A Knight of the Nets by Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr (christmas read aloud txt) 📖

any kind. Life was taken up where it had been most pleasantly dropped; all the interval of doubt and suffering was put out of remembrance, and when the joyful meal had been eaten, as Janet washed her cups and saucers and tidied her house, they talked of the happy future before them.

"And I'll tell you what, bairnies," said the dear old woman as she stood folding her real china in the tissue paper devoted to that purpose, "I'll tell you what, bairnies, good will asks for good deeds, and I'll show my good will by giving Christina the acre of land next my own. If Jamie is to go with you, Andrew, and your home is to be with me, lad--"

"Where else would it be, Mother?"

"Well, then, where else need Jamie's home be but in Pittendurie? I'll give the land for his house, and what will you do, Andrew? Speak for your best self, my lad."

"I will give my sister Christina one hundred gold sovereigns and the silk wedding-gown I promised her."

"Oh, Andrew, my dear brother, how will I ever thank you as I ought to?"

"I owe you more, Christina, than I can count."

"No, no, Andrew," said Janet. "What has Christina done that siller can pay for? You can't buy love with money, and gold isn't in exchange for it. Your gift is a good-will gift. It isn't a paid debt, God be thanked!"

The very next day the little family went into Largo, and the acre was legally transferred, and Jamie made arrangements for the building of his cottage. But the marriage did not wait on the building; it was delayed no longer than was necessary for the making of the silk wedding-gown. This office Griselda Kilgour undertook with much readiness and an entire oblivion of Janet's unadvised allusions to her age. And more than this, Griselda dressed the bride with her own hands, adding to her costume a bonnet of white tulle and orange blossoms that was the admiration of the whole village, and which certainly had a bewitching effect above Christina's waving black hair, and shining eyes, and marvellous colouring.

And, as Janet desired, the wedding was a holiday for the whole of Pittendurie. Old and young were bid to it, and for two days the dance, the feast, and the song went gayly on, and for two days not a single fishing boat left the little port of Pittendurie. Then the men went out to sea again, and the women paid their bride visits, and the children finished all the dainties that were else like to be wasted, and life gradually settled back into its usual grooves.

But though Jamie went to the fishing, pending Andrew's appointment to his steamboat, Janet and Christina had a never-ceasing interest in the building and plenishing of Christina's new home. It was not fashionable, nor indeed hardly permissible, for any one to build a house on a plan grander than the traditional fisher cottage; but Christina's, though no larger than her neighbours', had the modern convenience of many little closets and presses, and these Janet filled with homespun napery, linseys, and patch-work, so that never a young lass in Pittendurie began life under such full and happy circumstances.

In the fall of the year the new fire was lit on the new hearth, and Christina moved into her own home. It was only divided from her mother's by a strip of garden and a low fence, and the two women could stand in their open doors and talk to each other. And during the summer all had gone well. Jamie had been fortunate and made money, and Andrew had perfected all his arrangements, so that one morning in early September, the whole village saw "The Falcon" come to anchor in the bay, and Captain Binnie, in his gold-buttoned coat and gold-banded cap, take his place on her bridge, with Jamie, less conspicuously attired, attending him.

It was a proud day for Janet and Christina, though Janet, guided by some fine instinct, remained in her own home, and made no afternoon calls. "I don't want to force folk to say either kind or unkind things to me," she said to her daughter. "You know, Christina, it is a deal harder to rejoice with them that rejoice than to weep with them that weep. Sabrina Roy, as soon as she got her eyes on Andrew in his trimmings, perfectly changed colours with envy; and we have been a speculation to far and near, more than one body saying we were going fairly to the mischief with out extravagance. They thought poverty had us under her black thumb, and they did not think of the hand of God, which was our surety."

However, that afternoon Janet had a great many callers, and not a few came up the cliff out of real kindness, for, doubt as we will, there is a constant inflowing of God into human affairs. And Janet, in her heart, did not doubt her neighbours readily; she took the homage rendered in a very pleased and gracious manner, and she made a cup of tea and a little feast for her company, and the clash and clatter in the Binnie cottage that afternoon was exceedingly full of good wishes and compliments. Indeed, as Janet reviewed them afterwards, they provoked from her a broad smile, and she said with a touch of good-natured criticism:--

"If we could make compliments into silk gowns, Christina, you and I would be bonnily clad for the rest of our lives. Nobody said a nattering word but poor Bella McLean, and she has been soured and sore kept down in the world by a ne'er-do-weel of a husband."

"She should try and guide him better," said Christina. "If he was my man, I would put him through his facings."

"_Toots_, Christina. You are over young in the marriage state to offer opinions about men folk. As far as I can see, every woman can guide a bad husband but the poor soul that has the ill-luck to have one. Open the Book now, and let us thank God for the good day He has given us."


CHAPTER X


"TAKE ME IN TO DIE!"

After this, the pleasant months went by with nothing but Andrew's and Jamie's visits to mark them, and, every now and then, a sough of sorrow from the big house of Braelands. And now that her own girl was so happily settled, Janet began to have a longing anxiety about poor Sophy. She heard all kinds of evil reports concerning the relations between her and her husband, and twice during the winter there was a rumour, hardly hushed up, of a separation between them.

Isobel Murray, to whom at first Sophy turned in her sorrow, had not responded to any later confidences. "My man told me to neither listen nor speak against Archie Braelands," she said to Janet. "We have our own boat to guide, and Sophy cannot be a friend to us; while it is very sure Braelands can be an enemy beyond our 'don't care.' Six little lads and lassies made folk mind their own business. And I'm no very sure but what Sophy's troubles are Sophy's own making. At any rate, she isn't faultless; you be to have both flint and stone to strike fire."

"I'll not hear you say the like of that, Isobel. Sophy may be misguided and unwise, but there is not a wrong thought in her heart. The bit vanity of the young thing was her only fault, and I'm thinking she has paid sorely for it."

All winter, such vague and miserable bits of gossip found their way into the fishing village, and one morning in the following spring, Janet met a young girl who frequently went to Braelands House with fresh fish. She was then on her way home from such an errand, and Janet fancied there was a look of unusual emotion on her broad, stolid face.

"Maggie-Ann," she said, stopping her, "where have you been this morning?"

"Up to Braelands." "And what did you see or hear tell of?"

"I saw nothing; but I heard more than I liked to hear."

"About Mistress Braelands? You know, Maggie-Ann, that she is my own flesh and blood, and I be to feel her wrongs my wrongs."

"Surely, Janet There had been a big stir, and you could feel it in the very air of the house. The servants were feared to speak or to step, and when the door opened, the sound of angry words and of somebody crying was plain to be heard. Jean Craigie, the cook, told me it was about the Dower House. The mistress wants to get away from her mother-in-law, and she had been begging her husband to go and live in the Dower House with her, since Madame would not leave them their own place."

"She is right," answered Janet boldly. "I wouldn't live with that fine old sinner myself, and I think there are few women in Fife I couldn't talk back to if I wanted. Sophy ought never to have bided with her for a day. They have no business under the same roof. A baby and a popish inquisitor would be as well matched."

It had, indeed, come at last to Sophy's positive refusal to live longer with her mother-in-law. In a hundred ways the young wife felt her inability to cope with a woman so wise and so wicked, and she had finally begun to entreat Archie to take her away from Braelands. The man was in a strait which could end only in anger. He was completely under his mother's influence, while Sophy's influence had been gradually weakened by Madame's innuendos and complaints, her pity for Archie, and her tattle of visitors. These things were bad enough; but Sophy's worst failures came from within herself. She had been snubbed and laughed at, scolded and corrected, until she had lost all spontaneity and all the grace and charm of her natural manner. This condition would not have been so readily brought about, had she retained her health and her flower-like beauty. But after the birth of her child she faded slowly away. She had not the strength for a constant, never-resting assertion of her rights, and nothing less would have availed her; nor had she the metal brightness to expose or circumvent the false and foolish positions in which Madame habitually placed her.

Little by little, the facts of the unhappy case leaked out, and were warmly commented on by the fisher-families with whom Sophy was connected either by blood or friendship. Her father's shipmates were many of them living and she had cousins of every degree among the nets--men and women who did not forget the motherless, fatherless lassie who had played with their own children. These people made Archie feel their antagonism. They would neither take his money, nor give him their votes, nor lift their bonnets to his greeting. And though such honest, primitive feelings were proper enough, they did not help Sophy. On the contrary, they strengthened Madame's continual assertion that her son's marriage had ruined his public career and political prospects. Still there is nothing more wonderful than the tugs and twists the marriage tie will bear. There were still days in which Archie--either from love, or pity, or contradiction, or perhaps from a sense of simple justice--took his wife's part so positively that Madame must have been discouraged if she had been a less understanding woman. As it was, she only smiled at such fitful affection, and laid her plans a little more carefully. And as the devil strengthens the hands of those who do his work,