For Better, for Worse

Chapter I

" T DOOT the stage is gaun tae be late the nicht; ye'd better J. come ben the hoose, Maister Crerar, an' rest a bit. We'll hear the wheels lang afore she comes, there's nae wind the nicht." " I'll bide a meenit yet, Jennet, she canna be lang noo ; deed if I'm no mistaen, I think I hear her." Both speakers paused. Through the heavy stillness, a faint far-off rumbling sound was gradually growing louder. Nothing could be seen, as although the road stretched away straight and level into the distance, the east wind haar rolling in from the sea hid everything beyond the boundary wall of the opposite field, and deepened the obscurity of the fast falling September dusk. " It's an unco day this for Finnarty, Jennet," resumed Mr. Crerar. He was a short, wiry, elderly man, who walked with a habitual stoop, and a rapid shuffling step.

The small keen grey eyes out of which he shot every now and then furtive glances were deeply sunk under bushy grizzled eyebrows. But for a straggling fringe under the chin, which seemed to be retained to keep in countenance the few wisps of iron-gray hair that fell over the high collar of his old-fashioned black-coat, his wrinkled face was closely shaven revealing the unusual length of the upper lip, and the firm set of the wide mouth, which, save when he spoke, was so tightly closed as to appear a mere slit between the long lip and the long chin. He wore what any one accustomed to Finnarty fashions would have been at no loss to pronounce at once to be his best clothes, kept for Sabbath wear or for funerals — a suit of baggy ill-fitting black, which seemed to have been made for a man bigger in every way than himself — and a tall hat of most extraordinary height and rustiness.

Those sacred garments had been donned on this Saturday evening to do honour to the new minister of Finnarty, whose arrival was now momentarily expected, and whom Mr. Peter Crerar, as session-clerk, and leading man in the kirk and the village, con sidered it to be his duty to meet and to welcome. " Aye, an unco day, Jennet," he went on, " the young folk, as micht be expeckit, are a' agog for the new man, but we ken what we've lost. There's no mony noo-a-days can fill Maister Struthers' shoes, and they'll fin' that oot by and by. Weel I mind seein' him placed, and that's no yesterday." " Ye may say sae, Maister Crerar," rejoined Janet, a hard faced old woman, with a strip of fast whitening sandy hair showing under the ample "pipit" borders of the uncompromising white cap, tied with broad muslin strings under her chin. ' Over her plain scanty black gown, she wore a small woollen shawl of a minute black and white check pattern, an article of dress without which no middle-aged woman in Finnarty considered her toilet complete ; indeed to appear without it would have been regarded almost as a breach of decorum.

" For ma pairt, I canna chairge ma memory wi' onything quite so far back, but it's an unco change for me tae pit up wi' a young man's ways noo, after daein' for the auld man nigh on thretty years. No but what Maister Sutherland's a braw, wise like lad, an' after a' the young folks maun hae their turn. Deed, it's no likely I'll be needed lang, he'll be for a mistress for the manse afore we can look roun', if he hasna ane seekit oot already, an' I couldna staun tae hae a lassie pit ower me at ma time o' life." " Aweel, Jennet, it's likely enough, but it's to be houpit he'll hae grace gien him to haud aff the lassies for a while. No that I'm denyin' that a hoose needs a mensefu', sensible woman to look after it, but that's no easy got, they're a set o' glaikit craturs, the lassies noo-a-days, an' I think na the mair o' a man, let alane a meenister, wha's in ower great a hurry " But Mr. Crerar's ungallant remarks were cut short by a portentous object looming large out of the mist — the coach, or stage as it was called, which linked Finnarty to civilization and the rest of the world, by running daily to and from a little side station on a branch line of railway several miles off.

In appearance it resembled an old-fashioned hackney-coach with the half of another one stuck on behind for second-class passengers. This cumbrous vehicle pulled up with a great clatter at the little green gate, and a young man — its sole occupant — alighted. " We're rale glad tae see ye, Maister Sutherland, an' prood tae, I may say," said Mr. Crerar, stepping forward with out stretched hand, and as much cordiality as he was capable of. " Thank you, Mr. Crerar j it was kind of you to come to meet me. I am afraid you must have been waiting a long time, though, for the train was late, and the coach has not made up for it,' said the new arrival, in a pleasant hearty voice, a contrast from the sing-song east country accent of Janet and Crerar with the rising inflection at every pause. " An' this is Jennet Black ; she's keepit hoose for Maister Struthers for mony a year, an' she'll look weel after ye tae, I'se warrant," said Mr. Crerar with a wave of his hand towards Janet, who stood stolidly still where an Englishwoman would have dropped a shower of curtseys.

" Glad to see you, Janet," said the young man, shaking hands with her, to her intense inward gratification. " I think I can promise you'll not find me ill to put up with," he added with a laugh. " Ye hae nae mair luggage ? " asked Mr. Crerar, taking forcible possession of Mr. Sutherland's bag, while he led the way up the flagged path, bordered with sea-pink, towards the manse — a plain white house, such as a child might build with toy blocks, with a window on each side of the narrow door, a row of three above, and a high pitched roof. "No, not tonight. I have a lot of books and things, they will all come next week, and then I shall get fairly settled down." " This was Maister Struthers' study a' those mony years," said Mr. Crerar, going with a familiar step down the dark narrow passage to a small room at the back of the house, with a window in the western gable.

" I think ye couldna do better than mak' it yer ain, it's no sae cauld as the ither side o' the hoose ; the east winds are fell here, ye'll fin oot." " Oh, I am pretty well acquainted with east wind ; I have not been at college in Aberdeen for nothing." " Noo, Jennet, ma woman, ye'll bring a licht, an' I'm thinkin' ye'll hae some snack ready for Maister Sutherland, he'll be ready for't nae doot. Na, Sir, I'll nae bide the nicht ; I ken what Setterday nicht is fine. Ye'll need a' yer time, what wi' the travellin' the day, tae get yersel' into a richt frame for the morn. It'll be a solemn occasion, Maister Sutherland ; the fowk '11 come frae far an' near tae hear ye, because ye're a new haun', an' I houp ye'll seek grace tae use sic an opportunity aright. We're rale pleased wi' what we've heard frae ye, sae far, but some o' us thocht ye micht hae laid mair stress on the fundamentals.

I ken weel that's nae sae poplar noo-a-days, ye young men think mair of interestin' the fowk than instructin' them ; but, oh, sir, it's a mere kittlin' o' their lugs that'll never feed their souls, if ye dinna grun' them weel in the truth. We've been a favoured flock, sir, here in that respect, fed on the finest of the wheat, on fat things, fat things full of marrow, on wines upon the lees, well refined. An, oh sir, ye're but a young man yet, an' ye'll tak' a word frae an auld ane ; the carnal mind is easy puffed up, an' yer heart may be lifted up the morn when ye've a' the fowk listenin' tae ye ; but ye'll remember that it's the message that's a', an' we're naething, like treasure hid in earthen vessels, standing upon the housetops an' crying, ' Ho every one that thirsteth.' Na," with a sudden drop from the solemn hortatory tone to his usual voice, "Ye needna come tae the door, I ken my way aboot this hoose as weel as ma ain."

"So it would appear, and you seem inclined to regard it as such," thought the young man as the door closed upon Mr. Crerar, and his shambling steps were heard slowly retreating down the passage. Fortunately the newcomer was too much amused by the amazing mixture of metaphors with which his mentor had con cluded, to be annoyed, and when left alone in the darkness he fairly laughed aloud. He was trying in vain to stifle his in decorous mirth, when Janet entered with a paraffin lamp, emitting as much smoke and smell as light, and a large gaily japanned tray, one of the dishes on which, by its unmistake able odour, proclaimed itself to be herring. The light revealed a small low-ceiled room, which had apparently neither been repainted nor papered during the fifty years of Mr. Struthers' occupancy.

The paper was a dark red flock, which decreased still further the size of the room. Here and there brighter patches on the walls suggested that pictures had been removed, and the bookshelves were empty, but otherwise everything was much the same as the old man's eyes must have rested on it through all those years. Although the raw mist from without filled the little room with its penetrating chill, the fireplace was filled only by a gaudy screen of cut paper. Janet glanced towards it, following the direction of Mr. Sutherland's eyes. " Ye'd maybe hae likit a fire," she said doubtfully, " though it's sune in the year tae begin wi' fires ; it's but September yet, an' we ne'er pat them on till the preachin's." " The preachin's " was the popular term for the communion held twice a year, in May and in October, accompanied by a multiplication of services that fully justified the title.

As oldfashioned almanacs used to announce that summer began on the first day of May, thrifty Finnarty housewives discarded fires as soon as the spring communion came round, and " blackleaded their grates to a pitch of chilly perfection, heroically regardless of the snow that might be falling at the time, and, let the weather be what it might, the paper roses held their place till the October leaves were falling. " I am afraid I cannot wait till the preachings, Janet. I am a great believer in fires, and I should think there are few days in Finnarty when one would not be the better of a fire." " Eh, man, that wad be an awfu' burnin ; think o' the coals — fires every day ! " exclaimed Janet, her horror at such an extra vagant suggestion overcoming her respect for a moment. " The laddie's gyte, whaur can he hae been brocht up ?

" she added under her breath; then aloud, "Wid ye like ane the noo, then?" " No, no," said the young man hastily, with a smile, thinking the old woman looked troubled at the suggestion; "don't bother about one to-night, I shall do very well. Why, Janet," approaching the tray, " I don't know what kind of appetite you expected me to bring with me, you seem to have enough for ten hungry men here." When Janet had gone, he pulled on the thick overcoat which he had thrown off, and sitting down, drank the rasping tea out of the big black pot, and ate his bread and butter with the indifference of a man who eats merely to satisfy hunger, his eyes wandering the while round the empty shelves, as if he missed the familiar companionship of books. Now and then he glanced about with a look half-rueful, half-amused.

Home, sweet home, did not look very blythe as yet, not much better than old Mother M'Taggart's best parlour, from which he had been glad enough to escape ; but home was only a dim far-off memory to Angus Sutherland, and years of student life in lodgings teaches a man not to be over nice, especially one who has never been in the habit of thinking much of his personal comfort. His meal over, he went to the low uncurtained window and threw it open to get rid of the too-powerful fumes of the lamp and the herring. Finding the window a convenient height from the ground, he stepped out and strolled down the flagged pathway and leant for a while on the little gate. Some one in a sanguine moment had planted a couple of aspens on each side of it, which were now dragging out a sort of death in life. Darkness had fairly come, but the mist had vanished, and overhead a few faint points of light were beginning to appear.

In the village, a little beyond which the manse lay, a dim light or two shone feebly here and there, now and then a dark figure strayed slowly by, the echoes of the heavy footfalls dying reluctantly away into the silence, which yet was not wholly silence, for underlying it was a continuous muffled booming sound. " There must be wind out at sea, " thought Sutherland, " though it is quiet enough here." Above his head the restless aspen leaves fluttered with their peculiar hard dry rustle, a weird uncanny sound in the windless dark. His thoughts wandered back to the old man whose slow, feeble steps had but lately sounded on those stones, and who more than fifty years ago, might have stood where he now was, with all his future before him. What had been his hopes and dreams and plans in those far off days ?

Had the years brought him fulfilment or disappointment ? He had had length of days at least, if that were a blessing. How little he would think then, that man who was young fifty years ago, that in that bare white house he was to die half a century after, having seen wife and child and friend go down to the grave before him. Musing thus, Angus Sutherland's thoughts floated away to his own future, to what the days to come might hold for him, and whether that cold empty house might yet become a home such as he had dreamed of — the sweet, vague, formless visions of young hearts which, while they acknowledge the existence of suffering and failure, and the downfall of high hope and courage in other lives, tacitly claim exemption for themselves, ■» and build a dream-world where "sorrow and death may not enter in."

Then his thoughts passed beyond himself, and his face grew graver in the darkness, as the new life on whose threshold he was standing rose up before him. Standing there under the star-sown sky, the ceaseless, thunderous sound of many waters that filled his ears, was like the very voice of that eternity which seemed so near and present, when earthly sights and sounds were veiled and withdrawn for the time. As he listened, his head sank down on his folded arms, and thought passed into prayer, a silent but passionate outcry for help and strength, as in that vast, dim midnight world he realized his own weakness. How long he stood there he hardly knew, but he was roused at last by a chill sweeping blast that made the aspens rattle afresh, and brought a shower of leaves down on his bent uncovered head.

The lights were all gone from the village now, and the sky was full of the pale light of stars, glittering with a frosty radiance. He gave a long look round and then went hastily back to the house. It was no very fair scene that the darkness hid from Angus Sutherland's eyes. Finnarty is not a picturesque village — few Scotch villages are so in themselves, it must be confessed, what ever the beauties of their surroundings may be — and of such Finnarty, like many other northern villages, could boast but little. To most minds the very thought of the north conjures up visions of rocky islands sleeping amid lonely seas, or of blue winding lochs, straying far inland among the hills, where the orange tangle, swayed by the lapping wavelets, fringes the base of rocks tufted with crimson heather, and where the salt breath of the sea is mingled with the wild fragrance of drooping birches, or with the warm resinous odour of some stray group of sturdy, deep-rooted, ruddy stemmed pines ; lochs, whose rising and ebbing waters in the heart of those mountain fastnesses, those wildernesses of riven granite, link together the two ideals of vastness and solitude — the distant plains of ocean, and the silent sleep of the everlasting hills.

In a word, to most of us the north of Scotland means the Highlands, where spite of sportsman and tourist and guide-book, we can still feel to the full the spell of Nature's witchery, and the subtler influences of departed days, of "old unhappy far-off things" in the legends of fierce feud and foray, or in the gentler memories of that ancient piety whose echoes still linger amid the misty storm-beaten islands of the west. But there is a reverse to this picture, and beyond this land of glamour and romance lies a very different region, little visited and all but unknown, along the bleak north-eastern coast. Among the many fishing villages or "toons" that dot its long line is Fin narty, an irregular row of white-washed cottages, straggling along the low shore. Many of these cottages stand with their " gable ends " facing outwards, as if turning their shoulder to the fierce easterly blasts that drive the grey billows hissing in on the rough stony beach, which is the receptacle of all the refuse of the village.

Here the cargoes of the fishing boats are cleaned, a process gratifying neither to sight nor smell, especially during the herring season, when to the unaccustomed stranger, a party of "gutters," with their besmeared clothes and gory hands and arms, would present as horrifying a spectacle as any group of the Mænads of the French Revolution — and here too the nameless results of their busy fingers are allowed to lie mingled with every sort and kind of rubbish, until some spring-tide rises high enough to sweep the whole accumulation away. Those cottages are the fishermen's quarter, and are locally known as " the Row," while the few streets that branch inland behind them are called " the Toon." In one, dignified by the title of the Main Street, are a few low-browed shops, where the " merchants," as shopkeepers are called in the north of Scotland, sell the queerest and most hetereogenous mixture of goods.

At any of them you might buy sou'-westers, sea boots, or farm-gear, groceries or fishing-tackle, or " baker's bread," regarded as a luxury and brought from the nearest town. The houses, boasting but one story for the most part, stand in grim, unbroken line along the roadway. Not a flower, not the humblest attempt at a garden is to be seen, save when looking through some open door down the passage that intersects every house from the front door to the back, dividing the " but " from the " ben," one may catch a glimpse of a bleaching-green, or a weedy patch of the universal kail, or potatoes. Suddenly the houses cease, and the narrow dingy street becomes a country road, winding away through the flat, featureless fields between rough stone walls, " dry stane dykes," to the widely scattered farmhouses.

If the harvest of the sea be hard to reap, the harvest on such land is not much less so, a cold, sour soil, where the scanty crops struggle for life with the long bitter spring, the brief uncertain summer, and the storm and rains of autumn — such a soil as is exactly char acterised by the pithy description, " it girns a' summer and greets a' winter ! " Finnarty has its bright days, to be sure, when the wide expanse of sea is only a deeper blue than the sky, when the crisp salt wind shakes the dancing oats and waving barley, and disperses with its wafts of briny freshness the fishy odours of the Row and the beach for the time. And though in the Row and the Toon alike, existence might often enough seem a mere ignoble struggle to supply bodily wants amid circumstances depressing and cheerless enough, yet life in a fishing village can never be wholly prosaic.

If on this side of the Grampians the wild traditions of reckless daring and high-hearted loyalty, faithful unto death, are lacking, as well as the magic and mystery of moorland and mountain, what stories of the sea could be told in some of those white-washed cottages, stories all the more pathetic from the quiet acceptance of utmost tragedy as the common lot. When the brown-sailed boats, rock ing now at the roughly-piled quay — a poor shelter from the winter storms on that wild coast — put out in the evening glow into the darkening east, each man goes to his nightly toil with his life in his hands ; no woman knows how soon her turn may come to hope against hope, and to watch with dim eyes and a sinking heart for the boat that never comes back, and to weep for the husband and father, or for the fair-haired laddie making his first trip, whom she shall see no more till the sea gives back his dead.

True, men and women took such risks lightly, but they were a tragic background to the work-a-day life of the Row, which formed a little world in itself, and between which and the Toon there was a distinct line of demarcation, the inhabitants of each " keeping themselves to themselves," as they would have said. Even in appearance the fisher-folk seemed a distinct race, retaining very markedly the traces of their descent from the yellow-haired, long-limbed Vikings who once held possession of this strip of Scottish soil, and many a quaint Norse-sounding name bore witness to the Scandinavian descent of the sturdy fishermen. The open-handed, easy-going, thriftless ways of the Row, were viewed with the utmost disfavour by the shopkeepers of the Toon, while they looked with suspicion, not unmixed with contempt, on the devotional Saturnalia in which the warmer natures of their neighbours found vent — recurring periods of religious excitement, when emotion runs riot, and scenes are enacted recalling the frantic enthusiasms of the middle ages, rather than douce, sober Scotland in the nineteenth century.

The Toon, on the other hand, was stronger in theology than in "experience," and doctrines were held in their most literal acceptation which weaker-kneed Christians have by common consent consigned to the limbo of creed or confession as to a sort of spiritual museum. But in Finnarty, freewill and predesti nation, election and reprobation, and those awful doctrines of the future from which so many a good man turns his face shuddering away, were held as established beyond all argument. Such was Finnarty in some of its outer and inner aspects on that misty Saturday evening when Angus Sutherland came to make his home there, and it is still very much the same, for the flood of innovation, of modern thought, is slow in reaching those far out-lying nooks, where opinions, ideas, and habits of life tend rather to crystallize than to change.

Chapter II. The

following all important Sunday morning, or Sabbath rather, for the former word was unknown in Finnarty, was bright and fresh, and the Row and the Toon were gathered in unusual force in the common meeting-ground — the kirkyard. The wide expanse of sky was a vivid blue, almost hard-looking in its keen brightness. The church was at the landward end of the village, and from the very slight eminence on which it stood, there was a wide uninterrupted view of the far-stretching farm lands, now almost one unbroken breadth of yellowing grain, giving place towards the west, to low, rolling, heath-clad slopes, gradually rising towards lumpy, round-backed hills, the first outposts of the great central Grampian range. On the other hand, beyond the crowding gray and red roofs of the village, was the wide plain of the North Sea, to-day a deepest cobalt, all flecked with white breakers, for a brisk north-easter was blowing which even in the full September sunshine made the women draw their brilliant Paisley plaids, a once famous article of dress and part of the "plenishing" of every bride, closer round their shoul ders, while the various groups gradually tended towards the shelter edside of thechurch.

If sunlight and harvest-tints could transfigure sky and sea and land, they would to most eyes have served but to accentuate the desolate bareness of Finnarty kirk, to all probably save to those well accustomed ones that now looked on it. The surrounding graveyard, encircled by a solid stone wall, several feet high on the outer side, but only the height for a convenient seat on the inner, from reasons into which it were well perhaps not to enquire too curiously, was a square enclosure of rank grass without a path through it, save the one leading from the rusty gates to the kirk-door. Nothing, however, was further from the minds of the various groups seated on the wall or on the big flat " table stones '' than thoughts of death and mortality. As amongst southern nations the revelry of the Carnival precedes the plunge into the gloom of Lent, so the world and the flesh, (not to mention the third member of that formidable trio) supposed to be left outside of the sacred threshold, had their innings unrestrained in the quarter-of-an-hour before the beadle gave the final pull to the bell-rope and the kirk " took in."

The kirkyard served as a kind of informal club or exchange, where all the news of the week was discussed, and many a bargain was all but struck, or the way at least paved for its final consummation on the first "lawful day," the saving clause, "if it wasna the Sabbath day," relieving the conscience of both contracting parties. The kirk itself was a square, solid building, which at some former period had been " harled " with lime, and whitewashed, a process sorely in need of renewal. There was not a symbol about it to suggest its sacred character, unless the dumpy, pent house erection, in which the clamorous bell hung, could be regarded as such. The door, on whose faded paint were stuck bills, for the raising of yeomanry regiments, or lists of dog and gun licenses, was opened but once a week.

How different it would have been, were Finnarty a Norman fishing village. How many a wife and mother would ascend those rude steps, when the boats were out and the winds were high, and steal out again their hearts a little lighter surely than if they had but nursed their anxiety amid the petty worries of home, or wandered in helpless distraction along the shore. But Scotch people do not come to church to pray — the minister does that for them — they come to hear the sermon, above all to criticise it. The faces of the elder portion of the congregation gathered under the whitewashed roof of Finnarty kirk, and in its high unpainted deal pews — pews that seem to have been constructed to inflict as much discomfort as possible on the occupants — were mostly as keen as the wind outside, as hard as the soil, as dour as their own climate, but there was intelligence in all ; their owners were all listening and inwardly judging.

There was none of the " I thowt a said what a owt to 'a said " conclusion, save among the younger hearers, who wore as a rule a look of vacuous endurance. The women, too, generally found being in church enough for them without the additional mental exercise of following the sermon. Most of them were pretty well occupied in seeing that their numerous olive branches preserved the outward decorum due to the kirk and the stiff " Sabbath claes " in which they were encased, and in whose sacred pockets fidgetty little fingers fumbled in the vain hope that some stray marble or bit of string might have escaped the vigilant maternal scrutiny. The congregation was composed almost wholly of the fisher folk from the Row, the few shopkeepers and the village people, with a sprinkling of the farmers and labourers from the outlying farms in the neighbourhood.

The sole exception was a middle-aged gentleman, who sat alone in a large square pew lined with the same dim red baize as the pulpit, and directly facing it in the centre of the steeply-sloping gallery, in the " briest o' the last," to use Finnarty parlance. Under ordinary circumstances his appearance there would have attracted a good deal of attention, and a few stray glances wandered now and then in his direction, but to-day all interest was concen trated in the pulpit, for there, in place of the lined, withered face and white head of old Mr. Struthers, who had stood there Sab bath after Sabbath for more than fifty years, appeared, for the first time since he had been duly ordained and settled among them, their new minister, the Rev. Angus Sutherland. " The preliminary exercises " had been gone through, a phrase which suggests what a secondary place in the Scotch mind devotion and praise hold to the all important sermon, the psalms had been sung (hymns were unknown), the congregation sitting the while, though they rose with a great shuffling and scraping of feet to listen to the prayers, uttered in a full, round, young voice, in which however a sympathetic ear might have discerned an undercurrent of tremor, a contrast to the high, faltering, broken treble of extreme old age which had been so long familiar.