“She was never the kind o’ woman,” Whamond said, “that a body need be nane feared at. You can see she is o’ the timid sort. I couldna hae selected a woman easier to speak bold out to, though I had ha’en my pick o’ them.”
He was a gaunt man, sour and hard, and he often paused in his story with a puzzled look on his forbidding face.
“But, man, she was so michty windy o’ him. If he had wanted to put a knife into her, I believe that woman would just hae telled him to take care no to cut his hands. Ay, and what innocent-like she was! If she had heard enough, afore I saw her, to make her uneasy, I could hae begun at once; but here she was, shaking my hand and smiling to me, so that aye when I tried to speak I gaed through ither. Nobody can despise me for it, I tell you, mair than I despise mysel’.
“I thocht to mysel’, ‘Let her hae her smile out, Tammas 346 Whamond; it’s her hinmost.’ Syne wi’ shame at my cowardliness, I tried to yoke to my duty as chief elder o’ the kirk, and I said to her, as thrawn as I could speak, ‘Dinna thank me; I’ve done nothing for you.’
“‘I ken it wasna for me you did it,’ she said, ‘but for him; but, oh, Mr. Whamond, will that make me think the less o’ you? He’s my all,’ she says, wi’ that smile back in her face, and a look mixed up wi’t that said as plain, ‘and I need no more.’ I thocht o’ saying that some builds their house upon the sand, but – dagont, dominie, it’s a solemn thing the pride mithers has in their laddies. I mind aince my ain mither – what the devil are you glowering at, Andrew Luke? Do you think I’m greeting?
“‘You’ll sit down, Mr. Whamond,’ she says next.
“‘No, I winna,’ I said, angry-like. ‘I didna come here to sit.’
“I could see she thocht I was shy at being in the manse parlor; ay, and I thocht she was pleased at me looking shy. Weel, she took my hat out o’ my hand, and she put it on the chair at the door, whaur there’s aye an auld chair in grand houses for the servant to sit on at family exercise.
“‘You’re a man, Mr. Whamond,’ says she, ‘that the minister delights to honor, and so you’ll oblige me by sitting in his own armchair.’”
Gavin never quite delighted to honor the precentor, of whom he was always a little afraid, and perhaps Margaret knew it. But you must not think less of her for wanting to gratify her son’s chief elder. She thought, too, that he had just done her a service. I never yet knew a good woman who did not enjoy flattering men she liked.
“I saw my chance at that,” Whamond went on, “and I says to her sternly, ‘In worldly position,’ I says, ‘I’m a common man, and it’s no for the like o’ sic to sit in a minister’s chair; but it has been God’s will,’ I says, ‘to 347 wrap around me the mantle o’ chief elder o’ the kirk, and if the minister falls awa frae grace, it becomes my duty to take his place.’
“If she had been looking at me, she maun hae grown feared at that, and syne I could hae gone on though my ilka word was a knockdown blow. But she was picking some things aff the chair to let me down on’t.
“‘It’s a pair o’ mittens I’m working for the minister,’ she says, and she handed them to me. Ay, I tried no to take them, but – Oh, lads, it’s queer to think how saft I was.
“‘He’s no to ken about them till they’re finished,’ she says, terrible fond-like.
“The words came to my mouth, ‘They’ll never be finished,’ and I could hae cursed mysel’ for no saying them. I dinna ken how it was, but there was something pitiful in seeing her take up the mittens and begin working cheerily at one, and me kenning all the time that they would never be finished. I watched her fingers, and I said to mysel’, ‘Another stitch, and that maun be your last.’ I said that to mysel’ till I thocht it was the needle that said it, and I wondered at her no hearing.
“In the tail o’ the day I says, ‘You needna bother; he’ll never wear them,’ and they sounded sic words o’ doom that I rose up off the chair. Ay, but she took me up wrang, and she said, ‘I see you have noticed how careless o’ his ain comforts he is, and that in his zeal he forgets to put on his mittens, though they may be in his pocket a’ the time. Ay,’ says she, confident-like, ‘but he winna forget these mittens, Mr. Whamond, and I’ll tell you the reason: it’s because they’re his mother’s work.’
“I stamped my foot, and she gae me an apologetic look, and she says, ‘I canna help boasting about his being so fond o’ me.’
“Ay, but here was me saying to mysel’, ‘Do your 348 duty, Tammas Whamond; you sluggard, do your duty,’ and without lifting my een frae her fingers I said sternly, ‘The chances are,’ I said, ‘that these mittens will never be worn by the hands they are worked for.’
“‘You mean,’ says she, ‘that he’ll gie them awa to some ill-off body, as he gies near a’ thing he has? Ay, but there’s one thing he never parts wi’, and that’s my work. There’s a young lady in the manse the now,’ says she, ‘that offered to finish the mittens for me, but he would value them less if I let ony other body put a stitch into them.’
“I thocht to mysel’, ‘Tammas Whamond, the Lord has opened a door to you, and you’ll be disgraced forever if you dinna walk straucht in.’ So I rose again, and I says, boldly this time, ‘Whaur’s that young leddy? I hae something to say to her that canna be kept waiting.’
“‘She’s up the stair,’ she says, surprised, ‘but you canna ken her, Mr. Whamond, for she just came last nicht.’
“‘I ken mair o’ her than you think,’ says I; ‘I ken what brocht her here, and ken wha she thinks she is to be married to, and I’ve come to tell her that she’ll never get him.’
“‘How no?’ she said, amazed like.
“‘Because,’ said I, wi’ my teeth thegither, ‘he is already married.’
“Lads, I stood waiting to see her fall, and when she didna fall I just waited langer, thinking she was slow in taking it a’ in.
“‘I see you ken wha she is,’ she said, looking at me, ‘and yet I canna credit your news.’
“‘They’re true,’ I cries.
“‘Even if they are,’ says she, considering, ‘it may be the best thing that could happen to baith o’ them.’
“I sank back in the chair in fair bewilderment, for I didna ken at that time, as we a’ ken now, that she was 349 thinking o’ the earl when I was thinking o’ her son. Dominie, it looked to me as if the Lord had opened a door to me, and syne shut it in my face.
“Syne wi’ me sitting there in a kind o’ awe o’ the woman’s simpleness, she began to tell me what the minister was like when he was a bairn, and I was saying a’ the time to mysel’, ‘You’re chief elder o’ the kirk, Tammas Whamond, and you maun speak out the next time she stops to draw breath.’ They were terrible sma’, common things she telled me, sic as near a’ mithers minds about their bairns, but the kind o’ holy way she said them drove my words down my throat, like as if I was some infidel man trying to break out wi’ blasphemy in a kirk.
“‘I’ll let you see something,’ says she, ‘that I ken will interest you.’ She brocht it out o’ a drawer, and what do you think it was? As sure as death it was no more than some o’ his hair when he was a litlin, and it was tied up sic carefully in paper that you would hae thocht it was some valuable thing.
“‘Mr. Whamond,’ she says solemnly, ‘you’ve come thrice to the manse to keep me frae being uneasy about my son’s absence, and you was the chief instrument under God in bringing him to Thrums, and I’ll gie you a little o’ that hair.’
“Dagont, what did I care about his hair? and yet to see her fondling it! I says to mysel’, ‘Mrs. Dishart,’ I says to mysel’, ‘I was the chief instrument under God in bringing him to Thrums, and I’ve come here to tell you that I’m to be the chief instrument under God in driving him out o’t.’ Ay, but when I focht to bring out these words, my mouth snecked like a box.