A WILD YULE E’EN.
By Cyntha.
There are mad northern breezes howling over the heather, and there are savage blinding showers of snow, which fall in stinging bits and cover up the little dells, leaving only those same wind-waked heath-tops uncovered. There are loud-voiced tempestuous waves and anger-tossed foam, which lift themselves wildly up, as if in their insolent pride they would mingle with the low-lying clouds. There are grey gaunt cliffs frowning over the black water, and there are bare dreary-looking hills, with here and there a solitary cottage, standing unsheltered by tree or wall. It is not a pleasant scene, although, for some folks, it may have a weird beauty of its own. This snow is not like the gentle feathery flakes which robe your naked Christmas boughs in a robe of heavenly white. These gales are not the soft-toned breezes which bear to your expectant ears the sound of Christmas bells. These champing surges are not the light-footed friends who come to greet you with a smile and a word of seasonable cheer. Ah, no! but surely those fierce combating elements are fit attendants on the Yule of our sea-king sires.
“Mother, this is Yule e’en,” said little Tronda Henderson, looking wistfully up in her mother’s face.
“Well, what if it is, bairn? we can have no Yule fun, you know,” and Doya cast a glance at her husband, who was sitting by the uncurtained window. It was a look which said much: it was a look of reproach, of enquiry, of fear, of love; and the children, who sat beside Doya, crept nearer to her chair and kept silence when they saw that look. But Bartle did not notice either the woman or children. He was a sullen, discontented man, who evaded, as lazy ne’er-do-wells will always do, the poor man’s honest lot—a life of labour. He was the scion of a good old house, which had fallen into poverty and decay. Being too idle and too proud to work for a living, Bartle had left Shetland in his early manhood and had betaken himself to the wild unfettered life of an Australian digger. Years went past, and he came back in his prime and married an orphan cousin, to whom he had been engaged since his youth. He came back a reserved and selfish man, with a shadow on his brow and a strange mystery about even his everyday life. Bartle took up his abode in the half-ruined home of his boyhood, and became a subject of curiosity and conjecture to the whole island. His wife was a lady born, yet it was known that she did all the work of the house, keeping no servant; and the public also discovered that she “knitted and ’broidered and sewed” for a livelihood, just as any poor man’s spouse might do. They did not mingle with their neighbours, but rather shunned the society of high and low. Bartle had no live stock or banked money; he did no work, either mental or physical, and although he always wore the dress of a sailor, he never soiled his fingers with a fishing-line or other marine implements. He always had plenty of silver, nay, even gold, in hand for his own personal wants, yet Doya’s deft fingers provided for herself and the three children. Once Bartle had offered half-a-crown to his wife, when he chanced to overhear the little ones cry for breakfast, but she gave it back with such a gesture of horror and disgust as deterred him from ever repeating the act. And so they jogged on for many years, living in the same house utterly independent of one another, each going their own way—the mother keeping Rassmie, Hermann, and Tronda by her, and the father shrouded in the same mystery which had hitherto encompassed him.
On this same dark Yule even, Bartle looked out of window, moodily unconcerned for those within. He looked on a dismal scene. Between the cottage and the sea there stretched a piece of rough stony ground, which hardly allowed a weed to find refuge on it. This meagre morsel of mother earth terminated in a reef of dangerous crags, which were quite covered at high water, but, when the tide was out, extended high and dry between the island and a large grass-crowned skerry, which lay a short distance from the mainland. You could not picture to yourself a more barbarous coast.
The grey of night had come down, and only the outlines of the landscape, with here and there a foam-wreath curling about the rocks, could be descried by the looker out. Evidently such an imperfect view was not to Bartle’s liking, for very soon he got up, donned his seaman’s hat of waterproof, and without a word left the house. It was not pleasant out in that shivering cold, and the sullen man was not a good companion, but he had scarcely quitted the cottage ere he was followed by his sons. They were fine manly boys of twelve and fourteen, on whose honest faces lurked no resemblance to the hard features of their father. It seemed that they followed Bartle with reluctance, but certainly with a purpose, and he was not long in observing them. Turning round, he addressed the boys savagely, with a “What do you want? where are you bound for, you young rascals?”
They hesitated some time, and then Rassmie, as the oldest, replied, “Mother told us to go after you in case you might want help or a messenger, for she guessed you were going to look after the ship we saw locking the land this afternoon.”
These were simple enough words, but they roused Bartle’s passion in an instant, and, catching Rassmie by the collar, he would have flung the poor boy to the ground, had not Hermann thrown himself on his father’s arm, and so prevented the blow from falling On his beloved brother. “You young scoundrels,” shouted Bartle, shaking them from him; “what do you mean by dogging me like this, as if I were a madman who required a keeper, or—”
“A sinner who needs a Saviour,” said the meek voice of Doya, who had come to the spot. “Don’t be angry with me, Bartle; don’t hurt the poor boys, they are too young and innocent to dream of what I know is true, or to suspect the real motive of your going from home at this late and stormy hour. Oh, Bartle! it is years since I spoke to you thus—listen to me. Let me lead you home again, or let us rouse the neighbours, that your already red hand may be held from further crime.”
I may not repeat to you all the profane abuse with which Bartle Henderson replied to the timid entreaties of his wife, while the boys stood by, too terrified to move or speak. When he had exhausted his powers of swearing (and they were not by any means limited), and had ordered his wife and children to return to the house, Bartle took his way along the rough beach with a rapid stride and a lowering look on his face that it was not good to see. Doya gazed after the figure of her husband until it was lost in the obscurity of nightfall. Her face was very pale, and sad, and spiritless. She scarcely knew what instinct had told her to follow Bartle and speak words which she had never ventured to address to him since the early days of their married life, when first she came to know the dark mystery of his means of livelihood.
The courage which had prompted her appeal had died out before his fierce outburst of anger, and after telling the boys not to go near their father again, the poor woman returned to her lonely dwelling. Ah! not all lonely, for little deformed Tronda was waiting there for her mother’s return. The tiny lassie had raked the fire together and swept the hearth, as well as her feeble hands could, and the bright face which she lifted to Doya’s shed light, warm as sunshine, on the leaden heart of her parent. “Mother, mother, how came you to be so forgetful as to leave me here alone on Yule e’en, and after day set?” A sweet ringing laugh followed Tronda’s words, and Doya caught its infection and smiled upon the bonnie-featured, crooked-backed child, whose infirmities had not prevented her from being (as the “one ewe lamb” always is) the most useful and most beloved member of the family.
“Ah, bairn! I was indeed forgetful, but I have been so short a time away, that I cannot think the fairies have had leisure left them in which to do mischief to you.”
“Don’t be too sure, mother; I did hear a noise of something hopping about by the churn, and may be you won’t get any butter to-morrow; and are you quite sure I am just the same as when you left me? You know this,” touching her own twisted side, “came of my being left on Yule e’en by myself.” Tronda spoke jestingly, of course, but her light words carried a sad pang to the mother’s heart.
Folding her arms about the little thin figure, Doya said, whisperingly, “If the fairies took my child that night, or if they brought this life-trouble to her, I dare not repine, for who could be to us what loving, patient, unselfish, sickly Tronda is?”
Tronda knew that there were serious thoughts expressed in those words of pleasantry, so she let the Yule joke pass by, and nestling closer to the loving bosom above her, the child asked: “Tell me how it really happened, dear mother; I want so much to know, for although it’s all nonsense about the fairies or trows hurting me, still—I should—like to—know.”
“How old is my little girl?” Doya answered. “Let me see, thirteen past in September, and not so large as most bairns are at ten; but more than thirteen, aye, more than twenty, in mind and feeling. I have never spoken of my sorrows to any one, but I think my daughter can be my sympathizing friend, so she shall hear it all. It was just ten years ago, on that awful stormy Yule even, of which you have heard folks talk. I was happy then, for your father was kind, my little ones were healthy and beautiful, and I had never looked upon sin in its darker aspects. My little Tronda shall know all the story. On that wild Yule even I had put you and Rassmie to bed, and was hushing Hermann on my knee, when I was startled by hearing a succession of shrieks, which seemed borne to my ear on the wings of an exultant storm fiend. With the baby in my arms, I ran to the door and looked out into the mirkness—just such a night as this,” and Doya shivered, even by the glowing fire; “a tempest of wind, bright gleaming moonlight, and flying clouds. Again and again that dreadful cry arose, and, forgetful of everything, I flew down the slope and stood upon the beach. It was covered with bits of wreck—tables, chairs, trunks, hammocks. Near these, up to his waist in the roaring sea, I found your father. Above us, on the height, gleamed a gigantic fire of peat, and among the surf, close beside me, floated unresistingly the blood-stained form of a sailor—”
“Oh! mother, don’t tell me more of that. I know, I know; it is all plain now!”
“Yes,” Doya said, in a dreamy apathetic tone; “it’s all plain; you know now what I knew then. Hours afterwards I returned to the house, with Hermann still innocently sleeping on my bosom, and I discovered that in my absence you had waked up, and finding yourself alone, had tried to get out of bed, and in so doing had fallen against something on the floor, where I found you lying helpless and almost unconscious. It was not trows—no, Tronda; on that Yule e’en it was not trows that came to injure you—it was a fiend—your own flesh and blood!”
The poor feeble girl shrank away in meek terror from the sudden fierceness of Doya’s words and gesture. She had never seen her gentle, patient mother in that mood before, but it passed away, and a long painful silence fell upon them both.
Loudly and hoarsely roared the winter gales around the cottage. Sometimes their stormy voices rose defiantly above the boom of the breaking wave. Sometimes they clamoured fiercely against the chafing surge, whose anger they had awakened. Oftentimes they moaned and mourned among the heather, or hurled the “drifting veil” of snow before their impatient pinions deep into some dimpled valley; and you might well have deemed that evil spirits were wandering unfettered over the world, for the sweet Christmas heralds could not have bent their bright brows to earth in such a fearful hour. But still, musing and silent, sat Doya Henderson and her deformed child; and the minutes passed into hours, and both were so engrossed with dismal thoughts and forebodings that they never seemed to miss the presence of Rassmie and Hermann. But the same dark demon to whom power had been given over land and sea and human heart—that same “foul fiend” was reigning to-night as then; and again was brought to Doya’s ear the wail of bitterest mortal agony. You might almost have thought that she expected it, for when that awful cry rang out on the night air, Doya did not start or look surprised, her face just paled, and she dropped on her knees beside Tronda, whose trembling figure had sought that attitude which instinct teaches us to adopt when we turn to God in our hours of helplessness and woe.
“Pray, mother; pray!” cried the girl. “Pray for father; oh! let it be for him more than all.”
Earnest, though broken, were the supplications which rose from those grieving hearts; but their “woman’s heavenly part” was interrupted by the hasty entrance of Rassmie and Hermann, who rushed to their mother, with white and horror-stricken faces.
“We saw it all; oh, mother, we saw it!” they panted forth. “The peat stack had been lighted, and the ship had come on the rocks, lured by the false signals. She went down at once, and then—then we saw father among the crags. Some one floated on shore; and oh, how could he? he—father! struck at the swimming man with his knife, and there was a great cry, and blood among the white surf. Mother, mother! what shall we do? Father saw us beside him there; his face was awful, and oh, there may come others, for he was waiting, when we fled to you!”
Tronda had stood up when her brothers came, and as soon as their hurried tale was told, she spoke calmly and with resolution: “We must all go to father. It is not for us to give him to the hand of justice, but we dare not stand still and see murder committed. Come, mother; come, boys; father must be guided by us now,” and the small decrepit figure and pinched puny face looked noble and beautiful when the spirit spoke so boldly and undauntedly.
In obedience to a mind stronger than their own, the others followed Tronda from the house—from the house, down the slope, over the stony beach, under the moonlight, against the gale, to the scene of the shipwreck. There they found no living thing. There were broken spars and floating débris of various kinds, and there was a helpless human corpse, but that was all. In vain did Rassmie and Hermann search among the crags, in the hope of finding their father concealed there. In vain did Doya call upon his name; and at last they were obliged to believe that fear had compelled Bartle to fly. He had felt that he was safe from discovery while only Doya knew of his crimes, but he could not be so certain of the boys, whose eyes had actually been on him while he committed murder.
They all lingered on the beach for some time, but no one came from either land or sea, and at last the storm compelled them to seek the shelter of their home. You may believe it was a sad, sad night in that lone dwelling, and although the gale calmed down, and the snow lay still and fair when the daylight gleamed upon it, there was no hushing the inward storm. A very dark picture of sin had been presented to young pure spirits, and it was little wonder that their innocent hearts quivered and bled before the remembrance of that dreadful scene.
Morning—Yule morning—with its merry breakfast by candlelight, frothing bowl of “whipcull,” and sweetest of short-cakes for the rich; its “burstin” and rarely-tasted bacon, with jolly drams of whiskey, for the cottagers; and its fun and mystic spells, and football and evening dance, and olden tale and Norland song for both high and low. Morning—Yule morning—brought the discovery to all in the neighbourhood of the disastrous shipwreck on the island. Doya and her children sat in the house and saw the gathering crowd hurry to and fro upon the beach. They saw when the poor sailor’s body was found wounded, as the simple islanders supposed, by their own cruel crags; and all the day long the wife and family of the wrecker watched and waited, but no one came to them. The corpse was conveyed to an uninhabited dwelling close by, and decently buried next day; and Doya fell mechanically into all her accustomed duties. Curious people wondered what had become of Bartle, and somehow a story got about that he had deserted his wife, because she had taunted him with having taken her from a life of ease to one of hard and humble work. Those who believed such a tale had surely observed little of Doya’s meek contented acceptance of her lowlier lot; but she was quite willing that the inquisitive neighbours should accept that solution of Bartle’s conduct. That he had fled from his home and family she knew was true, but the reason, ah! how different from what was supposed.
The events of that most eventful Yule e’en had worked a great change in Rassmie and Hermann. They were sharp enough lads, and had made a pretty shrewd guess that their father gained his livelihood by rescuing from the deep its unlawful prey, but that he employed such criminal means for that end they never dreamed of. The appropriation of wreck was viewed, with smuggling, as a very light offence by the Shetlanders, who, at the same time, would have shrunk with horror from such crimes as those which Bartle had committed, and however little the boys might have thought of the sin against human codes of morality, they saw in all its deepest blackness the enormity of their parent’s offence against Divine laws. Therefore, as I told you, these things went a great way to work a change in the characters of the lads, adding to their hatred of sin, and taking away much that was evil in their disposition.
But time, that never flies from the happy, nor lingers with the sad, although we often think he is cruel enough to do so; time, whose monotonous footsteps echo along the years at the same even pace, no matter how we smile or suffer; time went on, and marked another season on the tablets of eternity, and, as he traced the first lines of the coming year, he also brought back the brave old Yule. Yule came this time with glittering frost and smiling sky, quiet waves, and scarce a breath of wind, and Rassmie launched his fishing boat for a day’s excursion among the cliffs. Their home was, as usual, unbrightened by festivity, so the good lads persuaded their mother and Tronda to accompany them on the water, and the four made a pleasant, if sober, party. Tronda had seldom been upon the sea, and had seen very little of the sublime scenery so near her home, therefore she easily prevailed on her brothers to row close to the shore, that she might the better admire the varied beauty of the crags and caves. One of the latter particularly attracted Tronda’s girlish fancy, and at her desire the boat entered the rock-hewn hall, whose tinted walls gave back a thousand silvery echoes of the splashing oars. It was a vast cavern into which the boat had entered, and the further she went the wider and more extensive seemed the boundaries of that ocean home. Even Doya’s broken spirit seemed to share in the enthusiasm of the young people, whose exclamations of rapture mingled with the shrill cry of the brooding sea fowl, and the whispering of the billows. But suddenly Tronda’s voice changed to a scream of terror, and she pointed to a ledge of rock in one of the deepest recesses of the cave. There lay what at first appeared to be merely a heap of ragged clothing, but which contained too surely a human skeleton. Rassmie’s first instinct was to turn his boat and fly from the horrible sight, but his mother was quite above the vulgar fears of the ignorant, and, after she had by her quiet mien and pious words reassured her children, their skiff was gently impelled nearer to the object of their alarm. There was nothing loathsome about those poor mortal remains; only a few whitened bones, huddled within the folds of a seaman’s dress, and a fleshless hand spread out upon the chilly stone. He had escaped from drowning by the help of a little boat, whose broken bits, cast up beyond the reach of the sea, by some unusually high tide and storm, spoke to so much of the sad tale. On that hard bed of shelving rock the unfortunate man had met a more dreadful death than that of the engulphing wave. Unheard, unsuccoured, he had died of starvation. “What had we better do, mother?” said one of the boys, after a long silence, which had been employed by the young people in gazing upon the miserable spectacle of man’s helpless humanity, and in gathering up the courage which had so suddenly deserted them. Doya did not reply, and the pallor and anguish which had fallen so suddenly upon her features gave much alarm to her children. “Are you ill, dear mother? What is it?” they queried. When at last she spoke, her voice trembled, and her figure shook with the force of some inward trouble, which she evidently tried to conceal and overcome. Having summoned all her strength of mind, she said, hurriedly—“No one must come here, no one must know of this but you and I. Children, children, the guardian spirit, who never forsakes its charge, has guided us here.” By the mother’s direction, Rassmie and Hermann landed on the little strip of sand which carpeted the further end of the cave. There they gathered together some bits of wood belonging to the broken boat, and, clambering up the rude walls, they deposited the spars on a ledge close to that on which the sailor lay. Then Doya got out of the boat, telling her children to return to the mouth of the cavern, and linger there out of sight until she called them. They were reluctant to leave her alone in such a place, and with such a task as they rightly guessed she had set herself to do, but obedience was the first lesson these young people had learned, and reverence for their mother and her wishes was the consequence of her wise training. The oars were dipped into the quiet water, and in a few moments Doya was alone with it. Ah! who but a wife would have knelt so tenderly by that ghastly object, and wrapped it in the folds of her cloak? who else would have laid her living lips on the bleached and bony palm, and have recognized in those un-sepulchred bones something she had once loved? Who but a wife, whose young affections had been altogether his, would have forgotten the sin and sorrow, the neglect and unkindness of years, and have thus cared for the poor remains of a wicked man?
Doya knelt long and prayed by her husband’s corpse, then with reverent hands she wrapped it closer in the shroud she had taken from her own person for that purpose, and while doing so she found among the skeleton fingers a small pocket-book. With an eager hope she opened this message from the departed. The sleeve of the dead man’s oil-skin coat had protected the paper from destruction, and the words which Bartle’s dying hand had pencilled on the leaves were easily deciphered. This is what he had written:—
“My wife and children, forgive me. God has done so. I am dying here, within a short distance of you all and home. I do not know how many days I have been here. It seems like ages. No help can come to me, and I am beyond the reach of being heard. I fled from your accusing eyes, and the boat carried me here. She was tossed like a weed on the rocks, and I have crawled up hither to die a harder death than any I ever dealt. It is the meet reward for all my crimes—that I know; but I am not alone, and I am forgiven. Try to think kindly of me. I have been very wicked, but now I am at peace, and dying. Something whispers you will know my fate, my children, my wife.”
Could anything have been of such infinite value to Doya as those parting words? They washed away every trace of bitter or offended feeling, and when she placed the precious relic in her bosom, she blotted out from its generous heart every remembrance of Bartle, save their early love and his Christian death.
Very slowly, very tenderly, Doya encased the withered form in the broken bits of wood, lashing them around it by means of some fishing lines which they had chanced to have in the boat. Very carefully she attached some pieces of rock to the rope, and then, after one long lingering look, and a silent, earnest prayer, she let it slide gently down into the calm limpid ocean. The waves gave one low gurgling sigh as they opened to receive that strangely buried thing, and Doya, kneeling on the cold stone, strained her sight to see the very last of her husband. The clear water hid nothing from her, and she saw him sink to rest down below the sea. And then the tide bore a floating mass of weed, glittering brown and crimson, to the spot, and laid it over poor Bartle, who slumbers peacefully there in that wild cavern, cradled by the surf, and lulled by the wind. And surf and wind say, better than sculptured stone, that mercy endureth for ever, and He, our Father, and our Judge, is long-suffering, and doeth all things well.
It was some time ere Doya could venture to break the awe and quiet of that scene by summoning her children. It seemed as if she had parted from every earthly trouble, as she knelt there alone, and pressed to her heart the token of her husband’s repentance; as she knelt there, alone with nature’s sublimest voices speaking to her soul; but slowly her thoughts came back to life and earth, and at her call the boat glided into the cave again. Then, as the boys rowed slowly homewards, Doya told them the end of the story. They had guessed it already, but they were not prepared for the surprise which she had in store—the reading of their father’s parting words. That took away almost all the sorrow. Under the moonlit sky of Yule, with Yule stars looking down like eyes of forgiving love, and Yule zephyrs winnowing by like the rustle of angel-wings, when they hurry to earth with Christmas messages of peace and good will, of mercy and pardon; with Yule frost glittering upon the heath, Doya and her children returned to their home; and when Rassmie clung to her neck, and Hermann’s head nestled on her bosom, while Tronda’s sweet voice whispered, “You have us, mother,” Doya’s sorely tried heart was comforted.
Just as Cousin Cyntha concluded her story, the clock struck, and then a strange stare of astonishment stole over every face. What the hour was it is not necessary to state, but a general stirring among the company told the fact that all of them were of opinion it was high time to be thinking of returning to their homes. But while glasses were being handed round, Old Merry took the opportunity of arresting attention; and, amid cries of “Hurrah, bravo! A speech! Old Merry, a speech!” got upon his legs, and after polishing his bald pate and adjusting his specs, according to time-honoured usage, he thus delivered himself:—
“Ladies and Gentlemen, my dear Young People,
“Before we separate we must all pledge ourselves in lemonade, et cetera, and wish one another ‘A Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!’ Perhaps in all the year the few merry hours of Christmas Eve are the brightest and happiest to the whole world. This night, while we have been here enjoying ourselves together, thousands of homes have been full of gladness and merriment. Boys and girls from school have been telling the adventures of the ‘last half;’ apprentices, home for the Christmas-tide, have been giving their parents and friends an account of their trials and joys; family circles, broken throughout the year by circumstances, have been united round the old fireside in thousands of homes; sailors on the sea have struggled between cheerfulness and sorrow as they have told their shore stories and drunk to absent friends; settlers in the colonies, despite the differences of time and climate, have been linking themselves again with the associations of the old country; heaven and earth have been vocal with new songs of praise; and the blessed Redeemer Himself, whose birth in this world is the source of all our joy and gladness, has looked down on the delights which He has created, and seeing the results of the travail of His soul ‘has been satisfied.’ Well, my young friends, I am not going to preach you a sermon, but I do ask you to try and realize the pleasure of sharing the joy of the whole world. But do not forget amid the festivities that Christmas is the anniversary of the birthday of our Lord. He came to bless us and He lives to bless us. He gave to us all we have, and we should seek to give back to Him all we are. The cheerful heart, the smiling face, the happy thought, the kindly act, the friendly speech, are more acceptable to Him than the long drawn face and the sigh and the groan. His service is not simply that of the Sabbath-day or the appointed Church, but at the fireside, the play-ground, the office; in our hours of rest and toil and recreation, at home and at school, all through the life He requires, and is pleased with, our acknowledgment of Him. So now for all the happy hours of this happy season let us devoutly thank Him, and let us each determine that as He came this day to bless all the world, we will try to follow His example as far as we can.
“Let each of you determine that some other life shall be happier to-morrow through your means. Join your labours to those of the ministering angels, and see if you cannot lighten some burden, and give joy to some sad heart on Christmas Day. The lad who sweeps the crossing, encourage him with a copper; your sister who has quarrelled with you, kiss her and make it up; that poor old woman in the garret, beg some plum pudding for her and send it with a twig of holly in it. Only be willing to do what you can, and depend upon it the opportunities will not be wanting. And now we must separate; I wish you all happy meetings and greetings on the morrow, pleasant hours for merry thoughts and serious thoughts—good digestions—and everything that can make to its full degree, A Merry, Happy, Christmas!”