Winter Evening Tales, Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr [i love reading books TXT] 📗

of oaks and beeches she had seen during her school days in Edinburgh. Peter listened to her as if she was telling a wonderful fairy story, but he liked it, and, as he cut slice after slice from his smoked goose, he enjoyed her talk of roses and apple-blossoms, and smacked his lips for the thousandth time when she described a peach, and said, "It tasted, father, as if it had been grown in the Garden of Eden."

After such conversations Peter was always stern and strict. He felt an actual anger at Adam and Eve; their transgression became a keenly personal affair, for he had a very vivid sense of the loss they had entailed upon him. The vague sense of wrong made him try to fix it, and, after a short reflection, he said in an injured tone:

"I wonder when Ronald's coming hame again?"

"Ronald is all right, father."

"A' wrong, thou means, lassie. There's three vessels waiting to be loaded, an' the books sae far ahint that I kenna whether I'm losing or saving. Where is he?"

"Not far away. He will be at the Stones of Stennis this week some time with an Englishman he fell in with at Perth."

"I wonder, now, was it for my sins or his ain that the lad has sic auld world notions? There isna a pagan altar-stane 'tween John O'Groat's an' Lambaness he doesna run after. I wish he were as anxious to serve in the Lord's temple--I would build him a kirk an' a manse for it."

"We'll be proud of Ronald yet, father. The Sinclairs have been fighting and making money for centuries: it is a sign of grace to have a scholar and a poet at last among them."

Peter grumbled. His ideas of poetry were limited by the Scotch psalms, and, as for scholarship, he asserted that the books were better kept when he used his own method of tallies and crosses. Then he remembered Geordie Twatt's misfortune, and had his little grumble out on this subject: "Boat and goods might hae been a total loss, no to speak o' the lives o' Geordie an' the four lads wi' him; an' a' for the sake o' liquor!"

Margaret looked at the brandy bottle standing at her father's elbow, and, though she did not speak, the look annoyed Peter.

"You arna to even my glass wi' his, lassie. I ken when to stop--Geordie never does."

"It is a common fault in more things than drinking, father. When Magnus Hay has struck the first blow he is quite ready to draw his dirk and strike the last one; and Paul Snackole, though he has made gold and to spare, will just go on making gold until death takes the balances out of his hands. There are few folks that in all things offend not."

She looked so noble standing before him, so fair and tall, her hair yellow as down, her eyes cool and calm and blue as night; her whole attitude so serene, assured and majestic, that Peter rose uneasily, left his glass unfinished, and went away with a very confused "good night."

In the morning the first thing he did when he reached his office, was to send for the offending sailor.

"Geordie, my Margaret says there are plenty folk as bad as thou art; so, thou'lt just see to the steeking o' the boat, an' be ready to sail her--or upset her--i' ten days again."

"I'll keep her right side up for Margaret Sinclair's sake--tell her I said that, Master."

"I'se do no promising for thee Geordie. Between wording an' working is a lang road, but Kirkwall an' Stromness kens thee for an honest lad, an' thou wilt mind this--things promised are things due."

Insensibly this act of forbearance lightened Peter's whole day; he was good-tempered with the world, and the world returned the compliment. When night came, and he watched for Margaret on the sands, he was delighted to see that Ronald was with her. The lad had come home and nothing was now remembered against him. That night it was Ronald told him fairy-stories of great cities and universities, of miles of books and pictures, of wonderful machinery and steam engines, of delicious things to eat and drink. Peter felt as if he must start southward by the next mail packet, but in the morning he thought more unselfishly.

"There are forty families depending on me sticking to the shop an' the boats, Ronald, an' I canna go pleasuring till there is ane to step into my shoes."

Ronald Sinclair had all the fair, stately beauty and noble presence of his sister, but yet there was some lack about him easier to feel than to define. Perhaps no one was unconscious of this lack except Margaret; but women have a grand invention where their idols are concerned, and create readily for them every excellency that they lack. Her own two years' study in an Edinburgh boarding-school had been very superficial, and she knew it; but this wonderful Ronald could read Homer and Horace, could play and sketch, and recite Shakespeare and write poetry. If he could have done none of these things, if he had been dull and ugly, and content to trade in fish and wool, she would still have loved him tenderly; how much more then, this handsome Antinous, whom she credited with all the accomplishments of Apollo.

Ronald needed all her enthusiastic support. He had left heavy college bills, and he had quite made up his mind that he would not be a minister and that he would be a lawyer. He could scarcely have decided on two things more offensive to his father. Only for the hope of having a minister in the family had Peter submitted to his son's continued demands for money. For this end he had bought books, and paid for all kinds of teachers and tours, and sighed over the cost of Ronald's different hobbies. And now he was not only to have a grievous disappointment, but also a great offence, for Peter Sinclair shared fully in the Arcadean dislike and distrust of lawyers, and would have been deeply offended at any one requiring their aid in any business transaction with him.

His son's proposal to be a "writer" he took almost as a personal insult. He had formed his own opinion of the profession and the opinion of any other person who would say a word in favor of a lawyer he considered of no value. Margaret had a hard task before her, that she succeeded at all was due to her womanly tact. Ronald and his father simply clashed against each other and exchanged pointed truths which hurt worse than wounds. At length, when the short Arcadean summer was almost over, Margaret won a hard and reluctant consent.

"The lad is fit for naething better, I suppose"--and the old man turned away to shed the bitterest tears of his whole life. They shocked Margaret; she was terrified at her success, and, falling humbly at his feet, she besought him to forget and forgive her importunities, and to take back a gift baptized with such ominous tears.

But Peter Sinclair, having been compelled to take such a step, was not the man to retrace it; he shook his head in a dour, hopeless way: "He couldna say 'yes' an' 'no' in a breath, an' Ronald must e'en drink as he brewed."

These struggles, so real and sorrowful to his father and sister, Ronald had no sympathy with--not that he was heartless, but that he had taught himself to believe they were the result of ignorance of the world and old-fashioned prejudices. He certainly intended to become a great man--perhaps a judge--and, when he was one of "the Lords," he had no doubt his father would respect his disobedience. He knew his father as little as he knew himself. Peter Sinclair was only Peter Sinclair's opinions incorporate; and he could no more have changed them than he could have changed the color of his eyes or the shape of his nose; and the difference between a common lawyer and a "lord," in his eyes, would only have been the difference between a little oppressor and a great one.

For the first time in all her life Margaret suspected a flaw in this perfect crystal of a brother; his gay debonnaire manner hurt her. Even if her father's objections were ignorant prejudices, they were positive convictions to him, and she did not like to see them smiled at, entertained by the cast of the eye, and the put-by of the turning hand. But loving women are the greatest of philistines: knock their idol down daily, rob it of every beauty, cut off its hands and head, and they will still "set it up in its place," and fall down and worship it.

Undoubtedly Margaret was one of the blindest of these characters, but the world may pause before it scorns them too bitterly. It is faith of this sublime integrity which, brought down to personal experience, believes, endures, hopes, sacrifices and loves on to the end, winning finally what never would have been given to a more prudent and reasonable devotion. So, if Margaret had her doubts, she put them arbitrarily down, and sent her brother away with manifold tokens of her love--among them, with a check on the Kirkwall Bank for sixty pounds, the whole of her personal savings.

To this frugal Arcadean maid it seemed a large sum, but she hoped by the sacrifice to clear off Ronald's college debts, and thus enable him to start his new race unweighted. It was but a mouthful to each creditor, but it put them off for a time, and Ronald was not a youth inclined to "take thought" for their "to-morrow."

He had been entered for four years' study with the firm of Wilkes & Brechen, writers and conveyancers, of the city of Glasgow. Her father had paid the whole fee down, and placed in the Western Bank to his credit four hundred pounds for his four years' support. Whatever Ronald thought of the provision, Peter considered it a magnificent income, and it had cost him a great struggle to give up at once, and for no evident return, so much of his hard-earned gold. To Ronald he said nothing of this reluctance; he simply put vouchers for both transactions in his hand, and asked him to "try an' spend the siller as weel as it had been earned."

But to Margaret he fretted not a little. "Fourteen hun'red pounds a' thegither, dawtie," he said in a tearful voice. "I warked early an' late through mony a year for it; an' it is gane a' at once, though I hae naught but words an' promises for it. I ken, Margaret, that I am an auld farrant trader, but I'se aye say that it is a bad well into which are must put water."

When Ronald went, the summer went too. It became necessary to remove at once to their rock-built house in one of the narrow streets of Kirkwall. Margaret was glad of the change; her father could come into the little parlor behind the shop any time in the day and smoke his pipe beside her. He needed this consolation sorely; his son's conduct had grieved him far more deeply than he would allow, and Margaret often saw him gazing southward over the stormy Pentland Frith with a very mournful face.

But a good heart soon breaks bad fortune and Peter had a good heart, sound and sweet and true to his fellow-creatures and full of faith in God. It is true that his creed was of the very strictest and sternest;