Winter Evening Tales by Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr (books to read now TXT) 📖

had crowned his labors, first in mining and afterward in speculation and merchandising. He said that he was indeed afraid to tell her how rich he was lest to her Arcadean views the sum might appear incredible.

Margaret let the letter fall on her lap and clasped her hands above it. Her face was beautiful. If the prodigal son had a sister she must have looked just as Margaret looked when they brought in her lost brother, in the best robe and the gold ring.

The dominie was not so satisfied. A good many things in the letter displeased him, but he kissed Margaret tenderly and went away from her. "It is a' I did this, an' I did that, an' I suffered you; there is nae word o' God's help, or o' what ither folk had to thole. I'll no be doing ma duty if I dinna set his sin afore his e'en."

The old man was little used to writing, and the effort was a great one, but he bravely made it, and without delay. In a few curt, idiomatic sentences he told Ronald Margaret's story of suffering and wrong and poverty; her hard work for daily bread; her loss of friends, of her good name and her lover, adding: "It is a puir success, ma lad, that ye dinna acknowledge God in; an' let me tell thee, thy restitution is o'er late for thy credit. I wad hae thought better o' it had thou made it when it took the last plack i' thy pouch. Out o' thy great wealth, a few hun'red pounds is nae matter to speak aboot."

But people did speak of it. In spite of our chronic abuse of human nature it is, after all, a kindly nature, and rejoices in good more than in evil. The story of Ronald's restitution is considered honorable to it, and it was much made of in the daily papers. Margaret's friends flocked round her again, saying, "I'm sorry, Margaret!" as simply and honestly as little children, and the dominie did not fail to give them the lecture on charity that Margaret neglected.

Whether the Udaller Thorkald wrote to his son anent these transactions, or whether the captain read in the papers enough to satisfy him, he never explained; but one day he suddenly appeared at Dr. Ogilvie's and asked for Margaret. He had probably good excuses for his conduct to offer; if not, Margaret was quite ready to invent for him--as she had done for Ronald--all the noble qualities he lacked. The captain was tired of military life, and anxious to return to Orkney; and, as his own and Margaret's property was yearly increasing: in value, he foresaw profitable employment for his talents. He had plans for introducing many southern improvements--for building a fine modern house, growing some of the hardier fruits and for the construction of a grand conservatory for Margaret's flowers.

It must be allowed that Captain Thorkald was a very ordinary lord for a woman like Margaret Sinclair to "love, honor and obey;" but few men would have been worthy of her, and the usual rule which shows us the noblest women marrying men manifestly their inferiors is doubtless a wise one.

A lofty soul can have no higher mission than to help upward one upon a lower plane, and surely Captain Thorkald, being, as the dominie said, "no that bad," had the fairest opportunities to grow to Margaret's stature in Margaret's atmosphere.

While these things were occurring, Ronald got Margaret's letter. It was full of love and praise, and had no word of blame or complaint in it. He noticed, indeed, that she still signed her name "Sinclair," and that she never alluded to Captain Thorkald, and the supposition that the stain on his character had caused a rupture did, for a moment, force itself upon his notice; but he put it instantly away with the reflection that "Thorkald was but a poor fellow, after all, and quite unworthy of his sister."

The very next mail-day he received the dominie's letter. He read it once, and could hardly take it in; read it again and again, until his lips blanched, and his whole countenance changed. In that moment he saw Ronald Sinclair for the first time in his life. Without a word, he left his business, went to his house and locked himself in his own room.

Then Margaret's silent money began to speak. In low upbraidings it showed him the lonely girl in that desolate land trying to make her own bread, deserted of lover and friends, robbed of her property and good name, silently suffering every extremity, never reproaching him once, not even thinking it necessary to tell him of her sufferings, or to count their cost unto him.

What is this bitterness we call remorse? This agony of the soul in all its senses? This sudden flood of intolerable light in the dark places of our hearts? This truth-telling voice which leaves us without a particle of our self-complacency? For many days Ronald could find no words to speak but these, "O, wretched man that I am!"

But at length the Comforter came as swiftly and surely and mysteriously as the accuser had come, and once more that miracle of grace was renewed--"that day Jesus was guest in the house of one who was a sinner."

Margaret's "silent money" now found a thousand tongues. It spoke in many a little feeble church that Ronald Sinclair held in his arms until it was strong enough to stand alone. It spoke in schools and colleges and hospitals, in many a sorrowful home and to many a lonely, struggling heart--and at this very day it has echoes that reach from the far West to the lonely islands beyond the stormy Pentland Firth, and the sea-shattering precipices of Duncansbay Head.

It is not improbable that some of my readers may take a summer's trip to the Orkney Islands; let me ask them to wait at Thurso--the old town of Thor--for a handsome little steamer that leaves there three times a week for Kirkwall. It is the sole property of Captain Geordie Twatt, was a gift from an old friend in California, and is called "The Margaret Sinclair."



JUST WHAT HE DESERVED.

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