she fervently uttered the last words.  And the mother was profoundly touched by her child’s devotion.  She drew her close to her heart, and said firmly: 

“No!  No, my dearie!  What could we two do for ourselves?  And I’m loth to part you and Gavin.  I simply cannot take the sacrifice, you so lovingly offer me.  I will write to my brother David.  Gavin isna far wrong there; David is a very close man, but he willna see his sister suffer, there is no fear of that.”

“It is Jean that will not see you suffer.”

“But the bite and the sup, Jean?  How are we to get them?”

“I can make my own dresses and cloaks, so then I can make dresses and cloaks for other people.  I shall send out a card to the ladies near-by and put an advertisement in the Haddington newspaper, and God can make my needle sharp enough for the battle.  Don’t cry, mother!  Oh, darling, don’t cry!  We have God and each other, and none can call us desolate.”

“But you will break your heart, Jean.  You canna help it.  And I canna take your love and happiness to brighten my old age.  It isna right.  I’ll not do it.  You must go to Gavin.  I will go to my brother David.”

“I will not break my heart, mother.  I will not shed a tear for the false, mean lad, that you were so kind to for fourteen years, when there was no one else to love him.  Aye, I know he paid for his board and schooling, but he never could pay for the mother-love you gave him, just because he was motherless.  And who has more right to have their life brightened by my love than you have?  Beside, it is my happiness to brighten it, and so, what will you say against it?  And I will not go to Gavin.  Not one step.  If he wants me now, he will come for me, and for you, too.  This is sure as death!  Oh, mammy!  Mammy, darling, a false lad shall not part us!  Never!  Never!  Never!”

“Jean!  Jean!  What will I say at all”

“What would my father say, if he was here this minute?  He would say, ’you are right, Jean!  And God bless you, Jean!  And you may be sure that it is all for the best, Jean!  So take the right road with a glad heart, Jean!’ That is what father would say.  And I will never do anything to prevent me looking him straight in the face when we meet again.  Even in heaven I shall want him to smile into my eyes and say, ’Well done, Jean!’”