Betty Grier. Joseph Laing Waugh
in the bushes, the rich, full-throated melody of the blackbird and mavis from the wooded recesses of the Gillfoot—each feathered minstrel piping his own song in his own way, and all in unison singing their pæans of praise in their leafy, sun-kissed bowers. Gossamer-webs, silvered with countless pearls of dew, stretch their glistening threads from leaf to leaf, and cover the shady side of the hawthorn hedgerows as with a gray-meshed silken veil. From rank, dewy grass humble blue-bells raise their heads, and nod good-morning to white and blue-red stately foxgloves standing sentinel o'er scarred red-earth banks and tangled bramble thickets. Lowing cows, knee-deep in meadow grass and buttercups, with swishing tails and pawing forelegs, impatiently await the opening gate. And over all, on field and wood and hill and dale, lie the glorious rays of God's own sunshine, diffusing warmth and gladness, and filling nature anew with pulsing life.
The road lies broad and white before me, and I see Nathan's tall, gaunt figure passing Longmire Mains, and I know the smell of the sweet American gean is in his nostrils, and his gardener's eye is on the fronded hart's-tongue ferns which here and there peep from the crevices of the lichen-covered dike; by Meadow Bank, where the purple bloom still crowns the spiked leaf branch of the rhododendron; on between the hollies and silver birches at Dabton; through the sleepy village of Carronbrig, where he is joined by moleskin-clad fellow-workers.
Staff in hand and pipe in mouth, at that regulation pace which is well known as 'the Duke's step,' each wends his way through the green turf holm, across the Nith by the stepping-stones, under the shadow of the ruin-crowned Tibbers mound. As they near the scene of their daily darg, tobacco 'dottles' are paper-padded and made secure, pipes are deposited in sleeved-vest pockets, and where the white iron wicket clicks and admits them to the low-lying stretch of fairy garden plots and multi-coloured perfumed bowers I take my leave of them. God grant I may soon be able to see with the living eye, and feel with the nature-loving heart, the beauties and joys which now in imagination only are mine!
By degrees, and at rare intervals, Betty has relieved her mind to me regarding Nathan. When I say 'relieved her mind,' I do not imply that there is anything in Nathan's conduct or any remissness in his mode of living which burdens Betty's thoughts. Far from it. Nathan is the best of husbands—appreciative, kind, steady, and considerate. His wages—to the uttermost farthing—are regularly given up to Betty's safe keeping. All his spare hours are devoted to the large garden, whose produce from January till December makes Betty's daily dinner of the bienest. Her slightest wish is a command which he obeys with cheerfulness and alacrity, and the quiet and composure of his presence is, I know, her secret pride and mainstay. Yet she seems to be ever apologising for his being about, and in speaking of him to me she invariably refers to him as 'Nathan, puir falla,' with just the slightest suggestion of commiseration in her tone.
I wonder why this should be, and it is beginning to dawn upon me that Betty somehow imagines—wrongly, needless to say—that I look upon him as an intruder, something foreign to the element of our home-life of long ago; and, stranger still, I am conscious of that feeling in Nathan also. Though I have been resident here for over two weeks, and though he has cried upstairs to me every evening, he has only been twice in my room; and on both occasions he stood awkwardly at the door, holding on by the handle, and answering my questions with his head turned toward the landing. During the past week I have managed to limp my way downstairs, and on passing through the kitchen have stayed my steps to ca' the crack with him. But 'Yes, sir,' 'No, sir,' 'Ay, ay; imphm!' have so far been the sum-total of his contribution to the conversation. Some day, however, I know Nathan will thaw; some day soon they will both know the high esteem in which I hold him. In due season he will rid himself of his backwardness and shyness, and I shall be glad, for his honest blue eye and his pleasing serenity appeal to me, and I feel I want a friend like Nathan Hebron.
To-night, after she had cleared away the remains of my homely supper, Betty sat down with her knitting at my little attic window. I have two pots of flowering musk and a lovely pelargonium in full bloom on my sill, and under pretence of procuring Nathan's advice as to their culture and well-being I inquired of Betty if she would ask him to come upstairs.
'Most certainly, Maister Weelum,' said she, with a pleasant nod; and she went out, returning a minute later with Nathan in her wake. I know he had been sitting in his easy-chair smoking in silence, with his stem-bonnet on and his shirt-sleeves rolled up, inactive, yet alert and ready to fulfil any of Betty's little behests; but at Betty's summons he had hastily donned a coat, and his head was bare.
After leisurely examining my plants and drawling out a few disjointed directions, he turned to go downstairs; but I motioned him to a seat, and, rather reluctantly, I thought, he sat down. I urged him to join me in a smoke, and offered him a fill of my Edinburgh mixture; but he declined my pouch; and, taking out a deerskin spleuchan, he nipped a full inch of brown twist, teased it, rolled it in the palm of his rough, horny hand, and meditatively filled the bowl of his clay cutty.
Betty noticed my little act of civility; but she plied her needles in silence till Nathan had struck a light and begun smoking.
'Ay, Maister Weelum,' she said, as Nathan fitted the glowing bowl of his pipe with a perforated metal cover, 'thae fancy ready-cut tobaccos are no' much in the line o' oor Nathan, puir falla.'
'Is that so? Well, every man to his own taste; but, Betty, excuse my asking so personal a question, why do you always refer to your goodman here as "Nathan, puir falla"?'
Nathan looked surprisedly from me to Betty, and, after fumbling with his match-box, struck another light when there was no necessity to do so; while Betty laid her knitting on the table and thoughtfully pressed it out lengthwise with the palm of her open hand.
'When ye mention it, noo, I daur say I div say "puir falla,"' she answered; 'but, though I say that, I dinna mean it in ony temporal sense, Maister Weelum. So far as this world is concerned, I've got the very best man that ever lived; but'–and she looked at Nathan as if in doubt how to proceed.
Nathan blew pipe-reek most vigorously; then he turned round to me with a faint smile on his sober face, and he actually winked. 'She's—she's sterted again, Maister Weelum,' he said with a side-nod toward Betty.
'Started what, Nathan?'
'Oh, the auld subject—imphm!'
'Ay,'—chimed in Betty, now sure of her opening, 'it's an auld subject, but it's ever a new yin, a' the same. "'Tis old, yet ever new," as the hymn-book has it. Ay, an' that is true. As I said before, Maister Weelum, I've nae concern regairdin' Nathan's welfare in this world. We're promised only bread an' water, an' look hoo often he gets tea an' chops, an' on what we ha'e saved there's every chance o' that diet bein' continued as lang as he has teeth to chew wi'. But what o' the next world? As Tammas Fraser aince said when he was takin' the Book, "Ah, that's where the rub comes in!"' and she shook her head dolefully, as much as to say, 'Nathan, you're a gone corbie!'
I looked from husband to wife in blank astonishment, not knowing what to say. I had always looked upon Betty as a deeply religious woman, a true disciple of the Great Master, but partaking more of the loving John than the assertive Peter; and, often as I had heard her say a word in season, I could not remember having listened to her expressing so pointedly her fears and convictions.
She interpreted my thoughts aright; and after Nathan had, without necessity, sparked another match, and almost succeeded in turning toward us the full length and breadth of his long tankard back, she resumed.
'Your mother was a guid woman, Maister Weelum, an' I ken that often, often, you were the burden o' her prayers. I never talked much on this subject to you, kennin' that you were her ain particular chairge, an' that her prayers, withoot my interference, wad be answered. But it's different in the case o' Nathan here. He belangs to me, an' me to him. My calling an' election 's sure, an' I juist canna bide the thocht o' us bein' separated at the lang hinner-en'. It's no' that he 's a bad man—far from it. Or it 's no' that he 's careless. I gi'e him credit for bein' concerned in his ain wey; but he juist saunters on through life, trustin' that things will somewey work oot a' richt, an' lettin' the want, if there 's ony, come in at the wab's end. Ay, an' for a man like him, that 's sae fond o' flo'ers an' dogs an' ither folks' weans, it simply passes my comprehension hoo it is that he 's sae indifferent to the greatest o' a' love an' the things that so closely concern his immortal soul's salvation. Nae wonder I