The Minister's Wife

The Glebe Cottage at the head of Loch Diarmid was something between a primitive cottage and a little house of gentility, commonly called by that name. The hill-side of which it was the sole inhabitant had once been ecclesiastical soil belonging to the church of Lochhead, which was about a mile distant across the braes--and still, so far as this one dwelling was concerned, retained the name. It had originally been a building of one story thatched and mossy; but lately a few additional rooms had been built over one part of it, and covered with respectable slates. It was composite and characteristic, a human thing, growing out of human rules, and consequently more picturesque than if it had been the result of the most picturesque intention. The thatched end of the cottage was surrounded by no enclosure; the soft rich mossy grass of the hills broken by great bushes of heather pressed up to its very walls; while the other half, or western end, was cultivated and formed into a pretty homely garden. Hardy roses and honeysuckles, and a wavering wealth of fuchsias, hanging rich with crimson bells, clothed the southern front and west end--the refined part of the cottage. On the mountain side, there was nothing but the rough, low whitewashed wall, the overhanging thatch, the heather within a yard of the house. And here, some thirty years ago, lived a family of Diarmids, as curiously varied in internal constitution as was the aspect of their home.

The father of the household had been a soldier ‘in the war,’ and, though little more than a peasant by birth, had risen from the ranks and won his commission by sheer daring and bravery. It is very doubtful whether he was much the happier for it. When he had won his epaulettes another piece of luck befell him: he caught the eye and fancy of a pretty, romantic girl, who married him for his valour and his inches and his red coat. To him she was an heiress, though the actual amount of her wealth was small. Probably he meant, in his gratitude and pride, to be a good husband and live happy ever after, and for this end bought the cottage he had been born in, and added some modern additions to it for the comfort of his lady-wife. But Duncan was Duncan still, notwithstanding his good fortune and his epaulettes; and his poor young wife, finding out her mistake, died at the end of a year or two, after bringing a pair of twin girls into the world. After this Captain Diarmid saw a great deal of service in all quarters of the world, and when he came back married again, a homely ‘neighbour lass,’ and died after she too had become the mother of two children. They all lived together in the Glebe Cottage--two sets of people as different as could well be conceived. During the Captain’s lifetime a certain arbitrary link united them; but after his death it was not expected by the country-side that there could be any further family union between the twin sisters to whom everything belonged, and the homely widow with her girl and boy. It was a wonder to many of the genteel people of the neighbourhood when it was discovered that Margaret and Isabel meant to permit their father’s widow, Jean Campbell, to share their house. Even old Miss Catherine at the Lochhead gave it as her opinion that ‘Jean and her bairns had no claim on them.’ But the sisters, it was evident, thought differently, though it was not without a certain conflict within and between themselves that the decision was made. They were then between nineteen and twenty, two girls who had grown up as Nature would, with little training of any description, but with that curious refinement of race or tradition which is so often to be found in those who, springing from a higher origin, have yet lived chiefly among the poor. They were ‘ladies born,’ as was acknowledged by ‘all the Loch’--and universal respect was paid them; although they were not, except on formal occasions, dignified by the title of ‘the Miss Diarmids,’ but were generally distinguished only as ‘the Captain’s Margaret,’ and ‘the Captain’s Isabel.’ Margaret had fallen into bad health some years before her father’s death, and sickness and a more elevated type of character had made her as much the elder of the two as if her seniority had been a matter of years instead of minutes. It was she whose will had prevailed in respect of her stepmother.

‘She was his wife after all,’ Margaret had said, ‘and they are our brother and sister. We have no right to forget that----’

‘She had no right to be his wife!’ said hasty Isabel, with sudden tears. ‘If she were a poor body in a cot-house do you think I would grudge her anything? but I cannot bear it, because she’s thought to belong to us--her and those weary bairns.’

‘They are my father’s bairns,’ said the invalid; and then she added after a pause, ‘And I hope they are God’s bairns, Bell--and you too.’

‘Me!’ said Isabel, looking round, as with a hasty determination even to deny this bond of union; but when the meaning of the words reached her, a shade of compunction, a gleam of sorrow, shot one after another over her face which expressed all she thought, ‘Oh, Margaret, no like you,’ cried the impulsive girl, ‘no like you!’

‘Dinna break my heart,’ said the other, falling in her emotion into the soft vernacular which both in their composed moments avoided; ‘are we not all God’s bairns? But we shut our hearts and shut our door the one on the other; the like of us can be grand and proud and high--but the like of Him was neighbour and mair to all the poor folk. We ay forget that.’

‘_You_ never forget,’ said Isabel; ‘I’ll do what you like, my dear, my dear! I’ll serve them on my knees night and day if you’ll but stay and be content.’

‘I’m very content to stay,’ said Margaret, with a smile,--‘too content. It’s not for me to judge; but, Bell, we’ll never be parted if I stay or if I go.’

To this the other girl made no answer, but fell down on her knees beside the invalid’s chair, and hid her face in her sister’s dress, weeping there in silence. Margaret laid her thin hand upon the bright hair and smoothed it tenderly. She was no older than the creature at her feet, and yet it seemed to be her child, warm with all the passion of life, whom she was caressing in her calm and patience. And she smiled, though Isabel saw it not.

‘I’ll go no further than to Him,’ she said, ‘and you’ve ay access to Him at all times. I’ll take a grip of His robe that’s made of light, and I’ll hear your voice when He’s listening to you. I’ll tell Him it’s my sister:--as if He needed us to tell Him,’ she added, with a soft laugh of contempt at herself; and her eyes lighted up in her pale face, and went away far beyond Isabel kneeling at her side, far beyond the homely walls and little humble house.

By and by Isabel’s weeping ceased, and she became aware, by her sister’s silence, and by the chill touch of the hand which rested on her head, that Margaret’s mind had stolen away from all their trials and troubles. She rose up softly, not disturbing her, and throwing one piteous look at the pale, soft countenance, withdrew to a corner. One or two hot, hasty tears fell on the work she had taken up mechanically. It was little Mary’s black frock, her other sister--Jean Campbell’s little girl. That was how Isabel succinctly described the children; Jean Campbell’s bairns; and was that to be all she would have for a sister when God had His way?

This was how it came to be settled that Jean Campbell and her bairns should remain in the Glebe Cottage. Jean had few qualifications for the office of guardian to these girls, but she was in some sort a protector to them, and took care of their goods and managed their humble affairs. She was not a woman of such elevation of character as might have fitted her to take the command of the situation; but she was one of those kind and faithful souls who so often hide the sweeter qualities of their nature under an almost harsh, quite uncaressing and undemonstrative appearance. She, too, had mother-wit enough to see through the Captain, though no doubt his rank had dazzled her at first; but now that Captain Duncan was gone, she would have defended his memory to her last breath, and she was very good and tender in her own way to his daughters. She accepted her position loyally, without any attempt to better or change it. The state of Margaret’s health was too apparent to leave bystanders in any doubt: and Jean was often uneasy--it is impossible to disguise the fact--as to what might become of herself and her children in such a case.

But in the meantime she was very kind to her husband’s daughters, and cared for their goods as if they had been her own, and was a faithful servant to them. She and her children were as comfortable in their end of the cottage as were Margaret and Isabel in their half, to which by times the gentlefolks of the district would come as visitors, out of consideration for the good blood which ran in their veins by their mother’s side. It was Isabel who was the representative sister out-of-doors, and whom Miss Catherine carried with her to return calls, and make such return as was possible to the civilities of her neighbours and connections. But it was Margaret who was the queen within and received all the homage. Day by day, however, carried the elder sister more out of the range of worldly affairs. It was, as Jean said, ‘a decline’ that had seized her. Not a violent disease, but a soft fading. The current of her life kept shrinking into always a narrower and a narrower channel. She still went every day to a certain spot on the hill-side above the house, where a little burn went trickling from stone to stone, and a mountain-ash drooped its leafy branches over a little green knoll. For many years it had been her daily custom to sit and ponder, or to pray in this silent grassy place. It was long before she knew that anyone watched her daily pilgrimage: but nothing escapes the keen inspection of a rural community. When it had just begun to be a toil to her to seek her little oratory, a poor mother from the village, who had been hanging wistfully about, accosted her with a humble petition that she would ‘think upon’ a suffering child ‘when she gaed up bye to the brae.’ It was too late then for her to change or to hide her custom, and by degrees she became used to the petition. She went up with tremulous, feeble step day after day, bearing upon her tender soul the burden of other people’s troubles, penitences, and fears. Not a soul in the parish would willingly have gone that way to disturb the saintly creature, as she knelt under her rowan-tree, with the soft burn singing in her ear, and the soft breeze blowing her hair; and offered her offering and made her intercession. They were stern Puritans in the village below, and rampant Protestants; but they sent their white spotless virgin to intercede for them, with a faith which no doctrine could shake.

She was stealing down softly in the slowly falling twilight, when the country was brightening into spring, six months after her father’s death. She had a warm shawl wrapped closely round her shoulders, and her step was not quite steady as she left the soft grass of the hill-side for the path. It was but a few yards to the cottage, but her strength was no more than equal to the exertion. There were two people standing waiting for her near the door; one of them a tall, vigorous, old lady, wrapped like herself in a large, soft, black and white shawl, who stood talking, with some eagerness, to the clergyman of the parish, a fresh, rural, middle-aged man, with clear eyes, clear complexion, and a general distinctness about him. It was Miss Catherine of the Lochhead who was speaking to the minister. Family names were unusual in the parish, for the population, with some trifling exceptions, were all Diarmids. Miss Catherine was in some respects the squire of the district. Her brother, it is true, was the real laird, but he was seldom at home, and Miss Catherine reigned in his stead. She was discussing the great topic of the moment with Mr. Lothian; and the two were not quite agreed.