Christine by Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr (the two towers ebook TXT) 📖

think she is dying, Auntie."

"Go hame as quick as you can, and tell your feyther to come, and not to lose a minute. Tell him he must bring the Cup wi' him, or I'm feared he'll be too late."

The Domine's voice roused Margot a little. She put out her trembling hand, and the likeness of a smile was on her face. "Is He come?" she asked.

"Only a few more shadows, Margot, and He will come. I have brought the Cup with me, Margot. Will you drink the Wine of Remembrance now?"

"Ay, will I--gladly!"

The Domine and Christine ate and drank the sacred meal with her, and after it she seemed clearer and better, and the Domine said to her, "Margot, you will see my dear old friend, James Ruleson, very soon now. Will you tell him I send him my love? Will you tell him little Jamie is my son now, and that he is going to make the name of James Ruleson stand high in the favor of God and man?"

"I'll tell him a' anent Jamie--and anent Christine, too."

"The dead wait and long for news of the living they love. Someway, sooner or later, good news will find them out, and make even heaven happier. Farewell, Margot!"

Later in the evening there came that decided lightening which so often precedes death. Margot asked for Norman, and while he knelt beside her, she gave him some instructions about her burial, and charged him to stand by his sister Christine. "She'll be her lane," she said, "'til my year is gane by, and the warld hates a lone woman who fends for hersel'. Stay wi' Christine tonight. Tell Christine to come to me."

When Christine was at her side, she asked, "Do you remember the verses in the wee, green book?"

"Called 'Coming'?"

"Ay"--and she added very slowly the first few words she wished to hear--"It may be when the midnight----"

"Is heavy upon the land,
And the black waves lying dumbly
Along the sand,
When the moonless night draws close,
And the lights are out in the house,
When the fires burn low and red,
And the watch is ticking loudly,
Beside the bed.
Though you sleep tired out, on your couch
Still your heart must wake and watch,
In the dark room.
For it may be that at midnight,
I will come."

And then Norman said solemnly, "In such an hour as you think not, He will come."

About ten o'clock Christine caught an anxious look in her eyes, and she asked, "What is it, Mither, dear Mither?"

"Neil!" she answered. "Did ye send for the lad?"

"Three days ago."

"When he does come, gie him the words I send him. You ken what they are."

"I will say and do all you told me."

"But dinna be cross wi' the laddie. Gie him a fair hearing."

"If he is sorry for a' he has done----"

"He willna be sorry. Ye must e'en forgie him, sorry or not--Ye ken what the Domine said to me--when I spoke--o' forgiving Neil--when he--was sorry?"

"The Domine said you were to remember, that while we were yet sinners God loved us, and Christ died for us."

"Ay, while we--were--yet--sinners! that leaves room for Neil--and everybody else, Christine--Christine--I am weary, bairns--I will go to sleep now--gude night!"

Death had now become a matter of consent to Margot. She surrendered herself to her Maker, and bade her children "goodnight!"

Her life had many a hope and aim, Duties enough and little cares, And now was quiet and now astir,

until God's hand beckoned her into His school of affliction. Now in the House not made with Hands she understands the meaning of it all.

The next week was a particularly hard one to Christine. In the long seclusion of her mother's illness, and in the fascination which study now had for her, the primitive burial rites of Culraine were an almost unbearable trial. Every woman who had ever known Margot came to bid her a last earthly farewell. Some cried, some volubly praised her, some were sadly silent, but all were alike startled by the mighty change that affliction and death had made in the once powerful, handsome, tremendously vitalized woman, who had ruled them all by the sheer force of her powerful will and her wonderful vitality. Pale and cold, her raven hair white as snow, her large strong hands, shrunk to skin and bone, clasped on her breast, and at rest forever--they could hardly believe that this image of absolute helplessness was all that was left of Margot Ruleson.

For three days the house was always full, and Christine was troubled and questioned on every hand. But for three days long a little brown bird sat on a holly tree by her window, and sang something that comforted her. And the sweet, strong song was for her alone. Nobody else noticed it. She wondered if they even saw the little messenger. On the afternoon of the third day, the Domine, standing at the head of the coffin, spoke to the men and women who filled the house. His eyes were dim with tears, but his voice had the strong, resonant ring of a Faith that knew it was well with the dead that die in the Lord. It was mainly to the living he spoke, asking them solemnly, "What does the Lord require of you? Only this service--that you do justly, and love mercy, and walk humbly with your God."

Then Margot's sons, Norman and Eneas, lifted the light coffin. The Domine walked in front of it, and all the men present followed them to the open grave, in the old kirk yard. In Scotland women do not go to the grave. Christine locked herself in her room, and the women mourners gradually returned to their homes.

That night she was quite alone, and she could give free outlet to her love, and grief, and hope. She felt her mother in every room. She could not believe she had gone far away. At times, walking about the desolate house, she called her mother with passionate weeping again, in the soft low voice that she had used when soothing her pain and weariness. At length even her superb vitality gave way, and she fell upon her bed in a comforting, restorative sleep.

Morning found her ready and able to face the new life. She rose with the dawn, ate her breakfast, and then lifted the hardest duty before her. This was to brush and carefully fold away Margot's last simple clothing. Margot herself had cared for her one silk dress, her bits of lace, and the beads and rings and combs of the days of her health and vanity. Christine had seen her face wet with tears as she locked them in the trunk, and had kissed those tears away with promises of renewed life. But there was no one with her to kiss away the tears she shed over the simple gowns of Margot's last hard days. As she was doing this loving duty, she thought of the angels folding up neatly the simple linen garments in which Christ had been buried. With such thoughts in her heart, oh how lovingly she stroked the plain cotton gowns, and the one black merino skirt, that had made up Margot's last wardrobe. Her tears dropped over them, and she turned the key with a little cry so heart-broken that no doubt her angel wept with her.

"Oh Mither, Mither!" she cried, "how little had ye for a' the days o' your hard, sorrowfu', painfu', fifty-five years--for a' your loveless girlhood--for a' your wifely watchings and fearings for feyther on the stormy seas--for a' your mitherhood's pains and cares--for the lang, cruel years you were walking i' the Valley o' the Shadow o' Death--for a' the years o' your hard, daily wark, loving and tending your six sons and mysel', feeding, dressing, and makin' us learn our catechism and our Bible verses--curing fish, and selling fish, makin' nets, and mending nets, cooking and knitting and sewing. Surely the good Master saw it all, and will gie you His 'well done,' and the wage ye hae earned."

The bits of crochet work that her mother's trembling fingers had made--her last work one little table mat unfinished--had a strange sacredness, and a far more touching claim. She took these to her own room. "They hold Mither's last thoughts. They seem a part o' her. I'll never lose sight o' them while I draw breath o' life. Never!" And she kissed and folded them up, with the dried rose leaves from Margot's garden.

Then she stayed her tears, and looked round the disordered house. Everything was out of its proper place. That circumstance alone made her miserable, for Christine was what her neighbors called a "pernickity" housekeeper. She must have a place for everything, and everything in its place. Until she had her home in this precise condition, she resolved to take no other trouble into consideration. And simple and even derogatory as it appears to be, nothing is more certainly efficacious in soothing grief, than hard physical labor. It took her two days to put the cottage in its usual spotless condition, and during those two days, she gave herself no moment in which to think of any trouble before her.

She knew well that there must be trouble. Her mother's burial money, put away twenty-nine years previously, had proved quite insufficient for modern ideals and modern prices. She was nearly out of money and there would be debts to meet, and every debt would be to her like a wolf baying round the house. That was one trouble. Cluny was another. She knew he would now urge an immediate marriage, and that his plea would have an appearance of extreme justice. She also knew that he would be supported by Norman, whose wife had long set her heart on occupying the Ruleson cottage. That was a second trouble. The third was Neil. He had been immediately notified of his mother's death, and he had taken no notice of the event. The other boys not present, were all at sea, but where was Neil?

These things she would not yet permit her mind to consider.--In fact, the tossed-up, uncleanly house, dulled her faculties. She could not think clearly, until all was spotless and orderly. Then she could meet trouble clear-headed and free-handed. However, on the third evening after her mother's burial, every corner of the house satisfied her. Even her dusters and cleaning-cloths had been washed and gone to their special corner of the kitchen drawer; and she had felt, that afternoon, that she could comfortably arrange her paper and pencils on the table of her own room.

She was eager to write. Her heart and brain burned with the thoughts and feelings she longed to express. "Tomorrow," she said to herself--"Tomorrow, I shall go on with my book." Three months previously she had begun a story to be called "A Daughter of the Sea," but lately she had been obliged to lay it aside. She found "the bits o' poetry," were all she could manage in the short intervals of time that were her own.

My readers may reflect here, on the truth that there is no special education for a writer. The man or woman who has anything to say to the world, brings the ability to declare