CHAPTER III.

JEAN’S REPRISALS.

Eppie Meffin had returned with her soldier, a full-blown sergeant in possession of a comfortable pension, to settle in her native village. And Jean went to congratulate her old friend, but found that condolences instead of congratulations were in requisition.

Eppie stood bathed in tears with her good bonnet and shawl thrown on anyhow, in her haste to set out for the Dalroy railway-station, which was now within three miles of the village, while the train stopped for five minutes at another station a mile from Logan, on its way to a place of greater note.

‘Come a bittie with me, Jean, it’s lang since we’ve seen ane anither, lass. I take your early visit very kind, and am fain to hear your cracks, ‘but I canna stop to speak to you,’ said Eppie, without waiting to be questioned on the cause of her distress.

Jean complied with the petition, excited almost out of her staid maidenly composure. And her companion was not slow to pour forth her lamentations over the misfortune that had befallen her, through all that was left of her kindred.

‘Oo, aye, it’s that unlucky Bob: you may be satisfied now, Jean, you ha’e lived to see vengeance execut’ on him--as they say, it’s aye ta’en--even in this world, on the deceivers and deserters o’ women.’

‘Me satisfied!’ cried Jean in unfeigned horror; ‘what do you tak me for, Eppie Meffin? Do you think I wish, or ha’e ever wished, an ill wish on your brither? You’re speakin’ like an unregenerate heathen. Is’t his ae bit laddie?’ inquired Jean almost tenderly.

‘It’s a hantle waur than the bairn,’ groaned Eppie. ‘I canna help liking the wee thing who is no accountable for a’ the fash he gies; but ’deed he would be weel awa’, at rest from a’ his pains.’

‘Oh! Eppie, Eppie,’ said Jean reproachfully, ‘when Bob’s heart is set on this bairn, and ane can never tell what the silliest callant may come through, and live, and grow to; you a mither yoursel’ to speak sic words!’

‘You speak o’ me bein’ a mither,’ said Eppie with a half-choked voice, ‘woman, you dinna ken what the outcome o’ a mither’s love may lead to, though you’re gude--you were aye a gude lass, Jean Kinloch. There’s my ain brisk mannie Peter. Do you think if I had the choice, and if I kenned I was to be ta’en away frae him, and his father was to forfeit his pension and become superannuate’, I wouldna rather choose to have a’ the briskness ta’en out of my laddie, and see him lying still--never to stir mair--only fit for the mools, than look forward to a chance of his comin’ to want, and fa’n on the parish, and being knocked about and scorned, and treated to a dog’s life?’

‘Then it’s Bob himsel’,’ said Jean briefly.

‘Wha else should it be?’ demanded Eppie, made peevish by her grief.

‘Ye dinna say he’s dead?’ said Jean, with white lips.

‘No dead outricht,’ said Eppie, not so grateful as she ought to have been for the great respite, never having contemplated the extremity, ‘but he is no muckle better, so far as being a bread-winner is concerned. He was trying to break in a maisterfu’ horse, when it turned and flung at him, and struck him atween the elbow and the shouther. His arm--and it’s his richt ane--is that melled the doctor is feared the banes will never gang thegither again, and he may have to cut it aff bodily. If poor Bob survive the operation, and be left an ae-armed man, he’ll no even be fit for a hag man’ (the used-up man who is the cattle-feeder on a farm). His maister may do something for him, so long as he lives, since the hurt was got in his service, but Bob cannot be allowed mair than will provide for his ain bite and sup, and what is to become of his bairns even in his lifetime Gude can tell. Me and my man micht take ane o’ the halflin lassies, but we could do nae mair; and little as the like o’ her is gude for, she’s like to be ill spared with her faither as weel as her little brither thrown on her and her sister’s care. Pity me! for the care, wi’ the auldest of the twa hardly in her teens. Now, Jean, when you’ve heard a’ will you flee out on me again for wishing the weary wean were safe in a better place?’

Jean was silent in the magnitude of the calamity.

At this moment Eppie had only one complaint to make of the victim, and she did not dream of including Jean in it, for Eppie was a loyal friend as well as an attached sister. She had heard already how Bob as a widower had ventured to make up to Jean Kinloch again, and so far from approving of the venture, Eppie, in fairness to her sex, and still more in fairness to Jean, had said stoutly, unswayed by family interest and partiality, that Bob was rightly served in the repulse he had received. He had no reason to count on any other answer. He was both bold and simple to speer Jean Kinloch’s price a second time. There had always been a simplicity about him, poor chap, though he was no fool either. Doubtless that had been the cause of his falling an easy victim to the wiles of that light-headed cutty Leezbeth Red--that Eppie should miscall the dead. But Eppie’s auld mother, who had a great work with Jean, could never abide Leezbeth. Thus Eppie took refuge from any self-reproach for the disparaging criticism on her late sister-in-law, by regarding it as a mark of filial respect.

‘You ken, Jean, it’s a mercy, “there was never a silly Jocky but there was aye as silly a Jenny,” and some canny woman, a wee bit up in years, wi no muckle to lippen to, micht have drawn up wi’ Bob and his foreman’s house and wages. And what though, she had been a thocht ill-faured?’ speculated Eppie boldly, ‘she would not ha’e made a waur wife and step-mither because of the shape of her nose or the colour of her skin. Of course I dinna mean a weel-to-do, weel-looking woman like you, Jean,’ broke off Eppie in perfect sincerity; ‘a match like that was no longer to be thought of for him. If you were inclined to change your state, you micht aspire as high as a butler or a schulemaister. But about the woman that might ha’e done for our Bob afore this mischanter--if she had not been a fule o’ a lassie--caring only for idleset and a reive at whatever pleasure came in her way--she would not ha’e been that ill aff. Puir Bob has learnt to serve hissel’ and to be easy served, and his patience wi’ these bairns o’ his, and his pleasure in them, is jist extraordinar’.’

‘Yes,’ Jean said half abstractedly, ‘he seemed to think a deal o’ his bairns.’

‘Nae doubt, ilka craw thinks its ain bird whitest, and Bob’s birds were aye birds o’ Paradise. No that I would deny they’re fine lasses as lasses gang, but will that prevent them being frichtet out o’ their wits if Bob has to get his arm chapped aff? and if he come round, how long will they be, think ye, of forgetting the trouble and getting out their heads? And how can I, wi’ a man and bairns and a house o’ my ain to look after, and a railway journey atween me and Bob’s family, keep the lasses out of a’ but good company, and set them down and haud them on their seats, at their seams and their knittin’, and teach them to be orderly and punctual and weel-mannered,’ said the sergeant’s wife with emphasis. ‘No that it matters muckle since it has come to the warst,’ she added the next moment, sinking back into dejection. ‘I see nae way now for them but they maun gang on the parish--that ever ony o’ my folk should come to this!’ Eppie ended with fresh tears of mingled personal mortification and grief for ‘our Bob.’

Jean tarried a couple of weeks, hearing various reports of Bob’s keeping up or giving way--of the youngest of his doctors maintaining that he would both save the arm and restore it to usefulness, only months of suffering and helplessness must intervene--of the eldest of his doctors swearing that Bob’s arm, if it were not amputated at once, would cost him his life at no distant day. Jean could bear it no longer. Her punishment, not Bob’s, was more than she could bear. She would ‘take her foot in her hand,’ go across the moor, and ask how Bob Meffin fared. She was an old enough woman to decide for herself on the desirability of such a step. She was old enough in her rank of life to be her own chaperon, and dispense with the presence of Eppie on her visit.

Jean was not accustomed to railways as her travelled friend was, so it did not occur to her to lessen the fatigue of the expedition by having recourse to the station, nearly three miles off, and being carried by the iron horse and deposited a mile from her destination. To Jean, by far the simpler and less troublesome course was to ‘take her foot in her hand’ and walk the ten miles to Logan.

It was already the month of February, and the days were lengthening, though spring was making little show in the woods and fields, and least of all on the moor.

Jean accomplished this journey as she had accomplished that other, with the frost-bitten instead of the blooming heather under her feet, and the former summer sky still grey with wintry clouds over her head. It was not the sabbath day, so Jean was not called upon to redeem the holy time by speaking to herself in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, as she trod the long and hard road; but she caught herself muttering involuntarily half aloud more than once, ‘God be gude to Bob Meffin and his mitherless bairns.’ And she was conscious, through her anxiety, that peace with God and man, instead of restless misery, filled her breast.

Jean passed the kirk where she had sat and heard Bob ‘cried’ with another woman, as it seemed to her an age ago--passed the kirkyard where Leezbeth Red lay sleeping. She knew the road to Blawart Brae perfectly well. Had she not learnt its every turning by heart in the days when she had thought of the farm in the light of her home as a young wife? Bob’s present house was not, indeed, the house which that young wife would have dwelt in, the last was tenanted by one of the junior ploughmen and his wife--no older than Jean would have been if she had come to Blawart Brae a married woman by the time she was twenty. Jean caught a glimpse of a young lass whose brown hand was already invested with the dignity of a wedding-ring, as she looked up and paused in the act of pulling up a curly green kail-stock from her ‘yaird.’ Jean stared wistfully at the fresh contented face as at a picture of what her own face might have been like, if Bob Meffin had not broken his vows more than a dozen of years before.

Bob’s cottage was that of the foreman on the farm, but the little advantages which the promotion secured had all been lost in the grinding poverty to which he had been subjected.

Bob himself opened the door to Jean’s knock, for he was able to walk about the house, though his arm was still in an early precarious stage of recovery.

‘Eh! Jean, is this you? Come in by; it’s kind of you to look in and speer for me in the by-going, since you maun ha’e some other errand at Logan.’ He cried with such glad surprise, that Jean had no more cause to fear the nature of her welcome.

He insisted upon her occupying the one arm-chair, and he would break up with his left hand the little fire gathered on the hearth, while he kept repeating, as in a wonderfully pleasant dream, ‘Is’t possible you’ve come aince errand to see me? Woman, the sicht of you is gude for a sick man;’ and Jean knew that he admired her fine carriage and fine face as of old--that to him, as to the rest of the world, she was still the well-endowed, the well- not the ill-favoured woman whom Eppie had proposed as a fit wife for her brother.

As for him, he looked fifty times more haggard and worn than when Jean had seen him sitting, still able-bodied and active, on the head of his cart between the smiddy and the well, in the winter gloaming. His cheeks were more sunken, his hair had received an additional white powdering, his very voice piped a little with weakness, his fustian clothes naturally were worse--not better, attended to, while his right arm, that sign and seal of a working man’s independence, hung pathetically incapable of service in its sling.

But he was eager, even cheerful, in his greetings to Jean. At the same time it was clear that though he had no regrets to spare for his personal appearance, he was full of apologies for his house which might throw discredit on the management of his young house-keepers. Both of them were absent for the moment, since Lizzie had carried out her little brother, and Peggy, who had returned to the parish school, was not come back for the day.

To tell the truth, Jean saw Bob’s house when it was about its best, while he remained constantly at home to give directions to his lasses, and when his sister Eppie came over, once a fortnight, expending her surplus energy and emotion in scouring not only the family wardrobe, but the windows and the grate.

But it was a house bare and barren in its small space, as the great ward of a poor-house, while it was liable to the squalor the absence of which is the redeeming feature of the poor-house. Here there was not one of the articles which are the pride of a well-to-do ploughman’s heart, and which make all the difference between ‘couthiness’ (plenty and comfort combined) and dreariness in his homely dwelling. In Bob’s house there was no chest of drawers rubbed by proud patient hands--such as Jean had been once laying by ten shillings of her wages at a time to buy; no grandiose eight-day clock with perhaps a wreath of brilliant pink roses and gorgeous blue convolvuluses painted round its broad face, to which Bob in the heyday of his fortunes had aspired; no coarse but gay earthenware, for show as well as for use, in the cupboard with its glass door; no resplendent coloured engravings of worse than doubtful merit as works of art, but bright suggestive spots relieving the staring or dingy blankness of the white-washed walls; no exquisitely patched quilt--a marvel of womanly ingenuity and industry, such as Jean had once stitched together and sung over, and laid aside to fade in her kist--adorning the box-bed. There was not even a cat purring about the ‘clean hearth-stane,’ or a bird chirping in its cage, or a growing plant on the ledge of the small window. Yet Bob as a young man had been fond of animals and plants. Only there had been hard times in his history. Then a cat, if it did not cast aside its domestic habits and run wild about the stack-yard and barn, killing rats and mice which Bob might have been tempted to grudge it, for its own consumption, would have grown as lean in flesh and as unthrifty in coat as Bob himself. The pence to be paid for an ounce of bird-seed might have formed a far larger sum than he, with any conscience, would have dared to abstract from the family capital. The burdened man could not have given the moment’s thought and time necessary to supply the ‘flooer’ with the common sunshine, air, and water--all that it craved.

Jean, who had been thinking much of late of her old comfortable manse-kitchen glittering with pewter, tin and brass, the very roof groaning with the weight of mutton hams, pigs’ cheeks, dried fish, bags of onions, bunches of herbs, contrasted it with this region of desolation, but did not shrink from the contrast.

Jean and Bob chatted together one on each side of the flickering fire--the blinking of which was more kindly than the pale February sunbeams, which shone steadily on the dispiriting house-place.

But Bob was not down-hearted: he was wonderfully hopeful, as, by the Providence which makes the back fit for the burden, it was his nature to be. He was ready to praise to the skies the cleverness and kindness of his young doctor--Bob having affectionately appropriated his medical man, with a certain proud admiration and tenderness for his gifts and his youth, much as Jean had appropriated her young mistresses, dwelling with fond delight on their graces. Bob proclaimed with unstinted gratitude the generosity of his master, who was paying in full a term’s wages which the servant had not earned, and only putting an orra (extra man) man into Bob’s place, till it could be ascertained whether he should recover from the effects of his accident, as Bob was well assured he would in time, if it were the Lord’s will--he used the expression without the slightest affectation. Eppie was a good sister to him, while all his neighbours were richt kind. He could better thole the pain of his arm now, that he had the comfort of trusting it was not to be sawn off. Bob said the words without shrinking and with manly fortitude. He had been in worse straits and seen far greater ‘trouble,’ and he had much to be thankful for. There was no more pretence in the acknowledgment of thankfulness than in the reference to his Maker’s will. Bob was one of those wayfaring men who, though a fool, was prevented, in part by his very simplicity, from erring in his judgment of the way he had to go through life and death.

Then he quietly dropped his own affairs and turned with kindly interest to discuss Jean’s concerns, and also to hear the news of old acquaintances which could only reach him and Jean orally, and could never come to them through any humble substitute for ‘Fashionable News’ in West-end newspapers. Bob could and did read stray newspapers, but they rarely brought him intelligence of the doings of friends old or new, and news were especially acceptable to Bob in these weeks of enforced idleness and pain, from which, though he bore the infliction bravely, he was fain to have his mind diverted for an hour. He took the friendliest interest in the changes going on in Jean’s ‘family,’ which happened at that moment to be looking up in the world, while now and then that very interest betrayed him into precarious allusions. ‘So Miss Mary is to be buckled with young Logan o’ Logan! I mind her weel as a bairn. She was the little leddy wi’ the lint white locks I ha’e carried on my shouther many a time--you mind, Jean? when there was a lock o’ us among the minister’s hay. And Miss Catrine’s to go back to the manse--how bools rin round! and she wants you to go back wi’ her. You’ll do’t, Jean,’ said Bob with cordial confidence. ‘You’ll like the auld place far better than Logan House after young Logan has come to his kingdom. The manse o’ Dalroy was a bonnie pairt and a happy hame even for a servant lass in the auld days. I’ve no doubt it will be as nearly as possible the same, under Miss Catrine who comes o’ a gude stock and the young minister who I am told has the making o’ a powerful preacher in him, while he is a kind man to the puir. I’m as pleased as you can think, Jean, to hear o’ your down-sitten in the end--for you’ll never leave them, they’ll never let you go. Woman, you’ll be an honour to their house among their young maids; you’ll be like Rebeecy’s nurse whom all Israel murned for, that the auld Doctor aince preached about, and you could turn up chapter and verse, and read what was said o’ her in the “Word.”’

‘Thanks to you, Bob,’ said Jean in a low tone, conscious of his self-forgetfulness.

But all through the conversation Bob was alert for any sign of the return of his bairns. He was extremely desirous that they should come home in time for Jean to see them before she left. ‘I wouldna like to keep you ower long, Jean, when you have siccan a tramp between toons, and it was mair than kind of you to come. But if you could just aince cast een on the bairns, if you could see Jockie and tell me what you think o’ him, I would like it aboon a’ things. If I were at their heels,’ cried Bob, waxing hot in his great longing to bring about the introduction, ‘I would try if a gude paik wouldna put smeddum in them. But you ken bairns will be bairns,’ he turned the next moment and craved indulgence for his culprits. ‘They will find things to play wi’, were it but a wheen burrs to stick on ane anither’s backs, and keep them ahint on the road.’

At last the members of Bob’s family arrived simultaneously, the lasses with their bleached hair and round rosy faces, and the puny little lad. Lizzie was lugging along her brother in her motherly young arms, Peggy had her bag with her books hung round her neck. There was no particular sign of that seeking to get their heads out of the yoke which Eppie had foreboded, though they might not have been guiltless of the light-heartedness of sticking burrs on each other’s backs for the last quarter of an hour. But the two, and even the small child, having a spindly arm hanging loosely across the breast of his sister’s blue pinafore, with his eyes looking large and hollow like his father’s, in his wasted mite of a face, stared open-mouthed at Jean. In vain their father strove to do the honours with the best effect. ‘Gie me the bairn, Lizzie. This is Lizzie and thon’s Peggy, Jean; and here’s an auld friend of mine, lasses.’

In his deep anxiety that the children might make a favourable impression on his old friend, Bob suddenly fell foul of the objects of his devotion with a sharpness of fault-finding which not only took them completely by surprise, but drove them into a frame of mind still more stupid and provoking.

‘Ha’e you no a tongue in your head, Lizzie?’ Bob reproached his eldest-born cuttingly. ‘And as for you, Peggy,’ he turned furiously on the second girl, ‘lowse that bag from your neck this minute, and put aff that bannet that you have a’ but torn the croon frae since you left hame this morning. What garred you be sae royd--and noo you are as blate, when I would have had you look wiselike and behave your best no to disgrace yoursel’s and me.’ Bob ended with a groan of disappointment--well-nigh despair.

Jean had to interfere with her womanly forbearance and consideration. ‘Let them alane, Bob. There’s naithing wrang. What would you ha’e o’ the bairns--fine bairns, who I am sure will do a’ they can to please you?’

But Bob’s heart melted utterly to his youngest-born, his son and heir, and he failed to attack him with scathing sarcasm. ‘Here’s Jockie,’ he said, smiling on the child that nestled in his left arm. ‘Tak him frae me, Jean, he’ll no greet--he’s the best manners o’ us a’--he’s sic a licht wecht, though he’s a hantle heavier than he was six months syne, you’ll no feel it, even though you’re tired,’ said Bob, putting his darling awkwardly with his one free hand into Jean’s arms. He gave a sigh half of speechless satisfaction, half of unfathomable sorrow--looking in her face at the same time, seeking to hear her utter her tribute to the child’s attractions, and hanging breathlessly on what was likely to be her outspoken verdict of whether it was to be life or death for the lad.

Jean took the bairn reverently and gently. He did not greet; in his weakness he appreciated fully Jean’s light firm grasp, while he cuddled to her breast and looked up in her face with his child’s eyes. ‘Puir wee lamb,’ said Jean, sitting down again, for she had risen, as if his feather’s weight had overpowered her strength; and she stroked the wan cheeks till Jockie smiled with the ineffable sweetness of a sick child’s smile.

‘He looks far frae strong,’ said truthful Jean slowly, while Bob listened to her words as if they had been those of an oracle. ‘But I dinna think he has just the look that little Jack at the manse had--I ha’e a hope he’ll get ower his sickness. Do you mind, Bob, your mither used to say you were a silly bairn yoursel’ till you were sax years auld? and your Jockie has a look o’ you.’

‘Do you think sae, Jean?’ said Bob, almost shame-faced at the extent of the compliment, while ready to bless her for the faintest encouragement to trust that Jockie might live to become a toil-worn, care-laden man like his father. But, no; Jockie, if he were spared, would have brighter fortunes; no true father or mother has ever ceased to dream that his or her child will be more successful in the best sense--happier in every way, in the path trodden and cleared before him.

‘I canna keep you longer, Jean,’ said Bob reluctantly but with manly tender forethought for her. ‘And I canna expeck that sic a favour will be repeated. I canna even find words to express to you how much I’m obleeged for this ca’. But if we should never meet again in this world, you’ll mind, Jean, I said as my last words to you, that, like the Maister you ha’e served all your life, you’ve returned gude for evil, you have done what you could to cheer the heart of a sick and lanely man.’

It was the single word of complaint he had allowed to fall from him, and he only let it pass his lips to enhance the value of her good deeds.

The two had left the children in the room behind them, and were standing in the doorway about to part.

‘Bob,’ said Jean hurriedly, ‘I’m ready and willing to come again and stop, if you’re in the same mind that you were on the afternoon you spoke with me, at the smiddy well. The Miss Frasers have no more need o’ me. Eppie will gie in the lines and cite the minister to come here, and I’ll walk across the moor as soon as a’ is ready--if you are in the same mind, Bob.’

Jean spoke the words tremulously, but merely as a matter of course, in her recantation of her refusal. It was the thought farthest from her generous heart to choose this moment of all others in which to reproach him with his former faithlessness.

But as a wrong once done is indelible, the reproach of which Jean never dreamt, smote Bob’s conscience keenly, even while he protested vehemently, ‘I’m in the same mind. Could I be in any other to my auld true love Jean?’ And he cried again, ‘Oh, Jean! your tender mercies are baith kind and cruel,’ while he bowed himself in such an agony of shame as he had never yet felt for the past. He had even, for an instant, a notion that it must be the bitterest part of his punishment to have to put away from him, with his own hand, this ecstasy of hope and happiness for the future--not of himself alone but of his children. ‘I canna let your mercies be, Jean, I daurna let them be,’ he muttered hoarsely.

‘Then I winna ask your leave, Bob,’ said Jean in her triumph of love, before the might of which Bob’s anguish and resistance went down.

‘It’s no me, it’s the bairns, who have won you, as I aye kenned they would,’ said Bob, taking heart again at the thought of his treasure; ‘and they will thank you as I couldna do--no, though I were to live to ninety-nine and never cease speaking your praises.’

END OF THE FIRST VOLUME.

LONDON: PRINTED BY SPOTTISWOODE AND CO., NEW-STREET SQUARE AND PARLIAMENT STREET

Transcriber’s Notes

Obvious punctuation errors and omissions have been silently corrected.

Page 41: “freely acknowleged” changed to “freely acknowledged”

Page 55: “scorched outmeal” changed to “scorched oatmeal”