One failing of William’s had hitherto resisted Jeanie’s silent influence. The smith had formed the habit, before he was married, of meeting a few companions, “just in a friendly way,” on pay-nights at a public-house. It was true that he was never “what might be called a drunkard,” “never lost a day’s work,” “never was the worse of liquor,” etc. But, nevertheless, when he entered the snuggery in Peter Wilson’s whisky shop, with the blazing fire and comfortable atmosphere; and when, with half a dozen talkative and, to him, pleasant fellows and old companions, he sat round the fire, and the glass circulated, and the gossip of the week was discussed, and racy stories were told, and one or two songs sung, linked together by memories of old merry meetings; and current jokes were repeated, with humour, of the tyrannical influence which some would presume to exercise on “innocent social enjoyment”—then would the smith’s brawny chest expand, and his face beam, and his feelings become malleable, and his sixpences begin to melt, and flow out in generous sympathy into Peter Wilson’s fozy hand, and there counted beneath his sodden eyes. And so it was that the smith’s wages were always minus Peter’s gains.
His wife had her fears—her horrid anticipations—but did not like to “even” her husband to anything so dreadful as what she in her heart dreaded. She took her own way, however, to win him to the house and to good, and gently insinuated wishes rather than expressed them. The smith, no doubt, was only “merry,” and never was ill-tempered or unkind; “yet at times—” “and then, what if—” Yes, Jeanie, you are right! The demon sneaks into the house by degrees, and at first may be dispelled, and the door shut upon him; but let him only once take possession, then he will keep it, and shut the door against everything pure, and lovely, and of good report, and bar it against thee and “wee Davie,” ay, and against better than thee and than all else, and fill the house with sin and shame, with misery and despair! But “wee Davie,” with his arm of might, drove the demon out.
It happened thus. One evening when the smith returned home so that “you would know it on him,” his child toddled to him, and, lifting him up, he made him stand before him on his knee. The child began to play with the locks of the Samson, and to pat him on the cheek, and to repeat with glee the name of “dad-a.” The smith gazed at him intently, and with a peculiar look of love, mingled with sadness.
“Isn’t he a bonnie bit bairn?” asked Jeanie, as she looked over her husband’s shoulder at the child, nodding and smiling to him.
The smith spoke not a word, but gazed still upon his boy, while some sudden emotion was strongly working in his countenance. “It’s done!” he at last said, as he put his child down.
“What’s wrang? what’s wrang?” exclaimed his wife, as she stood before him, and put her hands round his shoulders, bending down until her face was close to his.
“Everything is wrang, Jeanie!”
“Willie, what is’t? are ye no’ weel?—tell me what’s wrang wi’ you?—oh, tell me!” she exclaimed in evident alarm.
“It’s a’ richt noo!” he said, rising up, and seizing his child, lifted him up to his breast, and kissed him. He then folded him in his arms, clasped him to his heart, and looking up in silence, said, “Davie has done it, along wi’ you, Jeanie. Thank God, I am a free man!”
His wife felt awed, she knew not how.