The Twa Miss Dawsons

by Margaret M. Robertson

Her silence and reserve, even to her friends—and she had many—looked to those who were not specially her friends, like the coldness and hardness that strengthens with the years. It was by deeds rather than words that her strong and tender nature found expression, and those who needed her help most, knew her best and trusted her most fully, and even in the busiest time of her life, she saw enough of other people’s cares and sorrows, to remind her that there was something more needed in life than money, or the good things that money could bring.

And, when she ought to have been past “the like o’ that,” as she said to herself, for she was not far from thirty, the wonderful gift of love was given to her. And then, through her love, came the gift which God is sure, sooner or later, to give to His own,—the gift of sanctified trouble.

There came to Portie in one of the ships in which her brother had an interest, a lad—he looked scarcely more than a lad—sick with fever. Accident brought him to George Dawson’s house for a night, and in the morning he was too ill to leave it. Through long weeks of suffering and delirium, Jean nursed him, and cared for him, and saved him from death. He was not a good young man. The wild words uttered in his wanderings, proved this to Jean, only too clearly, and if he had gone away as soon as he rose from his bed, he would have taken her interest and her good will with him, and nothing more. But his convalescence was long and tedious, and whatever his sins against himself and others might have been, he was of a sweet and kindly nature, and a handsome and manly lad withal.

And of course it was the fairest side of his character that he showed to Jean in these days. Not that he tried to hide his past follies and even his sins from her. But it was his sorrow for them that he showed her, and his longing to live a better life by her help; and what with his penitence and his gentleness and his winning English ways, he wiled the heart out of her breast before she was aware. And the love was mutual. But whether he ever could have given to her all that she gave to him, was doubtful to the only one who knew what had befallen her.

To say that her brother was amazed at her love for a man so much younger and mentally and morally so much beneath her, is to say little. He was utterly dismayed. But he knew her strong and steadfast nature too well to try to move her from her purpose. He only stipulated that there should be time given to prove the young man’s love, and to prove also the firmness of his determination to live a new life. It was not a severe test that he insisted on. One voyage the young man was to make, and coming home with the good word of his captain and shipmates, no difficulty should be put in the way of the marriage, strange as he confessed the idea of such a marriage to be. It was to be a six months’ voyage only, and though Jean did not feel that such a sacrifice need be made, she was yet willing to make it at the will of the brother whom she loved. And so they parted.

But six months passed, and then six more, and when three more had worn away tidings came. Through these months of waiting Jean went in silence, and when the captain’s son came home—the only survivor of the crew of the ship that had carried her heart and her hope away—and told the story of their wreck on wintry seas, no one knew that she listened and suffered as no widow of them all suffered for her cruel and utter loss.

Her lover’s name was spoken with the rest, and it was told how brave he had been and kindly, and how he had kept up the courage of the rest and cheered them all to the last, and how the hardest and most careless of the crew had planned together to beguile him into taking more than his share of the food they had, because he was not strong like the rest, and because they loved him. And Jean listened to it all, and never uttered a word. Nor afterward did she open her lips even to her brother. He tried to speak to her some vague words of comfort, as to its being God’s will, and all for the best, but she only put forth her hand to bid him cease, and when he still would fain have spoken a word of his own sorrow for her trouble she rose and went away, and it was many years before either of them returned to the sorrow of that time. She lived through her trouble, and she did not grow hard or bitter under it, as she might have done if he had lived and forgotten her; and comfort came to her as the years went on.

It came to her in a strange way, her brother thought, and though he was glad of its coming, it cost him some pain. The first, indeed the only, danger of estrangement that ever came between the brother and sister grew out of this. Not that there was any real danger even then; for Jean was, in her silent and determined way, so soft and gentle and unprovokable in the new manner of thought and life into which she fell at this time, that though her brother was both angry and ashamed, and suffered both shame and anger to appear to her and to others, it made no real breach between them.

And he had cause for neither shame nor anger. It was only that weary of herself and the drowsy ministrations of the parish kirk, Jean had strayed one stormy Sabbath night into “a little kirkie” lately built in a back street by “a queer kin’ o’ folk ca’ed missioners,” and had there heard words such as she had never heard before, and had found in them more than comfort.

Not that the words were altogether new, nor the thoughts,—they were in her Bible, every one of them—she told her brother afterwards; but, for one thing, they were earnestly spoken by one who believed them, and then they came to one ready for them and waiting, though she knew it not.