George brought his wife home to the High-street. Even Mr Dawson after a while acknowledged that they had been wise to secure for themselves the quiet of a house of their own. Not that they began in these first days by living to themselves. There was enough to do. There were gay doings in many homes in honour of the bride, and the honour intended was generally accepted none the less gratefully or gracefully, that the gay doings could have been happily dispensed with by them both.
They had pleasures and occupations of another kind also, for Marion was too well-known to the poor folk of Portie to make her coming among them as young Mrs Dawson an intrusion or a trouble. So the young husband and wife went in and out together, “the very sicht o’ them,” as even Mrs Cairnie owned, “doing a body gude as they passed.”
And on the comings and goings of these happy young people, on the honour paid them, on their kindly words and deeds, and heartsome ways with rich and poor, with old friends and new, Mr Dawson looked and pondered with a constant, silent delight which few besides the two Jeans saw or suspected. Even they could not but wonder sometimes at the unceasing interest he found in them and their doings at home and abroad.
He wondered at it himself sometimes. It was like a new sweet spring of life to him to see them, and to hear about them, and to know that all things went well with them; and though few out of his own household could have seen any change in him, it was clear in many ways to those who saw him in his own house day by day.
“God leads His ain by many ways to Himself,” thought Miss Jean in her solitary musings over it all. “They that think they ken a’ the secrets o’ nature tell us that the flowing waters and the changing seasons, bringing whiles the frost and whiles the sunshine, have made from the rocks that look so unchangeable, much o’ the soil out of which comes bread to us all. And who kens but God’s gender dealings, coming after sore trouble, may prepare his heart for the richer springing o’ the good seed, till it bring forth a hundred-fold to His honour and glory. I ay kenned that the Lord had a richt hold o’ him through all, and that He would show him His face at last. Blessed be His name?”
“It whiles does folk gude to get their ain way about things, though that’s no’ the belief o’ gude folk generally, and nae in the Bible, as they would gar us believe,” said Mrs Cairnie, who never kept her opinions to herself if she could get any one to listen to them. “George Dawson is growing an auld failed man—and nae won’er considerin’ how lang he has been toilin’ and moilin’, gi’ein’ himsel’ neither nicht’s rest nor day’s ease. But auld and failed though he be, there’s a satisfied look on his face that naebody has seen there since the days he used to come in to the kirk wi’ his wife and a’ his bairns followin’ after him,—langer ago than ye’ll mind, Maggie, my woman. And for that matter naebody saw it then. It was satisfaction o’ anither kind that he had in those days, I’m thinkin’.”
“But, grannie,” said Maggie Saugster, giving her the name that the old woman liked best, though she would not acknowledge it, “is it about young Mr and Mrs Dawson you are thinkin’, or is it about May and her bairns? Because I mind ye once said to my mother and me that you doubted the old man wasna weel pleased when Mr George brought Marion Calderwood home.”
“Oh! ay. Ye’re gude at mindin’ things that’s nae speired at you whiles. He’s gotten his will about mair things than that of late, and what I say is, that it has done him gude, as trouble never did.”
“Maybe his satisfaction comes from giving up his ain will, rather than from getting it. I ken the look ye mean, mother,” said her daughter gently.
“Weel, it may be. A thing seems to ha’e taken a turn sin’ I was young. But it’s nae the look his face used to wear when man or woman countered him in the old days.”