Winter Evening Tales

by Amelia E. Barr

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.

Udaller Thorkald was exceedingly angry, and his remarks about Margaret Sinclair's refusal "to trust her bit property in as guid hands as her own" increased very much the bitter feeling against the poor girl. At the end of three years the trial became too great for her; she began to think of running away from it.

Throughout these dark days she had purposely and pointedly kept apart from her old friend Dr. Ogilvie, for she feared his influence over her might tempt her to confidence. Latterly the doctor had humored her evident desire, but he had never ceased to watch over and, in a great measure, to believe in her; and, when he heard of this determination to quit Orkney forever, he came to Stromness with a resolution to spare no efforts to win her confidence.

He spoke very solemnly and tenderly to her, reminded her of her father's generosity and good gifts to the church and the poor, and said: "O, Margaret, dear lass! what good at a' will thy silent money do thee in that Day? It ought to speak for thee out o' the mouths o' the sorrowfu' an' the needy, the widows an' the fatherless—indeed it ought. And thou hast gien naught for thy Master's sake these three years! I'm fair 'shamed to think thou bears sae kind a name as thy father's."

What could Margaret do? She broke into passionate sobbing, and, when the good old man left the cottage an hour afterward there was a strange light on his face, and he walked and looked as if he had come from some interview that had set him for a little space still nearer to the angels. Margaret had now one true friend, and in a few days after this she rented her cottage and went to live with the dominie. Nothing could have so effectually reinstated her in public opinion; wherever the dominie went on a message of help or kindness Margaret went with him. She fell gradually into a quieter but still more affectionate regard—the aged, the sick and the little children clung to her hands, and she was comforted.

Her life seemed, indeed, to have wonderfully narrowed, but when the tide is fairly out, it begins to turn again. In the fifth year of her poverty there was from various causes, such an increase in the value of real estate, that her rents were nearly doubled, and by the end of the seventh year she had paid the last shilling of her assumed debt, and was again an independent woman.

It might be two years after this that she one day received a letter that filled her with joy and amazement. It contained a check for her whole nine hundred pounds back again. "The bank had just received from Ronald Sinclair, of San Francisco, the whole amount due it, with the most satisfactory acknowledgment and interest." It was a few minutes before Margaret could take in all the joy this news promised her; but when she did, the calm, well-regulated girl had never been so near committing extravagances.

She ran wildly upstairs to the dominie, and, throwing herself at his knees, cried out, amid tears and smiles: "Father! father! Here is your money! Here is the poor's money and the church's money! God has sent it back to me! Sent it back with such glad tidings!"—and surely if angels rejoice with repenting sinners, they must have felt that day a far deeper joy with the happy, justified girl.