Complete Works of J. M. Barrie

by Unknown

  The exact date of Haggart’s departure cannot be determined, though it was certainly in the back end of the year 1834. He had then been married to Chirsty a little short of three years. His age would be something beyond thirty, but he never knew his birthday, and I have heard him say that one of the few things he could not understand was how the relatives of a person deceased could know the precise age to send to the newspapers.

  What is, however, known for certain is that Tammas’s adventures began within a week of the burial of old Mr. Yuill, the parish minister. There had been a to-do about who should preach the funeral sermon, two ministers having words over it, and all Thrums knowing that Mr. Yuill had left seven pounds to the preacher. At this time Haggart did not belong to the Auld Lichts, nor was he even regular in his attendance at the parish church, but the dispute about the funeral sermon interested him greatly, and when he heard that the session was meeting to decide the affair, he agreed with Chirsty that he might do worse than hang around the door on the chance of getting early information. There was a small crowd at the door on the same errand, all of whom noticed, though they little thought it would give them a topic to their dying day, that Haggart had on his topcoat. It had been an old one of Mr. Yuill’s, presented to Tammas, who could not fill it, but refused to have it altered, out of respect to the minister’s memory. It has also been fondly recalled of Tammas that he was only shaven on the one side, as if Chirsty had sent him to the meeting in a hurry, and that he had not the look of a man who was that very night to enter upon experiences which would confound the world.

  “It was an impressive spectacle,” Snecky Hobart said subsequently, “to see Tammas discussing the burial sermon, just as keen as me and T’nowhead, and then to think that within twenty-four hours the very ministers themselves would be discussing him.”

  “He said to me it had been a dowie day,” T’nowhead always remembered.

  “He shoved me when he was crushing in nearer the door,” was Hender Robbie’s boast.

  “But he took a snuff out of my mull.”

  “Maybe he did, but I was the last he spoke to. He said, ‘Weel, Dan’l, I’ll be stepping back to Tilly.’”

  “Ay, but I passed him at the Tenements, and he says, ‘ Davit.’ he says, and I says, ‘ Tammas.’”

  “Very like; but I was carrying a ging of water frae Susie Linn’s pump, and Tammas said would I give him a drink, the which I did.”

  “Lads, I’m no sure but what I noticed a faraway look in Tammas’s face, as if there was something on his mind.”

  “If ye did, Jeames, ye kept it to yoursel’.”

  “Ay, but I meant to mention it when I got hame.”

  “How did ye no, then?”

  “How does a body no do many a thing? I dinna say I noticed the look, but just that I’m no sure but what I noticed it.”

  So we all did our best to recall Haggart’s last words and looks on that amazing evening, even the Auld Licht minister, who cared little for popularity, claiming as a noticeable thing to have walked behind Tammas and observed that his handkerchief was hanging out of his north pocket. But though all these memories have their value as relics, we have Tammas’s own word for it that from the time he reached the session house until his return to Tillyloss he felt much as usual.

  “Ay,” he would say in his impressive way, “ many a thing may happen between the aucht and the ten-o’clock bells, but I told neither T’nowhead nor Snecky nor none of them as onything was to happen that nicht.”

  “Ye did not, Tammas; na, na, for if ye had I would have heard ye, me being there.”

  “Ay, but ye couldna say my reason for no telling ye?”

  “Na.”

  “Weel, then, my reason was just this that I — didna ken mysel’.”

  CHAPTER II.

  CONTAINING THE CIRCUMSTANCES WHICH LED TO THE DEPARTURE OF HAGGART.

  In the future Haggart’s mind was to become a book in which he could turn up any page wanted, but its early stage was a ravel not worth harking back to unless for purposes of comparison. He could never, therefore, when questioned, say for certain that between the session house and Tillyloss he had met a soul except the Auld Licht minister, to see whom was naturally to feel him. At the foot of Tilly, however, he was taken aback to find a carriage and two horses standing.

  The sight knocked all the news he had heard about the funeral sermon out of his head, and left him with just sufficient sense to put his back to the wall and assume the appearance of a man who would begin to think directly. First he gazed at the horses, and said, “Ay.”

  Then he looked less carefully at the coachman.

  “Yes,” he said.

  Lastly, he gave both eyes to the carriage, and corroborated his previous remarks with, “Umpha.”

  In themselves these statements suggest little, though they really left Haggart master of the situation. The first was his own answer to the question, “Will these be Balribbie’s beasts?” and the second was merely a stepping-stone to the third, which was a short way of saying that the ladies had called on Chirsty at last.

  Tammas’s wife, Chirsty, had been a servant at Balribbie, the mistress of which had promised, as most of Thrums was aware, to call on her some day.

  “Ye’ll be none the better though she does call,” Haggart used to say, to which Chirsty’s inhuman answer was, “Maybe no; but it’ll make every other woman in Tillyloss miserable.”

  Every day for a year Chirsty awaited the coming of the ladies, after which it was the neighbours who spoke of the promised visit rather than herself. But evidently the ladies had come after all, and the question for Tammas was whether to face them or step about Tilly until they had driven away. It is difficult, no doubt, to believe that there ever was a time when Haggart would rather have hidden behind a dyke than converse with the gentry, but I have this from himself. He, whose greatest topic in the future was to be, Women, and Why we should Put up with Them, however Unreasonable, could not think of the proper thing to say to the ladies of Balribbie.

  “Losh, losh,” he has said, when casting his mind back to this period, “it’s hard to me to believe that the unhumorous man swithering at the foot of Tilly that nicht was really Tammas Haggart, and no just somebody dressed up in Tammas Haggart’s image.”

  If it was hard to Tammas, how much harder to the like of us.

  Without actually deciding to show tail, Tammas continued to lean heavily against the wall, where he was not conspicuous to two women who passed a little later with baskets on their arms.

  “I assure ye Chirsty’s landed,” one of them said, “for she has her grand folk after all.”

  “Ay,” said the other, “and Tammas is no in, so she’ll no need to explain how her man’s so lang and thin by what he was when she exhibited him at Balribbie.”

  “What do ye mean, ye limmers?” cried Haggart, stepping into sight. “I was never at Balribbie.”

  They slipped past him giggling, with the parting shots —

  “Chirsty can tell ye what we mean,” and “And so can Jeames Pitbladdo.”

  Haggart probably sent his under lip over the upper one, for that was his way when troubled. He was aware that Chirsty had very nearly married Pitbladdo, but these women meant something else. Without knowing that he was doing so, he marched straight for his house, and was halfway up the outside stair when the door opened, and two ladies, accompanied by Chirsty, came out. Haggart did not even know what they were like, though he was to become such an authority on the female face and figure. He stopped, wanting the courage to go on and the discourtesy to turn back. So he merely stood politely in their way.

  Chirsty gave her curls an angry shake as she saw him, but he had to be acknowledged.

  “This is himself” she said, with the contempt a woman naturally feels for her husband.

  Thus cornered, Tammas opened his mouth wide, to have his photograph taken, as it were, by the two ladies. The elder smiled and said, “I am glad to make your acquaintance, James.”
/>   Tammas thinks she said more, but could never swear to it. To keep up with her quick way of speaking was a race for him, and at the word “James” he stumbled, as against a stone. When he came to himself, “Thank ye, mem,” he said, “but my name—”

  Here Chirsty gave him a look that made him lose his words.

  “Let the leddies pass, can ye no?” she exclaimed.

  For a moment Tammas did not see how they could pass, unless by returning to the house, when he could follow them and so get rid of himself. Then he had the idea of descending.

  “At the same time,” he said, picking up the lost words, “my name—”

  “Dinna argy bargy with the leddies,” said Chirsty, tripping down the stair like a lady herself, but not hoisting the colour that would at that moment have best become her.

  “You must come out to Balribbie again and see us, James,” the elder lady remarked by way of goodnight.

  Tammas turned a face of appeal to his other visitor, who had been regarding him curiously.

  “Do you know, James,” she said, “I would not have recognized you again?”

  “Very like,” answered Tammas, “for ye never saw me.”

  “Be ashamed of yourself, James,” cried Chirsty, shocked to hear husband of hers contradict a lady.

  The young lady, however, only smiled.

  “Oh, James,” she said, playfully, “to think you have forgotten me, and I poured out your tea that day at Balribbie with my own hand.”

  In his after years Tammas, tempted to this extent, would have answered in some gallant words such as the young lady could have taken away with her in the carriage. But that night he was only an ordinary man.

  “I never set foot in Bal—” he was replying, when Chirsty interfered.

  “Well he minds of it,” she said, audaciously, “and no farther back than Monday he says to me, ‘That was a cup of tea/ he says, ‘ as I never tasted the marrows of.’”

  “Wuman!” cried Tammas.

  “See to the house, James,” said Chirsty, “and I’ll go as far as the carriage with the ladies.”

  When Chirsty returned, five minutes afterwards, her husband was standing where she had left him.

  “My name, mem,” he was saying to the stair, “is not James, but Tammas, and it’s gospel I tell ye when I say I was never at Balribbie in my born days.”

  Chirsty passed him without a word, and went into the house, slamming the door. Tammas and his tantrums did not seriously disturb her, but she had been badly used on her way back from the carriage. While helping the ladies to their seats she had been happily conscious of Kitty Crabb peeping at the proud sight from the back of the doctor’s dyke, and as Kitty was the most celebrated gossip in Tillyloss, Chirsty thought to herself, “It’ll be through Tilly before bedtime.”

  “Ay, Kitty,” she said, on her way back, looking over the dyke, “that was the Balribbie family calling on me.”

  Kitty, however, could never stand Chirsty’s airs, and saw an opportunity of humbling her. “I saw nobody,” she answered.

  “They’ve been in my house since half nine,” cried Chirsty, anxiously, “and that was their carriage.”

  “I saw no carriage,” said Kitty, cruelly.

  “I saw ye gaping at it ower the dyke,” Chirsty screamed, “and that’s it ye hear driving east the road.”

  “I hear nothing,” said Kitty.

  “Katrine Crabb,” cried Chirsty, “think shame of yourself.”

  “Na, Chirsty,” rejoined Kitty, “ye needna blame me if your grand folk ignore ye.”

  So Chirsty entered her house with the dread fear that no one would give her the satisfaction of allowing that the Balribbie family had crossed its threshold. She was wringing a duster, as if it were Kitty Crabb, when Tammas stamped up the stair in no mood to offer sympathy.

  He kept his bonnet on, more like a visitor than a man in his own house, but as he plumped upon a stool by the fire he flung his feet against the tongs in a way that showed he required immediate attention.

  “I’m waiting,” he said, after a pause.

  “Take your feet off the fender,” replied Chirsty.

  “Tell me my name immediately,” requested Tammas.

  “That’s what’s troubling ye?”

  “It is so. What’s my name?”

  “Sal, whatever it is, I wish it wasna mine.”

  “Your grand folk called me James.”

  “So I noticed.”

  “How was that?”

  “Ye couldna expect the like of them to ken the ins and outs of your name.”

  “Nane of your tricks, wuman; I wasna born on a Sabbath. It was you that said my name was Jeames; ay, and what’s more, ye called me Jeames yoursel’.”

  “Do ye think I was to conter grand folk like the Balribbie family?”

  “Conter here, conter there, I want to bottom this. They said I had been at Balribbie.”

  “Weel, I think ye micht have been glad to take the credit of that.”

  “It’s my opinion,” said Tammas, “that ye’ve been pretending I was Jeames Pitbladdo.”

  “Ye micht have been proud of that, too,” retorted Chirsty.

  “As sure as death,” said Tammas, “if ye dinna clear this up I gang to Balribbie for licht on’t.”

  “She looked me in the face at that,” Tammas used to say as he told the story, “and when she saw the michty determination in it she began to sing small. I pointed to the place whaur I wanted her to stand, and I says, ‘ Now, then, I’m waiting.’”

  “I never pretended to ye,” said Chirsty, “but what it was touch and go my no marrying Jeames Pitbladdo.”

  Tammas nodded.

  “The leddies at Balribbie thocht it was him I was to marry.”

  “I daursay.”

  “They dinna ken about you at that time.”

  “They dinna seem to ken about me yet.”

  “Jeames used to come about Balribbie a heap, and they saw he was after me, and Miss Mary often said to me was I fond of him? Ay, and I said he was daft about me. Then he spiered me, and after that they had him up to the house.”

  “So, so, and that was the time he got the tea?”

  “It was so, and then I gave up my place, them promising to come and visit me when I was settled.”

  “Ay, but Jeames creepit off after all.”

  “Weel ye ken it was his superstitiousness made him give me the go-by.”

  “I’ve heard versions of the story frae folk in the toon, but I didna credit them. Ye took guid care never to tell me about it yoursel’. Ye said to me it was you that wouldna have him, no that he wouldna take you.”

  “He wanted me, but he was always a superstitious man, Jeames Pitbladdo. He was never fonder of me than when we parted.”

  “All I ken,” said Tammas, “is that he wouldna buy the ring to ye, and that must either have been because he didna want ye when it came to the point, or because he was a michty greedy crittur.”

  “He’s no greedy; and as for no caring for me, it near broke his heart to give me up. There was tears on his face when we parted.”

  “Havers! what was there to keep him frae buying the ring if he wanted it?”

  “His superstitiousness.”

  “What is there superstitious about a ring?”

  “It wasna the ring; it was the hiccup did it.”

  “Ay, I heard there was a hiccup in the story, but I didna fash about it.”

  “Jeames did though, and it was a very queery thing, I can tell ye, though I didna put the wecht on it that he did. As many a one kens forby me, he walked straight to Peter Lambie’s shop to buy the ring, and just as he had his hand on the door he took the hiccup. Ye ken what a superstitious man Jeames is.”

  “If I wanted a wife it’s no hiccup would stand in the road.”

  “Because you’re ower ignorant to be superstitious. And Jeames didna give in at the first try. He was back at the shop the next nicht, and there he took the hiccup again. Then he came to me and sai
d in terrible disappointment as it would be wicked to marry in the face of Providence. I never saw a man so crushed like.”

  “Ay, I’m no saying but what this may be true, but it doesna explain your reason for calling me Jeames.”

  “I call ye Tammas as a rule, when it’s necessary to mention your name. Ye canna deny that.”

  “Tell me how I’m Jeames to the gentry.”

  “I wasna to disgrace mysel’ to them, was I?”

  “Whaur’s the disgrace in Tammas?”

  “Ye maun see, Tammas Haggart, dull as ye are, that it was a trying position for me to be in. When I left Balribbie the leddies thocht I was to marry Jeames Pitbladdo; did they no?”

  “I daursay.”

  “And I had told them Jeames was complete daft about me; and so he was, for he called his very porridge spoon after me, a thing you never did.”

  “Did I ever pretend to you I had these poetical ways?”

  “I wouldna have believed it, though you did. But was ever mortal woman left in sich a predicament because of a superstition?

  Nat’rally, when I married you, I didna’ let on to the Balribbie family as ye wasna’ Jeames Pitbladdo, and Jeames Pitbladdo they think ye to this day. What harm does it do ye?”

  “Harm! It leaves me complete mixed up about mysel’. Chirsty Todd, ye have disgraced me this nicht.”

  Here Chirsty turned on him.

  “I’ve disgraced ye, have I? And wha has shamed me every nicht for years, if no’ yersel’, Tammas Haggart?”