Winter Evening Tales

Jean’s plans for the future were humble and reasonable enough to insure them some measure of success, and the dreaded winter passed not uncomfortably away.  Then in the summer Uncle David Nicoll came to Lambrig and boarded with his sister, paying a pound a week, and giving her, on his departure, a five-pound note to help the next winter’s expenses.  This order of things went on without change or intermission for five years, and the little cottage gradually gathered in its clean, sweet rooms, many articles of simple use and beauty.  Mrs. Anderson took entire charge of the housekeeping.  Jean’s needle flew swiftly from morning to night, and though the girl had her share of the humiliations and annoyances incident to her position, these did not interfere with the cheerful affection and mutual help which brightened their lonely life.

She heard nothing from Gavin.  After some painful correspondence, in which neither would retract a step from the stand they had taken, Gavin ceased writing, and Jean ceased expecting, though before this calm was reached she had many a bitter hour the mother never suspected.  But such hours were to Jean’s soul what the farmer’s call “growing weather;” in them much rich thought and feeling sprang up insensibly; her nature ripened and mellowed and she became a far lovelier woman than her twentieth year had promised.

One gray February afternoon, when the rain was falling steadily, Jean felt unusually depressed and weary.  An apprehension of some unhappiness made her sad, and she could not sew for the tears that would dim her eyes.  Suddenly the door opened and Gavin’s sister Mary entered.  Jean did not know her very well, and she did not like her at all, and she wondered what she had come to tell her.

“I am going to New York on Saturday, Jean,” she said, “and I thought Gavin would like to know how you looked and felt these days.”

Jean flushed indignantly.  “You can see how I look easy enough, Mary Burns,” she answered; “but as to how I feel, that is a thing I keep to myself these days.”

“Gavin has furnished a pretty house at the long last, and I am to be the mistress of it.  You will have heard, doubtless, that the school where I taught so long has been broken up, and so I was on the world, as one may say, and Gavin could not bear that.  He is a good man, is Gavin, and I’m thinking I shall have a happy time with him in America.”

“I hope you will, Mary.  Give him a kind wish from me; and I will bid you ‘good bye’ now, if you please, seeing that I have more sewing to do to-night than I can well manage.”

This event wounded Jean sorely.  She felt sure Mary had only called for an unkind purpose, and that she would cruelly misrepresent her appearance and condition to Gavin.  And no woman likes even a lost lover to think scornfully of her.  But she brought her sewing beside her mother and talked the affair over with her, and so, at the end of the evening, went to bed resigned, and even cheerful.  Never had they spent a more confidential, loving night together, and this fact was destined to be a comfort to Jean during all the rest of her life.  For in the morning she noticed a singular look on her mother’s face and at noon she found her in her chair fast in that sleep which knows no wakening in this world.

It was a blow which put all other considerations far out of Jean’s mind.  She mourned with a passionate sorrow her loss, and though Uncle David came at once to assist her in the necessary arrangements, she suffered no hand but her own to do the last kind offices for her dear dead.  And oh! how empty and lonely was now the little cottage, while the swift return to all the ordinary duties of life seemed such a cruel effacement.  Uncle David watched her silently, but on the evening of the third day after the funeral he said, kindly: 

“Dry your eyes, Jean.  There is naething to weep for.  Your mother is far beyond tears.”

“I cannot bear to forget her a minute, uncle, yet folks go and come and never name her; and it is not a week since she had a word and a smile for everybody.”

    “Death is forgetfulness, Jean;
                ... ’one lonely way
    We go:  and is she gone? 
    Is all our best friends say.’

“You must come home with me now, Jean.  I canna be what your mother has been to you, but I’ll do the best I can for you, lassie.  Sell these bit sticks o’ furniture and shut the door on the empty house and begin a new life.  You’ve had sorrow about a lad; let him go.  All o’ the past worth your keeping you can save in your memory.”

“I will be glad to go with you, uncle.  I shall be no charge on you.  I can find my own bread if you will just love me a little.”

“I’m no that poor, Jean.  You are welcome to share my loaf.  Put that weary; thimble and needle awa’; I’ll no see you take another stitch.”

So Jean followed her uncle’s advice and went back with him to Glasgow.  He had never said a word about his home, and Jean knew not what she expected—­certainly nothing more than a small floor in some of the least expensive streets of the great city.  It was dark when they reached Glasgow, but Jean was sensible of a great change in her uncle’s manner as soon as they left the railway.  He made an imperative motion and a carriage instantly answered it; and they were swiftly driven to a large dwelling in one of the finest crescents of the West end.  He led her into a handsome parlor and called a servant, and bid her “show Miss Anderson her rooms;” and thus, without a word of preparation, Jean found herself surrounded by undreamed of luxury.

Nothing was ever definitely explained to her, but she gradually learned to understand the strange old man who assumed the guardianship of her life.  His great wealth was evident, and it was not long ere she discovered that it was largely spent in two directions—­scientific discovery and the Temperance Crusade.  Men whose lives were devoted to chemistry or to electrical investigations, or passionate apostles of total abstinence from intoxicants were daily at his table; and Jean could not help becoming an enthusiastic partisan on such matters.  One of the savants, a certain Professor Sharp, fell deeply in love with her; and she felt it difficult to escape the influence of his wooing, which had all the persistent patience of a man accustomed “to seek till he found, and so not lose his labor.”

Her life was now very happy.  Cautious in giving his love, David Nicoll gave it freely as soon as he had resolved to adopt his niece.  Nor did he ever regret the gift.  “Jean entered my house and she made it a home,” he said to his friends.  No words could have better explained the position.  In the winter they entertained with a noble hospitality; in the summer they sailed far north to the mystical isles of the Western seas; to Orkney and Zetland and once even as far as the North Cape by the light of the midnight sun.  So the time passed wonderfully away, until Jean was thirty-two years old.  The simple, unlettered girl had then become a woman of great culture and of perfect physical charm.  Wise in many ways, she yet kept her loving heart, and her uncle delighted in her.  “You have made my auld age parfectly happy, Jean,” he said to her on the last solemn night of his life; “and I thank God for the gift o’ your honest love!  Now that I am going the way of all flesh, I have gi’en you every bawbee I have.  I have put no restrictions on you, and I have left nae dead wishes behind me.  You will do as you like wi’ the land and the siller, and you will do right in a’ things, I ken that, Jean.  If it should come into your heart to tak’ the love Professor Sharp offers you, I’ll be pleased, for he’ll never spend a shilling that willna be weel spent; and he is a clever man, and a good man and he loves you.  But it is a’ in your ain will; do as you like, anent either this or that.”

This was the fourth great change in Jean’s life.  Gavin’s going away had opened the doors of her destiny; her father’s death had sent her to the school of self-reliant poverty; her mother’s death given her a home of love and luxury, and now her uncle put her in a position of vast, untrammeled responsibility.  But if love is the joy of life, this was not the end; the crowning change was yet to come; and now, with both her hands full, her heart involuntarily turned to her first lover.

About this time, also, Gavin was led to remember Jean.  His sister Mary was going to marry, and the circumstance annoyed him.  “I’ll have to store my furniture and pay for the care of it; or I’ll have to sell it at a loss; or I’ll have to hire a servant lass, and be robbed on the right hand and the left,” he said fretfully.  “It was not in the bargain that you should marry, and it is very bad behavior in you, Mary.”

“Well, Gavin, get married yourself, and the furnishing will not be wasted,” answered Mary.  “There is Annie Riley, just dying for the love of you, and no brighter, smarter girl in New York city.”

“She isn’t in love with me; she is tired of the Remington all day; and if I wanted a wife, there is some one better than Annie Riley.”

“Jean Anderson?”

“Ay.”

“Send for her picture, and you will see what a plain, dowdy old maid she is.  She is not for the like of you, Gavin—­a bit country dressmaker, poor, and past liking.”

Gavin said no more, but that night he wrote Jean Anderson the following letter:  “Dear Jean.  I wish you would send me a picture of yourself.  If you will not write me a word, you might let me have your face to look at.  Mary is getting herself married, and I will be alone in a few days.”  That is enough, he thought; “she will understand that there is a chance for her yet, if she is as bonnie as in the old days.  Mary is not to be trusted.  She never liked Jean.  I’ll see for myself.”

Jean got this letter one warm day in spring, and she “understood” it as clearly as Gavin intended her to.  For a long time she sat thinking it over, then she went to a drawer for a photo, taken just before her mother’s death.  It showed her face without any favor, without even justice, and the plain merino gown, which was then her best.  And with this picture she wrote—­“Dear Gavin.  The enclosed was taken five years since, and there has been changes since.”

She did not say what the changes were, but Gavin was sure they were unfavorable.  He gazed at the sad, thoughtful face, the poor plain dress, and he was disappointed.  A girl like that would do his house no honor; he would not care to introduce her to his fellow clerks; they would not envy him a bit.  Annie Riley was far better looking, and far more stylish.  He decided in favor of Annie Riley.

Jean was not astonished when no answer came.  She had anticipated her failure to please her old lover; but she smiled a little sadly at his failure.  Then there came into her mind a suspicion of Mary, an uncertainty, a lingering hope that some circumstance, not to be guessed at from a distance, was to blame for Gavin’s silence and utter want of response.  It was midsummer, she wanted a breath of the ocean; why should she not go to New York and quietly see how things were for herself?  The idea took possession of her, and she carried it out.

She knew the name of the large dry goods firm that Gavin served, and the morning after her arrival in New York she strolled into it for a pair of gloves.  As they were being fitted on she heard Gavin speak, and moving her position slightly, she saw him leaning against a pile of summer blankets.  He was talking to one of his fellows, and evidently telling a funny story, at which both giggled and snickered, ere they walked their separate ways.  Being midsummer the store was nearly empty, and Jean, by varying her purchases, easily kept Gavin in sight.  She never for one moment found the sight a pleasant one.  Gavin had deteriorated in every way.  He was no longer handsome; the veil of youth had fallen from him, and his face, his hands, his figure, his slouching walk, his querulous authoritative voice, all revealed a man whom Jean repelled at every point.  Years had not refined, they had vulgarized him.  His clothing careless and not quite fresh, offended her taste; in fact, his whole appearance was of that shabby genteel character, which is far more mean and plebeian than can be given by undisguised working apparel.  As Jean was taking note of these things a girl, with a flushed, angry face, spoke to him.  She was evidently making a complaint, and Gavin answered her in a manner which made Jean burn from head to feet.  The disillusion was complete; she never looked at him again, and he never knew she had looked at him at all.

But after Mary’s marriage he heard news which startled him.  Mary, under her new name, wrote to an acquaintance in Lambrig, and this acquaintance in reply said, “You will have heard that Jean Anderson was left a great fortune by her uncle, David Nicoll.  She is building a home near Lambrig that is finer than Maxwell Castle; and Lord Maxwell has rented the castle to her until her new home is finished.  You wouldn’t ken the looks of her now, she is that handsome, but weel-a-way, fine feathers aye make fine birds!”

Gavin fairly trembled when he heard this news, and as he had been with the firm eleven years and never asked a favor, he resolved to tell them he had important business in Scotland, and ask for a month’s holiday to attend to it.  If he was on the ground he never doubted his personal influence.  “Jean was aye wax in my fingers,” he said to Mary.

“There is Annie Riley,” answered Mary.

“She will have to give me up.  I’ll not marry her.  I am going to marry Jean, and settle myself in Scotland.”

“Annie is not the girl to be thrown off that kind of way, Gavin.  You have promised to marry her.”

“I shall marry Jean Anderson, and then what will Annie do about it, I would like to know?”

“I think you will find out.”

In the fall he obtained permission to go to Scotland for a month, and he hastened to Lambrig as fast as steam could carry him.  He intended no secret visit; he had made every preparation to fill his old townsmen with admiration and envy.  But things had changed, even in Lambrig.  There was a new innkeeper, who could answer none of his questions, and who did not remember Minister Anderson and his daughter, Jean.  He began to fear he had come on a fool’s errand, and after a leisurely, late breakfast, he strolled out to make his own investigations.

There was certainly a building on a magnificent scale going up on a neighboring hill, and he walked toward it.  When half way there a finely-appointed carriage passed him swiftly, but not too swiftly for him to see that Jean and a very handsome man were its occupants.  “It will be her lawyer or architect,” he thought; and he walked rapidly onward, pleased with himself for having put on his very best walking suit.  There were many workmen on the building, and he fell into conversation with a man who was mixing mortar; but all the time he was watching Jean and her escort stepping about the great uncovered spaces of the new dwelling-house with such an air of mutual trust and happiness that it angered him.

“Who is the lady?” he asked at length; “she seems to have business here.”

“What for no?  The house is her ain.  She is Mistress Sharp, and that is the professor with her.  He is a great gun in the Glasgow University.”

“They are married, then?”

“Ay, they are married.  What are you saying at all?  They were married a month syne, and they are as happy as robins in spring, I’m thinking.  I’ll drink their health, sir, if you’ll gie me the bit o’ siller.”

Gavin gave the silver and turned away dazed and sick at heart.  His business in Scotland was over.  The quiet Lothian country sickened him; he turned his face to London, and very soon went back to New York.  He had lost Jean, and he had lost Jean’s fortune; and there were no words to express his chagrin and disappointment.  His sister felt the first weight of it.  He blamed her entirely.  She had lied to him about Jean’s beauty.  He believed he would have liked the photo but for Mary.  And all for Annie Riley!  He hated Annie Riley!  He was resolved never to marry her, and he let the girl feel his dislike in no equivocal manner.

For a time Annie was tearful and conciliating.  Then she wrote him a touching letter, and asked him to tell her frankly if he had ceased to love her, and was resolved to break their marriage off.  And Gavin did tell her, with almost brutal frankness, that he no longer loved her, and that he had firmly made up his mind not to marry her.  He said something about his heart being in Scotland, but that was only a bit of sentiment that he thought gave a better air to his unfaithfulness.

Annie did not answer his letter, but Messrs. Howe & Hummel did, and Gavin soon found himself the centre of a breach of promise trial, with damages laid at fifty thousand dollars.  All his fine poetical love letters were in the newspapers; he was ashamed to look men and women in the face; he suffered a constant pillory for weeks; through his vanity, his self-consciousness, his egotism he was perpetually wounded.  But pretty Annie Riley was the object of public pity and interest, and she really seemed to enjoy her notoriety.  The verdict was righteously enough in her favor.  The jury gave her ten thousand dollars, and all expenses, and Gavin Burns was a ruined man.  His eleven years savings only amounted to nine thousand dollars, and for the balance he was compelled to sell his furniture and give notes payable out of his next year’s salary.  He wept like a child as he signed these miserable vouchers for his folly, and for some days was completely prostrated by the evil he had called unto himself.  Then the necessities of his position compelled him to go to work again, though it was with a completely broken spirit.

“I’m getting on to forty,” he said to his sister, “and I am beginning the world over again!  One woman has given me a disappointment that I will carry to the grave; and another woman is laughing at me, for she has got all my saved siller, and more too; forbye, she is like to marry Bob Severs and share it with him.  Then I have them weary notes to meet beyond all.  There never was a man so badly used as I have been!”

No one pitied him much.  Whatever his acquaintances said to his face he knew right well their private opinion was that he had received just what he deserved.