Winter Evening Tales

"There are forty families depending on me sticking to the shop an' the boats, Ronald, an' I canna go pleasuring till there is ane to step into my shoes."

Ronald Sinclair had all the fair, stately beauty and noble presence of his sister, but yet there was some lack about him easier to feel than to define. Perhaps no one was unconscious of this lack except Margaret; but women have a grand invention where their idols are concerned, and create readily for them every excellency that they lack. Her own two years' study in an Edinburgh boarding-school had been very superficial, and she knew it; but this wonderful Ronald could read Homer and Horace, could play and sketch, and recite Shakespeare and write poetry. If he could have done none of these things, if he had been dull and ugly, and content to trade in fish and wool, she would still have loved him tenderly; how much more then, this handsome Antinous, whom she credited with all the accomplishments of Apollo.

Ronald needed all her enthusiastic support. He had left heavy college bills, and he had quite made up his mind that he would not be a minister and that he would be a lawyer. He could scarcely have decided on two things more offensive to his father. Only for the hope of having a minister in the family had Peter submitted to his son's continued demands for money. For this end he had bought books, and paid for all kinds of teachers and tours, and sighed over the cost of Ronald's different hobbies. And now he was not only to have a grievous disappointment, but also a great offence, for Peter Sinclair shared fully in the Arcadean dislike and distrust of lawyers, and would have been deeply offended at any one requiring their aid in any business transaction with him.

His son's proposal to be a "writer" he took almost as a personal insult. He had formed his own opinion of the profession and the opinion of any other person who would say a word in favor of a lawyer he considered of no value. Margaret had a hard task before her, that she succeeded at all was due to her womanly tact. Ronald and his father simply clashed against each other and exchanged pointed truths which hurt worse than wounds. At length, when the short Arcadean summer was almost over, Margaret won a hard and reluctant consent.

"The lad is fit for naething better, I suppose"—and the old man turned away to shed the bitterest tears of his whole life. They shocked Margaret; she was terrified at her success, and, falling humbly at his feet, she besought him to forget and forgive her importunities, and to take back a gift baptized with such ominous tears.

But Peter Sinclair, having been compelled to take such a step, was not the man to retrace it; he shook his head in a dour, hopeless way: "He couldna say 'yes' an' 'no' in a breath, an' Ronald must e'en drink as he brewed."

These struggles, so real and sorrowful to his father and sister, Ronald had no sympathy with—not that he was heartless, but that he had taught himself to believe they were the result of ignorance of the world and old-fashioned prejudices. He certainly intended to become a great man—perhaps a judge—and, when he was one of "the Lords," he had no doubt his father would respect his disobedience. He knew his father as little as he knew himself. Peter Sinclair was only Peter Sinclair's opinions incorporate; and he could no more have changed them than he could have changed the color of his eyes or the shape of his nose; and the difference between a common lawyer and a "lord," in his eyes, would only have been the difference between a little oppressor and a great one.

For the first time in all her life Margaret suspected a flaw in this perfect crystal of a brother; his gay debonnaire manner hurt her. Even if her father's objections were ignorant prejudices, they were positive convictions to him, and she did not like to see them smiled at, entertained by the cast of the eye, and the put-by of the turning hand. But loving women are the greatest of philistines: knock their idol down daily, rob it of every beauty, cut off its hands and head, and they will still "set it up in its place," and fall down and worship it.

Undoubtedly Margaret was one of the blindest of these characters, but the world may pause before it scorns them too bitterly. It is faith of this sublime integrity which, brought down to personal experience, believes, endures, hopes, sacrifices and loves on to the end, winning finally what never would have been given to a more prudent and reasonable devotion. So, if Margaret had her doubts, she put them arbitrarily down, and sent her brother away with manifold tokens of her love—among them, with a check on the Kirkwall Bank for sixty pounds, the whole of her personal savings.

To this frugal Arcadean maid it seemed a large sum, but she hoped by the sacrifice to clear off Ronald's college debts, and thus enable him to start his new race unweighted. It was but a mouthful to each creditor, but it put them off for a time, and Ronald was not a youth inclined to "take thought" for their "to-morrow."

He had been entered for four years' study with the firm of Wilkes & Brechen, writers and conveyancers, of the city of Glasgow. Her father had paid the whole fee down, and placed in the Western Bank to his credit four hundred pounds for his four years' support. Whatever Ronald thought of the provision, Peter considered it a magnificent income, and it had cost him a great struggle to give up at once, and for no evident return, so much of his hard-earned gold. To Ronald he said nothing of this reluctance; he simply put vouchers for both transactions in his hand, and asked him to "try an' spend the siller as weel as it had been earned."

But to Margaret he fretted not a little. "Fourteen hun'red pounds a' thegither, dawtie," he said in a tearful voice. "I warked early an' late through mony a year for it; an' it is gane a' at once, though I hae naught but words an' promises for it. I ken, Margaret, that I am an auld farrant trader, but I'se aye say that it is a bad well into which are must put water."

When Ronald went, the summer went too. It became necessary to remove at once to their rock-built house in one of the narrow streets of Kirkwall. Margaret was glad of the change; her father could come into the little parlor behind the shop any time in the day and smoke his pipe beside her. He needed this consolation sorely; his son's conduct had grieved him far more deeply than he would allow, and Margaret often saw him gazing southward over the stormy Pentland Frith with a very mournful face.

But a good heart soon breaks bad fortune and Peter had a good heart, sound and sweet and true to his fellow-creatures and full of faith in God. It is true that his creed was of the very strictest and sternest; but men are always better than their theology and Margaret knew from the Scriptures chosen for their household worship that in the depth and stillness of his soul his human fatherhood had anchored fast to the fatherhood of God.

Arcadean winters are long and dreary, but no one need much pity the Arcadeans; they have learned how to make them the very festival of social life. And, in spite of her anxiety about Ronald, Margaret thoroughly enjoyed this one—perhaps the more because Captain Olave Thorkald spent two months of it with them in Kirkwall. There had been a long attachment between the young soldier and Margaret; and having obtained his commission, he had come to ask also for the public recognition of their engagement. Margaret was rarely beautiful and rarely happy, and she carried with a charming and kindly grace the full cup of her felicity. The Arcadeans love to date from a good year, and all her life afterward Margaret reckoned events from this pleasant winter.

Peter Sinclair's house being one of the largest in Kirkwall, was a favorite gathering place, and Peter took his full share in all the home-like, innocent amusements which beguiled the long, dreary nights. No one in Orkney or Zetland could recite Ossian with more passion and tenderness, and he enjoyed his little triumph over the youngsters who emulated him. No one could sing a Scotch song with more humor, and few of the lads and lassies could match Peter in a blithe foursome reel or a rattling strathspey. Some, indeed, thought that good Dr. Ogilvie had a more graceful spring and a longer breath, but Peter always insisted that his inferiority to the minister was a voluntary concession to the Dominie's superior dignity. It was, however, a rivalry that always ended in a firmer grip at parting. These little festivals, in which young and old freely mingled, cultivated to perfection the best and kindest feelings of both classes. Age mellowed to perfect sweetness in the sunshine of youthful gayety, and youth learned from age how at once to be merry and wise.

At length June arrived; and though winter lingered in spates, the song of the skylark and the thrush heralded the spring. When the dream-like voice of the cuckoo should be heard once more, Peter and Margaret had determined to take a long summer trip. They were to go first to Perth, where Captain Thorkald was stationed, and then to Glasgow and see Ronald. But God had planned another journey for Peter, even one to a "land very far off." A disease, to which he had been subject at intervals for many years, suddenly assumed a fatal character and Peter needed no one to tell him that his days were numbered.

He set his house in order, and then, going with Margaret to his summer dwelling, waited quietly. He said little on the subject, and as long as he was able, gave himself up with the delight of a child to watching the few flowers in his garden; but still one solemn, waylaying thought made these few last weeks of life peculiarly hushed and sacred. Ronald had been sent for, and the old man, with the clear prescience that sometimes comes before death, divined much and foresaw much he did not care to speak about—only that in some subtle way he made Margaret perceive that Ronald was to be cared for and watched over, and that to her this charge was committed.

Before the summer was quite over Peter Sinclair went away. In his tarrying by the eternal shore he became, as it were, purified of the body, and one lovely night, when gloaming and dawning mingled, and the lark was thrilling the midnight skies, he heard the Master call him, and promptly answered, "Here am I." Then "Death, with sweet enlargement, did dismiss him hence."

He had been considered a rich man in Orkney, and, therefore, Ronald—who had become accustomed to a Glasgow standard of wealth—was much disappointed. His whole estate was not worth over six thousand pounds; about two thousand pounds of this was in gold, the rest was invested in his houses in Kirkwall, and in a little cottage in Stromness, where Peter's wife had been born. He gave to Ronald £1800, and to Margaret £200 and the life rent of the real property. Ronald had already received £1400, and, therefore, had no cause of complaint, but somehow he felt as if he had been wronged. He was older than his sister, and the son of the house, and use and custom were not in favor of recognizing daughters as having equal rights. But he kept such thoughts to himself, and when he went back to Glasgow took with him solid proof of his sister's devotion.

It was necessary, now, for Margaret to make a great change in her life. She determined to remove to Stromness and occupy the little four-roomed cottage that had been her mother's. It stood close to that of Geordie Twatt, and she felt that in any emergency she was thus sure of one faithful friend. "A lone woman" in Margaret's position has in these days numberless objects of interest of which Margaret never dreamed. She would have thought it a kind of impiety to advise her minister, or meddle in church affairs. These simple parents attended themselves to the spiritual training of their children—there was no necessity for Sunday Schools, and they did not exist. She was not one of those women whom their friends call "beings," and who have deep and mysterious feelings that interpret themselves in poems and thrilling stories. She had no taste for philosophy or history or social science, and had been taught to regard novels as dangerously sinful books.

But no one need imagine that she was either wretched or idle. In the first place, she took life much more calmly and slowly than we do; a very little pleasure or employment went a long way. She read her Bible and helped her old servant Helga to keep the house in order. She had her flowers to care for,—and her brother and lover to write to. She looked after Geordie Twatt's little motherless lads, went to church and to see her friends, and very often had her friends to see her. It happened to be a very stormy winter, and the mails were often delayed for weeks together. This was her only trouble. Ronald's letters were more and more unsatisfactory; he was evidently unhappy and dissatisfied and heartily tired of his new study. Posts were so irregular that often their letters seemed to be playing at cross purposes. She determined as soon as spring opened to go and have a straightforward talk with him.

So the following June Geordie Twatt took her in his boat to Thurso, where Captain Thorkald was waiting for her. They had not met since Peter Sinclair's death, and that event had materially affected their prospects. Before it their marriage had been a possible joy in some far future; now there was no greater claim on her care and love than the captain's, and he urged their early marriage.

Margaret had her two hundred pounds with her, and she promised to buy her "plenishing" during her visit to Glasgow. In those days girls made their own trousseau, sewing into every garment solemn and tender hopes and joys. Margaret thought that proper attention to this dear stitching as well as proper respect for her father's memory, asked of her yet at least another year's delay; and for the present Captain Thorkald thought it best not to urge her further.

Ronald received his sister very joyfully. He had provided lodgings for her with their father's old correspondent, Robert Gorie, a tea merchant in the Cowcaddens. The Cowcaddens was then a very respectable street, and Margaret was quite pleased with her quarters. She was not pleased with Ronald, however. He avowed himself thoroughly disgusted with the law, and declared his intention of forfeiting his fee and joining his friend Walter Cashell in a manufacturing scheme.

Margaret could feel that he was all wrong, but she could not reason about a business of which she knew nothing, and Ronald took his own way. But changing and bettering are two different things, and, though he was always talking of his "good luck" and his "good bargains", Margaret was very uneasy. Perhaps Robert Gorie was partly to blame for this; his pawky face and shrewd little eyes made visible dissents to all such boasts; nor did he scruple to say, "Guid luck needs guid elbowing, Ronald, an' it is at the guid bargains I aye pause an' ponder."

The following winter was a restless, unhappy one; Ronald was either painfully elated or very dull; and, soon after the New Year, Walter Cashell fell into bad health, went to the West Indies, and left Ronald with the whole business to manage. He soon now began to come to his sister, not only for advice, but for money. Margaret believed at first that she was only supplying Walter's sudden loss, but when her cash was all gone, and Ronald urged her to mortgage her rents she resolutely shut her ears to all his plausible promises, and refused to "throw more good money after bad."

It was the first ill-blood between them, and it hurt Margaret sorely. She was glad when the fine weather came, and she could escape to her island home, for Ronald was cool to her, and said cruel things of Captain Thorkald, for whose sake he declared his sister had refused to help him.

One day, at the end of the following August, when most of the towns-people—men and women—had gone to the moss to cut the winter's peat, she saw Geordie Twatt coming toward the house. Something about his appearance troubled her, and she went to the open door and stood waiting for him.

"What is it, Geordie?"

"I am bidden to tell thee, Margaret Sinclair, to be at the Stanes o' Stennis to-night at eleven o'clock."

"Who trysts me there, Geordie, at such an hour?"

"Thy brother; but thou'lt come—yes, thou wilt."

Margaret's very lips turned white as she answered: "I'll be there—see thou art, too."

"Sure as death! If naebody spiers after me, thou needna say I was here at a', thou needna."

Margaret understood the caution, and nodded her head. She could not speak, and all day long she wandered about like a soul in a restless dream.

Fortunately, every one was weary at night, and went early to rest, and she found little difficulty in getting outside the town without notice; and one of the ponies on the common took her speedily across the moor.

Late as it was, twilight lingered over the silent moor, with its old Pictish mounds and burial places, giving them an indescribable aspect of something weird and eerie. No one could have been insensible to the mournful, brooding light and the unearthly stillness, and Margaret was trembling with a supernatural terror as she stood amid the solemn circle of gray stones and looked over the lake of Stennis and the low, brown hills of Harray.

From behind one of these gigantic pillars Ronald came toward her—Ronald, and yet not Ronald. He was dressed as a common sailor, and otherwise shamefully disguised. There was no time to soften things—he told his miserable story in a few plain words:

"His business had become so entangled that he knew not which way to turn, and, sick of the whole affair, he had taken a passage for Australia, and then forged a note on the Western Bank for £900. He had hoped to be far at sea with his ill-gotten money before the fraud was discovered, but suspicion had gathered around him so quickly, that he had not even dared to claim his passage. Then he fled north, and, fortunately, discovering Geordie's boat at Wick, had easily prevailed on him to put off at once with him."

What cowards sin makes of us! Margaret had seen this very lad face death often, among the sunken rocks and cruel surfs, that he might save the life of a ship-wrecked sailor, and now, rather than meet the creditors whom he had wronged, he had committed a robbery and was flying from the gallows.

She was shocked and stunned, and stood speechless, wringing her hands and moaning pitifully. Her brother grew impatient. Often the first result of a bitter sense of sin is to make the sinner peevish and irritable.

"Margaret," he said, almost angrily, "I came to bid you farewell, and to promise you, by my father's name! to retrieve all this wrong. If you can speak a kind word speak it, for God's sake—if not, I must go without it!"

Then she fell upon his neck, and, amid sobs and kisses, said all that love so sorely and suddenly tried could say. He could not even soothe her anguish by any promise to write, but he did promise to come back to her sooner or later with restitution in his hand. All she could do now for this dear brother was to call Geordie to her side and put him in his care; taking what consolation she could from his assurance that "he would keep him out at sea until the search was cold, and if followed carry him into some of the dangerous 'races' between the islands." If any sailor could keep his boat above water in them, she knew Geordie could; and if not—she durst follow that thought no further, but, putting her hands before her face, stood praying, while the two men pulled silently away in the little skiff that had brought them up the outlet connecting the lake of Stennis with the sea. Margaret would have turned away from Ronald's open grave less heart-broken.

It was midnight now, but her real terror absorbed all imaginary ones; she did not even call a pony, but with swift, even steps walked back to Stromness. Ere she had reached it, she had decided what was to be done, and next day she left Kirkwall in the mail packet for the mainland. Thence by night and day she traveled to Glasgow, and a week after her interview with Ronald she was standing before the directors of the defrauded bank and offering them the entire proceeds of her Kirkwall property until the debt was paid.

The bank had thoroughly respected Peter Sinclair, and his daughter's earnest, decided offer won their ready sympathy. It was accepted without any question of interest, though she could not hope to clear off the obligation in less than nine years. She did not go near any of her old acquaintances; she had no heart to bear their questions and condolences, and she had no money to stay in Glasgow at charges. Winter was coming on rapidly, but before it broke over the lonely islands she had reached her cottage in Stromness again.

There had been, of course, much talk concerning her hasty journey, but no one had suspected its cause. Indeed, the pursuit after Ronald had been entirely the bank's affair, had been committed to private detectives and had not been nearly so hot as the frightened criminal believed. His failure and flight had indeed been noticed in the Glasgow newspapers, but this information did not reach Kirkwall until the following spring, and then in a very indefinite form.

About a week after her return, Geordie Twatt came into port. Margaret frequently went to his cottage with food or clothing for the children, and she contrived to meet him there.

"Yon lad is a' right, indeed is he," he said, with an assumption of indifference.

"Oh, Geordie! where?"

"A ship going westward took him off the boat."

"Thank God! You will say naught at all, Geordie?"

"I ken naught at a' save that his father's son was i' trouble, an' trying to gie thae weary, unchancy lawyers the go-by. I was fain eneuch mesel' to balk them."

But Margaret's real trials were all yet to come. The mere fact of doing a noble deed does not absolve one often from very mean and petty consequences. Before the winter was half over she had found out how rapid is the descent from good report. The neighbors were deeply offended at her for giving up the social tea parties and evening gatherings that had made the house of Sinclair popular for more than one generation. She gave still greater offence by becoming a workingwoman, and spending her days in braiding straw into the (once) famous Orkney Tuscans, and her long evenings in the manufacture of those delicate knitted goods peculiar to the country.

It was not alone that they grudged her the money for these labors, as so much out of their own pockets—they grudged her also the time; for they had been long accustomed to rely on Margaret Sinclair for their children's garments, for nursing the sick and for help in weddings, funerals and all the other extraordinary occasions of sympathy among a primitively social people.

Little by little, all winter, the sentiment of disapproval and dislike gathered. Some one soon found out that Margaret's tenants "just sent every bawbee o' the rent-siller to the Glasgow Bank;" and this was a double offence, as it implied a distrust of her own townsfolk and institutions. If from her humble earnings she made a little gift to any common object its small amount was a fresh source of anger and contempt; for none knew how much she had to deny herself even for such curtailed gratuities.

In fact, Margaret Sinclair's sudden stinginess and indifference to her townsfolk was the common wonder and talk of every little gathering. Old friends began to either pointedly reprove her, or pointedly ignore her; and at last even old Helga took the popular tone and said, "Margaret Sinclair had got too scrimping for an auld wife like her to bide wi' langer."

Through all this Margaret suffered keenly. At first she tried earnestly to make her old friends understand that she had good reasons for her conduct; but as she would not explain these good reasons, she failed in her endeavor. She had imagined that her good conscience would support her, and that she could live very well without love and sympathy; she soon found out that it is a kind of negative punishment worse than many stripes.

At the end of the winter Captain Thorkald again earnestly pressed their marriage, saying that, "his regiment was ordered to Chelsea, and any longer delay might be a final one." He proposed also, that his father, the Udaller Thorkald of Serwick, should have charge of her Orkney property, as he understood its value and changes. Margaret wrote and frankly told him that her property was not hers for at least seven years, but that it was under good care, and he must accept her word without explanation. Out of this only grew a very unsatisfactory correspondence. Captain Thorkald went south without Margaret, and a very decided coolness separated them farther than any number of miles.