Complete Works of J. M. Barrie

by Unknown

  To write this account of the glen when it is locked has been an effort, for the reason that I have done it twice already and in the morning it was not there. I sat down by lamplight on both occasions to write it and thought I had completed my task, but next morning I found just a few broken lines on otherwise blank pages. Some of them were repeated again and again like a cry, such as ‘God help me,’ as if I were a bird caught in a trap. I am not in any way disturbed of mind or body, at any rate in the morning. Yet this was what I had written. I am none so sure but what it may prove to be all I have written again.

  I will now go and say goodnight to the Old Lady, for though it is barely half nine on the clock, we keep early hours in the wilderness. This is a moment I owe to her ingenuity. The Grand House, which has of course a statelier name of its own, is a steep climb from here and is at present inaccessible, the approach having thrown in its lot with the fields, but it is visible, and at half nine o’clock she shoots her blind up and down twice, and I reply with mine. Hers, I am thankful to say, is red, or the lamp behind it has a red shade, and this shooting of the blinds is our way of saying goodnight to each other. When she shoots hers three times it means something personal about my gown, and I make no answer. There is a warmth, however, in saying goodnight to a living being when the glen is so still that I am thinking you could hear a whit-rit on the move. Sometimes I stand by my window long after hers is dumb, and I have felt that night was waiting, as it must have done once, for the first day. It is the stillness that is so terrible. If only something would crack the stillness.

  CHAPTER V.

  THE STRANGER

  Dec. 21. For the first time since the glen was locked Dr John ‘threw in,’ as we say, this morning.

  He came straight to the study, where he found us at family exercise. I did not look up from my knees, but Christily whispered to me, ‘Be short,’ which I dare say made me in consequence a little longer. Yet I knew she would not have taken such a liberty unless there was something untoward with the man, and though I found when I rose that he was on his knees with us, I saw that he had gone to sleep on them. His face was so peaked that I sent Christily hurriedly for the bottle of brandy which has lain in the manse uncorked since I came here six months ago, and as soon as he had partaken she hauled off his boots and ran him on to the stair-head to wring and scrape him, for he was getting on to the carpet.

  I saw he ettled to be rid of her before communicating something by-ordinar to me, and he took the best way to effect this by saying in a sentence that he had got through to Joanna Minch and it was a girl and both were doing well; whereupon Christily was off to cry the tidings across the burn.

  He was nodding in the grandy with fatigue, so that it looked as if only by sudden jerks could he keep his head on, but he brought out the words, ‘There is more in it than I told Christily. I have been to the shieling, but I did not get through in time. There were two lives saved in that bit house in the small hours; but don’t be congratulating me, for I had naught to do with it.’

  Having said this, he fell head foremost into sleep, and I had ill rousing him, which I was sweer to do, but he had made it plain that he wanted to say more.

  ‘It’s such a camsterie tale,’ he told me, ‘as might banish sleep in any man; but I am dog-tired and unless you keep pulling my beard with all the strength that is in you I’ll be dovering again.’

  I may say here that I had to do as he instructed me several times. We must have looked a strange pair, the doctor yawning and going off in the middle of sentences while I tugged fiercely at the beard.

  I will put his bewildering tale together as best I can. He had forced his way last evening to the farm of the Whammle, where a herd was lying with two broken legs. While he was there Fargie Routh, the husband of Joanna, had tracked him down to say that she was terrible near her reckoning. The doctor started off with him rather anxious, for Fargie was ‘throughither,’ and it was Joanna’s first. Dr John had floundered into worse drifts, but a stour of snow was plastering his face and he lost Fargie at the sleugh crossing. He tumbled and rumbled down in a way at which he is a master-hand, and reached the shieling hours before the husband, who is a decent stock but very unusual in the legs. The distance is a short mile when the track is above-ground. Dr John was relieved to smell smoke, for he feared to find he was on a sleeveless errand, and that the woman would be found frozen.

  I told him I knew the house, which is a lonesome one-roomed cot of double stone and divot, with but a bole window. I asked if he had found Joanna alone, but he had taken the opportunity of my making a remark to fall asleep again.

  I got his eyes open in the manner recommended by him, and he said with one of his little leers at me, ‘She was not quite alone; but maybe you are one of those who do not count an infant till it be christened.’

  ‘If there is any haste for that—’ I cried, looking for my boots.

  ‘There is none,’ he said.

  ‘But who had been with her? Was she in such a bad condition that she could give you no information about that?’

  ‘She was in fine condition and she could and she did,’ he said. ‘I was with her till Fargie, who had gone back to the Whammle, brought down the gude-wife, and I have no doubt Joanna is now giving the particulars to them. They are such uncommon particulars,’ he went on, taking a chew at them, ‘that I can fancy even the proud infant sitting up to listen.’

  Then who was it that had acted in his place, I enquired, not daring to be more prolix lest he should again be overtaken.

  That, he said, was what he was asking me.

  ‘Dr John—’

  ‘Be assured,’ said he, ‘that I am too dung owner with tire to be trifling with you; but this will become more your affair than mine. It is not to me they will look to be told who she was but to their minister.’

  ‘I hope I shall not fail them,’ I said loftily. Nevertheless I dreed what was coming, and I insisted on his keeping awake ‘or I would lay a hot iron on the beard.’

  He said he had found a kettle on a bright fire and Joanna in her bed with the child, who was fittingly swaddled in her best brot. He would not let her talk until he had satisfied himself that everything necessary had been done, and then (for the curiosity was mounting to his brain) he said with pretended casualness, ‘I see you have been having a nice cup of tea.’

  ‘And merry she was at the making of it,’ replied Joanna, turning merry herself.

  ‘I forget,’ said he, ‘if you mentioned who she was?’

  ‘Of course it was one of the Strangers,’ she said.

  ‘Of course it would be one of those curiosities,’ said he, ‘but I never chanced to fall in with ane; what was she like?’

  ‘Oh,’ said Joanna, ‘she was like the little gentleman that sits under his tail’ – meaning a squirrel.

  ‘I thought she would be something like that,’ he said; ‘but had you no fear of her?’

  ‘Never,’ said Joanna, ‘till after the bairn was born, and then for just a short time, when she capered about mad-like with glee, holding it high in the air, and dressing and undressing it in the brot, so as to have another peep at it, and very proud of what she had done for me and it till a queer change came over her and I had a sinking that she was going to bite it. I nippit it from her.’

  ‘To bite them is not my usual procedure at a birth,’ the doctor had said, ‘but we all have our different ways.’

  Joanna gave him a fuller story of the night than, as he said, would be of any profit to a sumph of a bachelor like Adam Yestreen, but he told me some of its events.

  The door had blown open soon after Fargie’s departure, leaving naught but reek to heat her, and the bole closed, and when the fire went down she would have been glad to cry back the reek. She thought the cold candle of her life was at the flicker. The Stranger relit the fire, but there was no way she could conceive of heating that body on the box-bed. Then the thought came to her.

  ‘She strippit herself naked,’ Joanna said, ‘and m
ade me keep my feet on her, as if she was one of them pig bottles for toasting the feet of the gentry; and when my feet were warm, she lay close to me, first on one side and then on the other. She was as warm as a browning bannock when she began, but by the time the heat of her had passed into me I’se uphaud she was cold as a trout.’

  As to the actual birth, though this was Joanna’s first child, she knew more about the business than did her visitor, who seems to have been in a dither of importance over the novelty of the occasion. She was sometimes very daring and sometimes at such a loss that in Joanna’s words, ‘she could just pet me and kiss me and draw droll faces at me with the intent to help me through, and when she got me through she went skeer with triumph, crying out as she strutted up and down that we were the three wonders of the world.’

  The whole affair, Dr John decided, must have been strange enough ‘to put the wits of any medical onlooker in a bucket,’ and if he let his mind rest on it he would forget how to sleep as well as how to practise surgery; so in the name of Charity would I leave him in the land of Nod for an hour while I thought out some simple explanation for my glen folk.

  He got his hour, though sorely did I grudge it, for I was in a bucket myself.

  When he woke refreshed I was by his side to say at once, as if there had not been a moment’s interruption, ‘Of course she was some neighbour.’

  There was a glint in his blue eyes now, but he said decisively, ‘There is no way out by that road, my man; Joanna is acquaint with every neighbour in the glen.’

  ‘An outside woman of flesh and blood,’ I prigged with him, ‘must have contrived to force the glen; as, after all, you did yourself.’

  That, he maintained, was even less possible than the other.

  I was stout for there being some natural explanation, and he reminded me unnecessarily that there was the one Joanna gave. At this I told him sternly to get behind me.

  I could not forbear asking him if he had any witting of such stories being common to other lonely glens, and he shook his head, which made me the more desperate.

  He saw in what a stramash I was, and, dropping his banter, came kindly to my relief. ‘Do you really think,’ he said, in his helpful confident way, ‘that I have any more belief in warlocks and “Strangers” than you have yourself? I’ll tell you my conclusion, which my sleep makes clearer. It is that Joanna did the whole thing by herself, as many a woman has done before her. She must at some time, though, have been in a trance, which are things I cannot pretend to fathom, and have thought a woman was about her who was not there. It cows to think of a practical kimmer like Joanna having, even in her hour of genius, such an imagination; that bit about nearly biting the bairn is worthy of Mr H. ‘s Spectrum.’

  ‘None of that,’ I cried. ‘She no doubt got that out of the old minister’s story.’

  ‘Ay,’ he granted, ‘let’s say that accounts for it. I admit it is the one thing that has been worrying me. But at any rate it is of no importance, as we are both agreed that Joanna was by her lonesome. She had no joyous visitor, no. Heigh-ho, Mr Yestreen, it’s almost a pity to have to let such a pleasantly wayward woman go down the wind.’

  It was far from a pity to me. I was so thankful to him for getting rid of her that I pressed his hand repeatedly. I was done with wayward women.

  CHAPTER VI.

  SUPERSTITION AND ITS ANTIDOTE

  Dec. 26. I got as far as the shieling two days behind Joanna’s story and held a kirstening, this being the first at which I have ever officiated.

  The usual course is to have it in the kirk toward the end of a service, but in urgent cases it may be on the day of birth. There was maybe no reason for precipitancy in this case, the child being lusty, but in the peculiar circumstances I considered it my duty to make her safe. When I took her in my arms, by far the youngest I had ever meddled with, I was suddenly aware of my youthful presumption. I should have been warned beforehand about the beauty of their finger nails.

  Yet I dared not let on that I was the most ignorant in the room, for I was the minister, and therefore to be looked up to. Also Joanna swore to her visit from the Stranger, with side-looks at me as if she had given birth to a quandary as well as to a litlun; and the lave of the party present were already familiar with her story and were all agog.

  So, knowing how ill it fares with a minister’s usefulness if he does not keep upside with his flock, I was bolder than I felt, and told them in a short exposition that there had been no ‘Stranger’ in the affair; otherwise some of them would certainly have seen her.

  They all nodded their agreement and thanked me for making it so clear, but I knew in my bones that they did not accept one word of my redding up, though they regarded it as very proper for a minister, especially one who was new to the glen.

  This way they have, of heartily accepting what you tell them and then going their own gate, is disheartening to me, and at one time I thought of making any dirdum about Strangers a subject of stern discipline from the pulpit. Fear did not enter into my reluctance, for I knew they would esteem me the more the harder I got at them, but I drew back from the ease of superiority toward men and women whose simple lives have been so often more grimly fought than my own. It relieves me, therefore, to have decided that I may get through their chinks more creditably in another manner.

  The amelioration in the weather, which probably will not last, is what put the idea into my head. Some of us have been able to step about a little these last days. A curran herd, weary of bothy life, have made so bold as to find out where the glen road is. Of course they cannot shule down to it, but they have staked some of the worst bits, and several carts have passed along as if the proximity to it gave them courage. I saw from the manse the Old Lady’s carriage trying for Branders. The smith’s klink-klink from the smiddy, which is the most murie sound in a countryside next to a sawmill, shows that he has had at least one to shod. Posty has ridden on his velocipede the length of the Five Houses and back, with the result that you can hardly see his face for the brown paper.

  It is true that there is no possibility of opening the kirk on Sabbath, for though we have thrown planks across the burn, with a taut rope to hang on by, the place is too mortal cold for sitting in through a service. There is, however, the smiddy, which can be used for other purposes besides preaching.

  All our large social events take place in the smiddy, and the grandest consist of Penny Weddings, when you are expected, if convenient, to bring, say, a hen or a small piece of plenishing to the happy pair. The actual marriage, of course, takes place in the bride’s home, and not, in the queer English way, in the kirk. We have had no weddings since I came, but twice last month we had Friendlies, which we consider the next best thing.

  Our Friendlies are always in two parts, the first part being devoted to a lecture by the minister or some other person of culture, who is usually another minister. This lecture is invariably of a bright, entertaining character, and some are greater adepts at unbending in this way than others, the best being Mr Watery of Branders, whose smile is of such expansion that you might say it spreads over the company like honey. Laughter and the clapping of hands in moderation are not only permissible during the lectures but encouraged.

  The second part of a Friendly is mostly musical with songs, and is provided by local talent, in which Posty takes too great a lead. There is an understanding that I remain for the first song or so, whether I am lecturing or in the Chair. This is to give a tone to the second part, and then I slip away, sometimes wishing I could bide to enjoy the mirth, but I know my presence casts a shadow on their ease. The time in which Friendlies would be most prized is when the glen is locked, but the difficulty for all except the Five Houses lies in getting to the smiddy.

  Nevertheless we are to attempt a Friendly on Thursday, though Mr Watery, who was to be the lecturer with a magic lantern, which of course is a great addition, has cried off on account of nervousness lest the weather should change before he gets home again. I have undertake
n to fill his place to the best of my more limited ability, as indeed it is.

  I am doing so the more readily because of this idea that came to me, which promises to be a felicitous one. It is to lecture to them on Superstition, with some sly and yet shattering references to a recent so-called event in the glen, all to be done with a light touch, yet of course with a moral, which is that a sense of humour is the best antidote to credulity. There are few of the smaller subjects to which I have given greater thought than to Humour, its ramifications and idiosyncrasies, and I have a hope that I may not do so badly at this. I wish Mr Watery could be present, for I think I can say that I know more about Humour than he does, though he is easier at it.

  CHAPTER VII.

  MISS JULIE LOGAN

  Dec. 28. Hours have passed since I finished my lecture. I know not how many times I have sat down to write about her, and then taken to wandering the study floor instead. My mind goes back in search of every crumb of her, and I am thinking I could pick her up better on my fiddle than in written words.

  My eyes never fell on her till I got to my peroration. This is no reflection on my sight, for all the company in the smiddy, and there were more than thirty, had to sit in darkness so that they could better watch my face between the two candles. She was with Mistress Lindinnock, who presented me to her, and they came over to the manse while the shelties were being yoked. I held her hand to guide her across the planks. She is the Old Lady’s grand-niece, and her name is Miss Julie Logan. I am glad of her Christian name, for it has always been my favourite.