Winter Evening Tales

by Amelia E. Barr

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 bear; and neither had dared to look into the future or to speculate as to its necessities. Jean in her heart expected Gavin would at once send for them to come to America. He had a fair salary, and the sale of their furniture would defray their traveling expenses.

She was indeed so sure of this journey, that she did not regard the cottage as more than a temporary shelter during the approaching winter. In the spring, no doubt, Gavin would have a little home ready, and they would cross the ocean to it. The mother had the same thought. As they sat on their new hearthstone, lonely and poor, they talked of this event, and if any doubts lurked unconsciously below their love and trust they talked them away, while they waited for Gavin's answer to the sorrowful letter Jean had sent him on the night of her father's burial.