Tang. A Shetland story

Front matter

TANG PRINTED UY J OH *3l$^Lg£K3&Nl.KK W 1C K TANG A SHETLAND STORY BY J. J. HALDANE BURGESS Author of "The Viking Path: A Tale of the White Christ" "Pasmie's Buddie," &c. LERWICK JOHNSON & CRF.IO LONDON SIMPKIN, MARSHALL, HAMILTON, KENT & Co., Ltd. [ALL RIGHTS RESERVED] CONTENTS CHAl' PAGE I. Peter, ...... i "High dreams on /ire with God." II. Inga, n " The eyes hide not if a woman loves." III. Bob,' 26 " They all fell silent." IV. "Johnsmas Flooers,". '. . . 41 " The Fates oppose." V. Hakki, 56 The thoughts of youth are long, long thoughts. VI. An Impulse, 71 Nothing can happen without a cause." VII. Vatster, 84 "Men are not taught to he honest." VIII. Da Ha, 99 "By hidden power." CONTEXTS CHAP. PACE IX. Through Mist, in " The heart has its reasons which Reason knows nothing of." X. The Workers, . . . . .125 "Let ?iot Ambition mock their useful toil."

XL Jacob, 142 "'Tis sweet to know there is an eye will mark Our coming, and look brighter when we co?ne." XII. Janny, 158 " We may avoid metis eyes, though we cannot so easily avoid their tongues." XIII. Mary, 173 " We all believe in one God." XIV. Hearts, 186 " Between, the thoughts can stealing go." XV. Two Scenes, 197 "And nothing can me call our own but death." XVI. The Meetings, ..... 208 " // takes long to teach a fool." XVII. "Mareel" [Sea-Fire], .... 219 "So much of banter that the laughter stops." XVIII. Tang, 230 " Wilt thou wander ever farther? See, the Good is lying near. Learn thou only Joy to gather, Seeing Joy is ever here." Da Sea o Life sings everntair Da sam aald, siren sang, An da haerts o men drive here an dere — Laek da broon blades o da Tang. A TANG

Chapter I Peter

"High dreams on fire with God." — E. B. Browning IT was a warm Sunday in June. The folk had gathered in the kirk at Norwik. As usual, most of them were women dressed in mourning black. The older men sat with their wives and younger children ; but the lads and single men sat by themselves. They had squeezed themselves into two pews upon the north side of the kirk, though there were four or five quite empty pews in front of them. Most of the young women were in the four front pews in the middle of the kirk ; but they had not squeezed them selves together like the men. There was a hush ; but flies buzzed here and there. The Rev. Peter Mann rose in his pulpit and said, " Let us begin the public worship of God at this TANG time by singing to His praise the one hundred and forty-sixth Psalm." There was a flutter of leaves.

Mr. Mann read the Psalm right through, then gave the number out again, and the folk stood up. Three men stood up in the square seat just below the pulpit. They were John Jarmson, the old precentor; Hansi Bolt, the chief elder in the kirk ; and Jeems Ertirson, who was a younger elder, strange as that may seem. John Jarmson was bent with rheumatism, and one perhaps can hardly say that he stood up in the same sense as the others, but he stood up as far as he could get, and then he wanted only about thirty-five degrees of being straight. He was, as he used to say himself in the language of one of his many callings, "jost a mention aff o da plumb." John swung round towards the folk like a derrick, and cleared his throat to raise the tune. He began by making a sound like the cry of a calf, and he stretched it out so that the end of it did for the first note in the tune.

It was the lively tune which John was wont to speak of as " Waarweek : 'at begins low an ends wi a skreegh." John held his book close to his breast and kept time with the tune by swinging his body stiffly to and fro from the hips and up. He had a very deep bass voice. It was the upper end of this voice he used to raise the tune. Any other part would have been sure to lower it. As soon as he had got it fairly started John left the air to be looked after by the younger women in the four front pews, while he rolled down into his native element, the bass, in the PETER depths of which he kept on playing solemnly about like an old whale, helped by the younger men in the congested pews, and coming up to blow just at the first of every verse when he saw it was time for him to give the folk the note again.

He did not really need to give the folk the note ; but he was a proud, old body, and since he knew that he would soon be giving up his place to make room for a younger man, he wished, as he had often said, " ta shaa dem aa 'at Aald John wisna atagedder timmer yet." The singing would at times have seemed harsh to the ear of a fastidious stranger ; but even at such times it would not probably have seemed so to the ear of God, for it was hearty and was very clearly meant as real praise. The voices were all strong. In the singing of the women you could hear the echo of the breezes that had blown in from the North Sea in the spring and filled their lungs when they were delving in " da voar rig," with many-coloured handkerchiefs about their heads and gowns and petticoats tucked up to give full freedom to their active legs.

In the men's voices you could hear the roar and rumble of the sea, with which it was the lot of most of them to have to do as fishermen or sailors. All through the singing, praiseful as it was and lively as the tune old John had chosen was, there ran an under tone of sadness that seemed in keeping with the mourn ing black worn by so many of the folk. One voice alone was free of it. It was the voice of the Rev. Peter Mann, who stood up in his pulpit and sang with his people. He was a tall, somewhat pale young man of five-and-twenty, with light brown hair, a high brow, big, tanc; dark dreamy eyes at that moment glowing with ardour and hope, a well-formed nose, a small moustache a little lighter in its colour than his hair, and a slightly heavy underjaw. On a first look you would have said he had great force of will ; but on a second you saw that the mouth did not bear out the promise of the underjaw, and on a third you felt that you must wait till you knew more about him before settling what you were to think.

As he stood and sang, his eyes wandered now and then over the congregation. Sometimes he looked up to the gallery, in the right back pew of which sat Mrs. Mann, an elderly, sweet-faced woman in widow's weeds, whom one could at a glance have known to be the Rev. Peter's mother, and from whom he had very plainly inherited his irresolute mouth ; while in the left back pew sat Mr. Black, the laird, a thin, dark man with a critical cast of countenance, and his wife, a little woman with a dissatisfied face, evidently vain, and dressed in distinctly bad taste. Sometimes the Rev. Peter's eyes wandered over the lower part of the kirk, resting for a moment here and there on family groups, on those young men in the congested pews, on the young women in the front, and so back to the book again. He never, as preachers often do, looked through the kirk windows at the beauty of the summer landscape without.

Nature had vanished from his mind. For him there was no summer land scape, no mother, no laird and his wife, no family groups, no young men crammed together, no young women in the front. He was in the Spirit. He saw before him but the fleshly tabernacles of immortal spirits. PETER For him there was neither high nor low, rich nor poor, great nor little, wise nor foolish. He forgot at times the earthly meaning of the words he sang, for they were lost in the great wave of pfaise that he felt pass across his soul. If one had doubted this, all doubt would have been banished when the singing of the psalm was ended and the preacher came to his first prayer. In it his soul shot upward, on strong wings, towards the throne of God. It seemed as though he would by main force drag his people up from earth and time, on, up to Heaven and Eternity, as if he knew that there was nothing real but the Soul and God.

At first his voice was low and thrilling, but it gathered strength and passion till it filled the building and each listener felt that this man was in conflict with some mighty, unseen force. But through the wrestling there rang out at times a shout as of a man who conquers — the warcry of a faith that will not brook defeat. This was a new tone to the congregation, used, as they had been, to the sedate petitions of his prede cessor, the Rev. Mr. Wood. To the laird, who still had in his mind a lingering reminiscence of the classical mythology of which he had known something once though chiefly in its prurient parts, this man seemed like a Titan climbing up to storm the crystal battlements of Heaven. To Hakki Perk, the schoolmaster, who sat in the corner of the front seat in the gallery on the preacher's left, and who had thus a view of his "port wharter," as old John used to say, the Rev. Peter seemed more like Prometheus indomitably bent on stealing fire from heaven with which to inflame the TANG dull, slow hearts of common folk, and kindle in them burning zeal.

The prayer was ended. Then came another psalm, the reading of the Scriptures, and another prayer in which the Queen and all other members of the Royal Family were held up to be blessed along with all official persons, and the institutions of this land including even the army and navy on which, however, he seemed to ask a blessing with some diffidence, praying God to hasten on the time when war shall be no more. After this second prayer a psalm was sung again, and the congregation sat down for the sermon, some of the younger women bobbing up and down a time or two before they settled finally. There was the customary chorus of coughing and clearing of throats. The text was the first verse of the first psalm sung. The preacher read it out and paused. Some of the women slipped a clove into their mouths ; an old man in the north-west corner of the kirk put a chew of twist tobacco into his ; while here and there the youngsters were supplied with a few sweets that represented the fag-end of balance on goods bartered at the shop the day before.

These different ways of getting ready for the sermon were however, not so widely used now in the kirk as they had been in the days of Mr. Wood. Mr. Mann had certainly stirred up the folk to some extent. " Praise ye the Lord. Praise the Lord, O my soul," he said again, in a voice clear but low. He began by stating that the whole creation owed one mighty psalm of praise to Goo, the Maker and PETER Upholder of it all — one full, vast harmony of earth and ocean ; of raging winter storm and whispering summer breeze ; of thundering mountain waterfall and tiny, tink ling rill ; of wild waves breaking on the iron rocks and ripples laughing in lone caves in calm; of sun and moon and burning stars of night. " Why this ? and yet, why not ? " said Hakki Perk to himself in his corner. Mr. Mann rose through the kingdoms in which life was found till he reached human life and, finally, the soul of man.

It was clear this was his goal. He had gone somewhat hurriedly till now ; but he had reached the region where he felt himself at home. He looked out on existence from this height. Nature was some thing lying far below. Earth had a meaning only as a spot on which to set the Cross of Christ. All former ages had looked onward to that point ; all future ages must look back. The lightning of God's wrath had struck that Tree and passed into the earth, leaving the ransomed sinner safe. That flash had rent the veil. Through the rifted clouds of wrath that rolled away, shone in the splendour of eternal Love. The glittering shows of Time grew dim before the first, faint streak of glory such as this. The blackness of all human woe and pain grew bright with golden light. The guilt of sin had vanished utterly for him whose eyes were turned to that Cross.

What were the puny storms of earth to him, who, lifted by the hand of God from out the weltering deep, was set on high upon the Rock of Ages ? TANG Hakki Perk sat watching carefully the gestures of the preacher, which were eloquent at every turn. " He'll probably wake Norwik up a little at the first," he thought. "There'll maybe be a revival when the crops are in ; but after that ? well, after that, most things will go as they have gone before." It was the first time he had heard the Rev. Peter, who had been ordained about three months before. His aunt, Willa Perk, the wife of Hansi Bolt, had urged him to come to the kirk ; but he had smiled and said that he would wait a week or two till Peter Mann was done with knocking all the dust, that he could get, out of the bookboard and had settled down to moderate work.

But he saw that this stage had not yet been reached. He felt, moreover, that this man had stirred him more than any other man had done for many years. Now and then he glanced round at the folk, and saw that many of them sat with eager faces, drinking in the preacher's words. One or two old fisher men, however, were asleep. They had had a hard week at the " has." The weather having been quite calm they had been forced to row in from this deep-sea fishing, sticking to the oar for many hours. But others sat there listening, wide awake, with an earnest look upon their weatherbeaten faces, and shaking their heads gently now and then, a sign that they were fully satisfied with what they heard. Some of the older women shook their heads still more. Willa Perk's was moving all the time. She had a summer bonnet, for she was not in mourning, and close beside a big, red flower upon it hung a pink bud halfway out of a PETER bright sheathing of unearthly green, and it was never still.

Besides Hakki Perk, there was another person in the kirk, who was hearing the Rev. Peter Mann for the first time. This was Inga Bolt. She was the daughter of Hansi Bolt and his wife, Willa Perk. It is well to men tion this, for the folk in Norwik said that Hansi had another and younger daughter, of whom Willa was not the mother. Like their " forebears," the old Norsemen who had a married women's property act more than half a score of centuries ago, the Norwik folk saw that a woman is still herself, sometimes to a very marked extent, even though she has been married to a man, and so, in common with most Shetlanders, they gave every woman her own name without minding whether she was maid or wife. Inga sat with her mother in the pew immediately behind the four filled by the younger women. She had a pretty face with finely formed features and a gentle but keenly intelligent expression.

Her eyes were of a deep blue. Her hair, to tell the truth, was really red; but she had trimmed her summer hat with bright red ribbon that strongly drew the eye away from noticing the hair so much. Her neck and bust, visible from the pulpit, between the heads of the two girls in front of her, were full and rounded ; but she was not so stout as most of her companions. She sat there with her deep blue eyes intently fixed upon the preacher's face. Her cousin, Hakki Perk, had once or twice observed this through the sermon. Mr. Mann drew to a close, his last words thrilling out upon his TANG people in a strong appeal to them to turn their thoughts away from all things earthly to the one great matter of their souls' salvation. He stopped, and there was a deep hush, except for the buzzing of the flies and the stirring of the one or two old fishermen who had been dozing and who felt that it was now time to awake.

After a short pause, Hansi Bolt and Jeems Ertirson rose in the square seat, took two long wooden ladles from behind them, and came out through the kirk to take up the collection. Jeems carried his ladle more reverently than Hansi, for he had not been an elder so long. They began at the outer end of the kirk. Several of the folk still had their eyes fixed on the preacher as he sat there in his pulpit with downcast eyes and head a little forward. Among these was Inga Bolt. Mr. Mann was lost in thought ; but the rattle of the coppers drop ping into the two wooden ladles brought him back. This sound invariably suggested to his mind his boyish days in his father's shop in Lerwick on busy Saturday nights, when the rattle of the coppers meant that he must be as sharp as possible in all his movements.

He raised his eyes. They met the deep blue eyes of Inga Bolt. He felt as though a soul had suddenly revealed itself to him. Here, at least, was one whose heart was stirred. As his eyes took in the girl's face and bust he all at once became aware that, mingling with this first impression there came a new feeling which he did not rightly understand, for it was unlike any he had had since he was quite a boy.

Chapter II Inga

" Eigi leyna augu, ef aun kona manni." — Icel. Pkov. INGA blushed as Mr. Mann's dark eyes met hers, but her face was sunbrowned and so the blush did not show very much. For a few seconds she met his look, then she turned suddenly to her mother and began to whisper to her something about the collection, she scarcely knew what herself. Willa nodded decently in answer without taking her eyes off the minister, for she had noticed that his look was to wards their pew ; but, as her eyes were not so good as they had been, she did not see that he was looking straight at Inga. After a few minutes Inga glanced up again from beneath the broad brim of her hat ; but Mr. Mann was finding the closing psalm. Her father and Jeems Ertirson went back into the square seat carrying their ladles with which they had scooped up the few coppers that the parish, being delicate about pressing money upon Providence, saw fit to offer weekly in the kirk.

A little afterwards Inga stood with her mother and TANG Hakki out before the kirk door in the sunlight. Most of the folk, in twos and threes, were going up the green, daisy-chequered slope to the west, while a few held northward along the hillside. Inga had wanted to go on with the other girls, but her mother had kept her back. Willa thought it only proper that the daughter of an elder should be introduced to the new minister as soon as possible. She had kept back Hakki too, but with more trouble. Mrs. Mann had just turned south along the churchyard wall with Mr. and Mrs. Black, who would leave her at the manse gate. After a few minutes the vestry door opened, and Mr. Mann came out. Jeems Ertirson and Hansi Bolt were with him. Jeems shook hands with him at once and walked off after old John Jarmson, who, bent now at a more decided angle and with his left hand resting on the back of his blue pilot coat, while his right used vigorously his old oak staff, was halfway up the slope.

As Mr. Mann stopped, Willa poked her head forward with the same gesture she would have used if she had had a shawl about it and wished to sort her hair away to each side under it before addressing him. The pink bud on her bonnet nodded violently, and her nose which was rather long became very pro minent now from the way her head was held. She had her Bible with her folded handkerchief about it in her hand. "Good morning, Mrs. Bolt," said the minister quietly. They shook hands. Willa's manner showed that she was not quite at her ease. She felt she had INGA three different parts to play. She was an elder's wife, a country woman, and the mother of the prettiest girl in the parish. For the moment she could not fix upon the proper mixture of sanctity, humility, and pride, which her bearing should possess.

But her middle part, that of the country woman, took the upper hand, for she was most accustomed to it. It was known in the parish and beyond it that the Bolts were pretty well to do, but they tried hard to hide this by keeping, to all outward seem ing, on a level with their neighbours. " Dis is Inga, my dochter, sir," said Willa quickly, trying to look obliquely at both of them at once, and apparently excluding Hansi from any credit in the matter, " ye'll mind me spaekin o her, sir. Sho's been awa in Fetlar aside her uncle frae da first o da year, an cam haem jost da last evenin." " Shak haands wi da minister, Inga," she added, in a tone that showed how apt she was in moments of excitement to forget that Inga was not still a little girl. Inga, nettled at her mother's tone and flushing slightly, gave Mr. Mann her hand, but did not look at him.

At the touch of her warm hand, gloveless and not quite soft, he was conscious of a renewal of that curious feeling he had had in the kirk so short a time before when first their eyes had met. He hoped she would look up, but she did not, and his eyes fell only on the red rim of her hat, round which a fly, possibly one of those that went regularly to the kirk on Sundays, was hurrying as if in doubt about the place. Then he noticed that her mouth and chin were visible in the shade beneath the hat-rim, and TANG he looked at them. Suddenly he felt that mouth and chin were saying to him something he had not expected, something quite different from what he had hoped her eyes would say, had she but raised them. He had hoped to see shining through them the light of a soul awakened, a light the sweeter since it shone out from a pure, young girl's eyes.

The other undefined sensation was a mere intrusion, part of the earth that always clings and clogs the soul in aspiration. But he became a little bit confused as he found himself almost unconsciously still taking in the girl's figure. Hakki was the only one that noticed this. Inga wore a black cloth jacket, closely-fitting, and fastened at the neck by a little knot of bright red ribbon and an oval, silver brooch. She would have had a brooch with her name on it if she could have got one, but the makers of such things had likely never heard that there was such a name as Inga, and would have thought it hardly worth their while to make perhaps three " Inga " brooches, if they had. Her dress was red merino, with three frills about the foot. She held her small clasp Bible now with both hands right in front of her, her elbows sticking ouf.

Mr. Mann saw the clear outline of her left breast and side against the sunlit grass. " I hope you enjoyed yourself in Fetlar," said he, " and that you left your friends there well." " Yes, sir," said Inga, answering his last words only, " dey wer all well." Her voice was low. She gave a small smile by way of full stop at the end of the sent ence. Then Hansi, without waiting for Willa, who was INGA of course, in due time going to introduce Hakki herself, said — " Dis is a bridder-son o Willa's, sir. He's wir skolmester here." Mr. Mann half turned and saw a rather tall, sharp-featured young man, with a pair of very keen blue eyes, the left one of which looked as if it would have liked to know what the right one was about, for it was trying, though in a somewhat furtive way, to get a glimpse of it across his nose.

On his head he had a hard felt hat, and the little of his closecut hair that showed from under it was red. He had a pretty heavy red moustache, was dressed in a light tweed suit, and carried a walking-stick apparently of Japanese extraction. The two men shook hands. " My name is Perk," said Hakki, for Hansi's information had been as usual rather general. " Yes, I know," said Mr. Mann, " and I have two or three times been on the point of calling at the Schoolhouse ; but I have been so busy that I have not yet succeeded. I must come soon now, however. I should like to have a talk with you, for we are both engaged in the same great work, I hope." " I don't know," returned Perk quietly, with a keen glance at the minister, " Religion and knowledge are not always going the same way." Before Mr. Mann could reply, Hansi, who through long experience of Willa knew that the Perks were fond of arguing, a thing he had never been in his life, broke in cheerily with — " Dis'll be a god year, I tink, sir. We're hed a misty TANG Mey an noo we're haein a waarm Jone an dat brings on da coarn son, ye ken."

" Yes," said Mr. Mann, "we certainly have great cause to be thankful to God for His goodness to us." Willa gave a large sigh. After a few words more, Mr. Mann shook hands with them all again before going. This time Inga raised her eyes and looked straight into his. There was something in the look that seemed to overleap the only relation in which he as yet had realised that they stood to each other, namely, that of minister and member of his flock. He vaguely felt that the girl, by some subtle power she had, had managed to ignore this purely spiritual relation, but his soul was too much filled at present with its own high aspirations to consider all that this might mean. He turned south along the kirkyard dyke towards the manse, that stood about two hundred yards away. When he reached the garden gate he saw his mother near the porch, bending over a cluster of peonies.

As he came up she said to him — " Mrs. Black tells me that they are expecting their daughter home from the finishing-school in Edinburgh early next month." There was a tone of keen interest in her voice. " Oh, yes," he said, mechanically, andwent in to the house. Inga and her folk went north along the hillside. Hakki kept with them, for he usually spent the Sunday with the Bolts at Taft, going home with them to dinner after kirk. The three girls, with whom Inga would have gone B INGA before if Willa had not kept her back, were walking slowly on a little way in front of them, but higher up the hill. They were, however, far enough away to let Willa, who was considerably uplifted, pass them without the need of speaking. Inga and Hakki were both busy with their own thoughts. But Hansi, in his cheery fashion, hailed them.

" Weel, lasses, ye're makkin for haem," he called. " Yea," answered Janny Gair, the tallest of the three. When the Bolts had passed, Janny turned to the other two, Ann Ertirson and Lowra Sharp, and said — " Na, bairns, see ye Inga ? Dat's a fair new hat 'at sho haes on. A body wid a toucht 'at her head wis red anoff already withoot da laek o yon. O, da pride o dat." Ann Ertirson, a stout, dumpy girl with pale yellow hair, laughed approvingly. She generally thought the same as Janny Gair. " Lass," said Lowra Sharp, a plump, dark-eyed girl with a pleasant face, " I tink du's tumin blinnd. Yon's no a new hat. Yon's her aald hat trimmed wi a bit o new sylk, an it sets her lovely. An as for pride, even if sho hed ony, I winder wha haes better caase. If du wis only half as weel-laek, du wid be prood dysell."