Shenac's Work at Home

by Margaret M. Robertson

When a friend came in to sit with him for a while, or when he was easy or slumbered through the day, Shenac made herself busy with household matters; for, what with the milk and the wool and the harvest-people, Shenac Dhu had more than she could well do, even with the help of her handmaid Maggie, and her sister strove to lighten the labour. But the care of her brother was the work that fell to her now, and at night she never left him. She slept by snatches in the great chair when he slept, and whiled away the wakeful hours when his restless turns came on.

She was not doing too much for her strength; she was quite fit for it all. The neighbours were more than kind, and many of them would gladly have shared the watching at night with her; but Hamish was not used to have any one else about him, and it could hardly be called watching, for she slept all she needed. And, besides, it was harvest-time, and all were busy in the fields, and those who worked all day could not watch at night. She was quite well—a little thin and pale—“bleached,” her aunt said, by being in the house and not out in the harvest-field; but she was always alert and cheerful.

The coming sorrow was more hers than any of the others. They all thought with dismay of the time when Shenac should be alone, with half her heart in the grave of Hamish. But she did not look beyond the end to that time, and sought no sympathy because of this.

It is a happy, thing that they who bear the burdens of others by this means lighten their own; and Shenac, careful for her young brothers and little Flora, anxious that the few hushed moments in their brother’s room—his prayers, his loving words, his gentle patience, his immortal hope—should henceforth be blended with all their inward life, never to be forgotten, never to be set aside, thought more of them than of herself through all those days and nights of waiting.

When a sudden shower or a rainy day gave the harvesters a little leisure, she used to make herself busy in the house that Dan might feel himself of use to Hamish, and might hear, with no one else to listen, a sweet, persuasive word or two from his dying brother’s lips.

For Shenac’s heart yearned over her brother Dan. He did so need some high aim, some powerful motive of action, some strengthening, guiding principle of life. All need this; but Dan more than others, she thought. If he did not go straight to the mark, he would go very far astray. He would soon be his own master, free to guide himself, and he would either do very well or very ill in life; and there had been times, even since the coming home of Allister, when Shenac feared that “very ill” it was to be.

And yet at one time he had seemed not very far from the kingdom. During all the long season of religious interest, no one had seemed more interested, in one way, than he. Without professing to be personally earnest in the matter, he had attended all the meetings, and watched—with curiosity, perhaps, but with awe and interest too—the coming out from the world of many of his companions, their changed life, their higher purpose. But all this had passed away without any real change to himself, and, as a reaction from that time, Dan had grown a little more than careless—very willing to be called careless, and more, by some who grieved, and by others who laughed.

So Shenac watched and prayed, and forgot herself in longings that, amid the influences of a time so solemn and so sweet, Dan might find that which should make him wise and strong, and place him far beyond all her doubts and fears for ever.

It was a day in the beginning of harvest—a rainy day, coming after so long a time of drought and dust and heat that all rejoiced in it, even though it fell on golden sheaves and on long swaths of new-cut grain. It was not a misty, drizzling rain; it came down with a will in sudden showers, leaving little pools in the chip-yard and garden-paths. Every now and then the clouds broke away, as if they were making preparation for the speedy return of the sunshine; but the sun did not show his face till he had only time to tinge the clouds with golden glory before he sank behind the forest.

“Carry me to the window, Dan,” said Hamish. “Thank you: that is nice. You carry me as strongly and firmly as Allister himself. You are as strong, and nearly as tall, I think,” continued he, when he had been placed in the great chair and had rested a little. At any other time Dan would have straightened himself up to declare how he was an eighth of an inch taller than Allister, or he would have attempted some extraordinary feat—such as lifting the stove or the chest of drawers—to prove his right to be called a strong man. But, looking down on his brother’s fragile form and beautiful colourless face, other thoughts moved him. Love and compassion, for which no words could be found, filled his heart and looked out from his wistful eyes. It came to him as it had never come before—what a sorrowful, suffering life his brother’s had been; and now he was dying! Hamish seemed not to need words in order that he might understand his thoughts.