“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.