The curse that came home

Front matter

(i

BY

MRS. J. K. LAWSON

Chapter I Sandy Brunt’s Indignation

“It’s enough to turn a body’s stammack! the idea o’ aman marryin’ at his time o’ life,’ quoth Sandy Brunt to his wife, a quiet, dun-faced little woman, as they sat together at tea-time. This remark, made apropos of his uncle’s departure to Edinburgh on a matrimonial expedition, being his first venture of the kind, was uttered with an expression of unspeakable disgust.

“ Aweel,” responded Mrs. Brunt meekly, “there’s ae comfort. She’s weel on in years, so she’s no likely to hae ony family to heir what he has.”

“Ay! but she has a dochter o’ the first man’s, I hear; a lassie o’ fifteen or thereaboot. Hoo are we to ken he'll no’ leave what he has atween her an’ her mither? The man’s oot o’ his mind!”

“It’s a peety, nae doot, Sandy, but I dinna see hoo it’s to be helpit. What we never had we'll no’

miss.” 7

Sandy ignored this sensible, everyday philosophy, and went on, his anger rising with his voice, like the wind in a storm.

“The mair I think o’t the waur it looks. She canna be a woman o’ ony great principle, or she would never marry an auld dottrifeed man like my uncle. It’s naething but the siller. An’ if he was the man be pretends to be, he would never marry, an’ put the siller past his ain flesh and bluid. As sure as death, if he dees an’ leaves that woman a bawbee, Ill hae the law on’t, an’ break the will on the grund o him no’ being compos ments, as I think they ca’t.”

“Tchick! tchick! dinna blether nonsense, Sandy. Wha would believe ye? Ye ken very weel that your uncle is as wise an’ worldlike as either you or me. Of coorse—I’ll no’ say but what it would bea peety if he really put the bawbees by ye.”

“Peety! it’s a black shame. To think o’ him comin’ hame frae foreign pairts wi’ plenty o’ siller, an’ gaun awa’ to Edinburgh caperin’ after a wife. He’s no’ wise; an’ if I’m no’ sair mista’en, I’ve heard my mither pen ieity DU ie aboot him bein’ sunstruck ance.”

“ Aweel, he’s sunstruck noo, onyway. An’ the best thing for you to dae, Sandy, is to keep a calm sough till we see. Maybe he'll no’ pit his siller past ye; maybe the wife has bawbees o’ her ain; wha kens ?”

“Her? Na,na; no’ a bawbee. It’s oot o’ peety he’s marryin’ her. Ye see she’s an auld lass o’ his. It was on her accoont he gaed awa’ to Ameriky first:

SANDY BRUNT’S INDIGNATION 9 of a’, because she marrit an Englishman instead 0’ him; an’ when he gaed up to the Exhibition last year, whaur should he licht on for a lodgin’ but in her hoose. An’ the thing’s been gaun on ever since.”

“Auld love’s easy kennelt, Sandy. Weel, noo! isn’t it droll whaur folk’ll meet their ain?” exclaimed the wife, sentimentally interested in the facts.

“Woman! speak sense. D’ye no’ see hoo she’s gotten roond him in his auld age, after her slichtin’ him when he was young? Depend upon’t, that sunstroke’s affeckit his mind, or he would never hae gicn her the second chance.”

“ Aweel! there’s nae accoontin’ for ee things. They say marriages are made in heaven, Sandy, an’ if this has been made an’ ordeened, I fancy there’s nae gettin’ oot o't. It’s kind o’ hard, though, after your mind bein’ made up to heir him, but ye ken we canna help it. We'll be ceevil to her.”

“No, yell no’ be ceevil. Ill no’ hae ye speakin’ to her ava’. A bonny story for ony woman to come in an’ mak’ disturbance in a a! at my uncle’s time o’ life.”

“ But, ye see, folk’ll say you re disappointed cat him marryin’, on accoont o’ the siller gaun by ye.”

“T’m no carin’; I'll tell her to her face what I think o’ her. ‘There’s nae twa-facedness aboot me. But say nae mair aboot it the noo. Tm gaun up to the minister the nicht to tell him a aboot it. I would like to hear what Hell think o’ my uncle after that. He’s fairly begottit in him, ye ken; but Tl ‘open his een an’ let him see the kind o’ man he railly is. To see him comin’ into the kirk on Sabbaths, an’ prayin’ 7? the croon o* his hat in yon English fashion, a proper saint, an’ a’ the time this Woman rinnin’ in his head! It’s no’ moral.”

Mrs. Brunt remained silent during the remainder of the meal. She was a quiet, meek-looking woman, of the type yclept “little gude, little i11;” a woman, however, who had wisdom enough not to “thraw” a masterful husband, and Sandy Brunt could be masterful enough when the getting of money was in the question. He was so excited over the unwarrantable marriage of his uncle, that he took an extra cup of tea, draining the pot, after which Mrs. Brunt filled it up again from the kettle, remarking, as she did so, that strong tea was very bad for young folk. Then she called the two hired lads in to tea, removing the butter they themselves had been using from thé table, and substituting margarine in its place, Sandy noting her manceuvres with silent approval as he finished his tea and rose to his feet. He was a big man, but there was something ugly and disagreeable in his bigness. He had none of that rotundity of figure which gives a certain jocundity to a man of middle life; his back was broad, but his shoulders humped slightly, that appearance being the result of the way his head was set between them; and from front of the shoulders down, he was flat as a board, with heavy legs and heavy feet. His hair was irongrey, as was also his beard; his eyes small, and set close together; his nose sizable and fleshy; his long upper lip, and flat, straight chin clean shaven, with a fringe of grizzled hair around his square jaws.

SANDY BRUNT’S INDIGNATION it

His complexion was sallow, but under excitement became wonderfully white and waxy.

Such was Sandy Brunt, who, by dint of hard living and close saving in his youth, found himself at last in the position of a respectable man, with a small croft of land, a couple of carts, a pair of horses, a cow, and several pigs. He had no children, a fact which he deplored, since it necessitated the hiring of two boys to do the work which his own might have done, and so kept their wages in the family. And, as he frequently remarked, there was no paying folk now-a-days. In his youth a boy could be got for his meat and a shilling a week; now, two or three wouldn’t pay them. The country was going headlong to wreck and ruin, with trades-unions and strikes, and all the like o’ that. In his day puir folk had to be doing with little, but now—it was nothing but “ fill and fetch mair.”

It was rarely indeed that Sandy dressed after tea. There were beds to weed, and pigs to feed ; old harness to mend (the saddler’s charges were perfectly outrageous), and not unfrequently a clout to put on his own. well-worn shoes; all to be done after the day’s work was over. And thus he rested from his ordinary labour, for a penny hained was a penny gained.

“ Aweel, Sandy, ye’re a wise-like man when ye’re redd up,” remarked his wife, as she looked up from her milking and saw her husband standing in the byre. He was clean shaven and washed; his whiskers were well combed out from under his chin, and held up by a high stiff collar; he had his Sunday felt hat on, and was attired in a decent suit of darkgrey tweed. He smiled as she rose to her feet and stood admiring him.

“Will I dae?” he inquired, looking down complacently on his trousers, while he shook out a nicely ironed handkerchief.

“Dae? Atween you an’ me, Sandy, although I say’t that shouldna, ye look anither man when ye’re redd up,” answered the wife, with fine flattery. She knew her goodman’s weak spot, and had tested before now the worth of the old adage, “Stroke him canny doon the hair.”

“Ay. If it was the like o’ me gaun after a wife, it would be something like the thing. But an auld man o fifty! Never you mind, Vll open the minister’s een afore I’m through wi'm the nicht.”

“ He'll be makin’ ye an elder afore lang, I would think. It’s some time sin’ it began to be spoken aboot, ye ken.”

“ Aweel, ’'m no’ carin’ hoo sune. It wouldna hurt me ony; it’s a responsible position, an’ I’m sure if ance we were in the eldership thegither, I could get some 0’ Grainger’s cairtin’.”

“’Deed ay; that’s what I said when I heard o't first. Maybe the minister ‘ll gie ye a hint when yere up.” |

“Tl see. Onyhoo, I'll tak’ good care that my uncle ‘ll never get that length. An auld blackguard! wi’ naething but women rinniw’ in his head.”

Sandy’s small eyes scintillated with outraged propriety as his mind reverted again to his relative and the money he considered himself being defrauded of; and, brimful of hatred and malice, he

SANDY BRUNT’S INDIGNATION 13 turned and strode in the direction of the Manse, intent on blasting for ever the character of the relative who had dared to be a law unto himself in the matter of his own private affections. As he held forward his dark brows lowered, his eyes burned fiercely, his thick hands clenched, and now and again he shook them in the air as in imagination he laid down the whole statement of the case before the minister. Ere he reached the Manse gate he had worked himself up to the point of demanding that the marriage be declared null and void, on the gtound of it being the result of sunstroke years ago. A fairly decent citizen as the world goes, Sandy on the subject of money had become a fanatic. Money-getting had become the swmmum bonum of existence, and he conscientiously felt himself justified in sweeping from his path all that threatened to prevent its attainment. The sophisms with which the religious fanatic justifies intolerance and cruelty were unconsciously used by Sandy Brunt in defence of his zeal. His uncle was a single man, lable, therefore, to be wheedled by designing women; he was old and “ dottrifeed,’ and ought to be restrained; he was beyond the marrying age, and ought rather to be thinking of his grave. There was that dim legend of sunstroke too; in fact, the man required to have his freedom curtailed if the right was to go the right way, and honest folk to get their own— at his death. Whether Sandy would have been exercised in this way over his uncle’s movements had the gentleman possessed no funds, is another question, —a question he never thought of asking himself.

Yet how far he was responsible for this blasting, withering passion it would be hard to say; for who shall deliver us from the power of heredity? From earliest infancy the love of money had been instilled into him; the love of God and his fellow-men had ever been a secondary consideration; a thing to assent and say Amen to on Sundays, or, for that matter, throughout the week, so long as it did not clash with personal interest. When it did so, the beast of prey promptly discovered itselfi—its paw upon the quarry, and its teeth snarling defiance at all who might seek to share.

His gE paternal remembrance—and he always spoke of his father with admiration and reverence— was that of a haggard man, with a week-old beard erizzling his bony chin; up at four o’clock of a sweet spring morning, threshing away at his loom and disturbing the neighbourhood with the “ whaff! whaff! clicketty-click” of the beam and shuttle, which he plied with the eager, earnest intensity of a madman, in the little den where the loom stood. Outside, beyond the dust and cobwebs of his dingy window, the sun—a veritable angel of the resurrection—rose gloriously; with Apatine: wings stretched far to north and south, furling the clouds and flushing the sea; the light of his countenance transficuring the dews of the night into diamonds, flashing on green swards starred with living gold, while near and far the woods rang with ecstatic melody.

But what was all that to the weaver in his den, sending forth that “whaff! whaff! clicketty-click!” with such incessant, maddening monotony? It was

SANDY BRUNT’S INDIGNATION 15 no longer the sound of the loom earning honest bread; it was the voice of the Demon of Greed itself, chuckling, “ Mak’, mak’, an’ get siller! mak’, mak’, an’ get siller! mak’, mak’, an’ get siller!”

What, indeed, to the weaver, who had money in the bank, and property besides, were dawns or sun- — sets; the refreshing relaxations, the sweet sympathies, the gentle amenities, the noble generosities of even a humble hfe, so long as he could sit at the loom weaving away his soul to the tune of “ Mak’, mak’, an’ get siller! mak’, mak’, an’ get siller! mak’, mak’, an’ get siller!”

It was madness, the diseased concentration of the mind upon one object, to the exclusion of higher considerations, to the dwarfing and paralysing of its nobler powers.

And yet, how much respect just such madness receives from the children of men! Success is no longer the attainment of the noblest in life, but of the basest. The successful man is the man who has made most money, no matter how. And to this man of money, as a shining example of success, we point the youne—knowing not what we do. Forvetting that to encourage money-getting for the sole use and pleasure of the getter is to put a premium on selfishness, greed, and covert oppression ; since on those three elements are most of the gigantic fortunes of the world built up. And after all, the ordinary successful man of money becomes but a part of the loom: the rhythm of its motion and the thoughts of his heart are one.

With such hereditary tendency, it is not surprising that Sandy Brunt should have developed traits unknown to his father. For, to be fair, the old man’s worst trait was stinginess; an unreasonable value stupidly attributed to the possession of money, and an overwhelming desire to get more and more of it; sacrificing health and life itself to that end. But the law of evolution showed another and more serious development of the madness. In the son it begat and brought forth covetousness, with its accompanying sinister passions, and perhaps it was wisely ordered that Sandy should have no children, otherwise the third generation might have produced the ordinary full-blown vulgar thief; a creature to weep over and bewail and wonder at; seeing what respectable and industrious parents he came of, one of those mysteries which people shake their heads over, and cannot by any means understand, unless that God had permitted it for some wise and hidden purpose!

When Sandy returned from the Manse and entered his house that evening, his wife asked, in a meek but eager tone—

“Did you see the minister ?”

“ Wang the minister!” was the startling answer.

Chapter II The Gipsy’s Curse

Mrs. Brunt turned pale and kept silence, as was her wont when anything serious happened. Hers was not a combative nature, and when trouble loomed up she instinctively crouched to the wall; not so much from fright, as from sheer inability to cope with it. She did not venture to ask what had happened, though she felt it must be something terrible which made Sandy curse the minister. She waited, knowing it would be out presently in language the most emphatic. And that knack of waiting was one of the things which greatly endeared his wife to Sandy. She never “thrawed” with him, never argued with him as some wives with their husbands, was a patient listener, and by her meek silence, broken only by an occasional sympathetic “humph!” she afforded him the solace of opening the floodgates of his anger, and letting the torrent of his wrath pour forth uninterruptedly.

As soon as he had closed the door upon himself, he viciously threw his hat upon the floor, careless of the fact that it was his Sunday best. Then he divested

2 ;

himself of his coat, and tossed it down also. Mrs. Brunt quietly lifted up both and put them carefully away.

“Will ye tak’ a bite o’ bread an’ cheese?” she asked, in a meek, matter-of-fact tone, as she poked up the fire, stirring the coals gently. “It’s a gude while sin’ ye had your tea.”

“No,” was the gruff answer; “what substance is there in white bread ?” ,

“There’s some mixed bannocks in the press there. They're a hantle mair substantial. As you say, there’s nae substance whatever in baker's bread.”

“Tm sick o’ bannocks,” quoth Sandy.

“ Aweel, I canna blame ye; a body does tire 0’ bannocks whiles,” she assented; and without making any further suggestion, she quietly lifted the kettle on the hook above the flames.

“What are ye puttin’ on the kettle for? My stammack is just wersh wi’ sae muckle tea. I get naething but tea frae mornin’ till nicht.”

“Ower muckle tea’s no’ gude for naebody. If it | was tea itsel’—but really it’s naething but dishwater. Na,” she explained, “I just tuk’ a notion of a drap parritch an’ milk the nicht.”

“ Humph!”

“Naething better for a body’s inside than a drap fine, weel-boiled parritch, made of new-grund meal, an’ boiled till it’s fine an’ lythey, an’ then, when they are half cauld, suppit up wi’ a drap sweet milk.”

The artful wife, as she drew this tempting picture of a wholesome supper, covertly glanced at her husband’s gloomy profile, but he continued to glower into the fire and made no sign, ;

She went on with her porridge-making without exchanging another word, until, having poured it out into two plates, she exclaimed, with well-feigned distress—

“Kh, juist look what I’ve dune! made parritch for the twa o’s! sic a peety! That’s wi’ me bein’ aye used _to makin’ for twa.”

The savoury smell of the porridge was now sweet in the nostrils, and Sandy turned and scowled at the two steaming dishes, with the milk cups and spoons placed handy beside them.

“T may as weel sup them noo when they’re made,” he grunted ungraciously; and, drawing in the table to where he sat, he paused a moment, and, bending his head, rapidly mumbled something which might have been a malediction, so surlily was it uttered. Then he audibly said Amen! and lifted the spoon.

His wife, sitting opposite him, took her supper and waited. She did not need to wait long, for already the comfortable porridge was telling, and Sandy showed signs of relaxing.

“That meal’s no’ bad,” he remarked.

“Tve seen waur,’ responded his wife, with meekness, adding, “I aye think that when a body gets what the stammack’s cravin’ for, it gangs a hantle better doon.”

“ Ay, sometimes,” he admitted.

He had finished now, and, throwing the spoon upon the plate, he pushed it from him and leant back, smacking his lips with satisfaction.

Mrs. Brunt continued her supper, still waiting.

“ Aweel,” he said at last, “I’ve left the kirk.”

20 THE CURSE VCHAT CAME FIO hits

The spoon dropped from the wife’s hand ; she could only sit and stare at her husband with alarmed interrogation.

“T got mair impidence frae that man than I was fit to ancy he explained.

“No’ frae the minister, Sandy ?”

“Ay, just frae the minister. I never could hae believed him to be the man he is. He’s no’ fit to be in a poopit. What d’ye think he telled me to my face?”

“What, Sandy ?” questioned his wife ; and, laying down the bowl, she adjusted herself in an attitude of shocked surprise which told on the lord and master of the house.

“He said I was in the gall o’ bitterness an’ the bond o’ iniquity ; that I was gaun clean contrar’ to the speerit o the Gospel; an’ that my uncle had a richt to marry whaever he liket withoot consultin’ onybody but his ain feelin’s; an’ that I was just eaten up wi’ this world.” Here Sandy paused for breath, and his wife, in unfeigned horror and distress, held up her hands, exclaiming in a whisper—

“Kh! the like o’ that!”

“Ah! but that’s no’ the warst o’t. He said he thocht it was a piece o’ insufferable tyranny for me to think o’ interferin’ wi my uncle; an’ when I tried to tell him the kind o’ man he was, he wouldna sae much as let me open my mouth—waved me awa’ wl’ his hand like that, an’ said he would listen to nae backbitin’ an’ evil speakin’, and began to preach to me like as I had been a proper heathen.”

“Eh! wha would hae thocht it?” moaned the listener.

bibs GIESy 5S CURSE 21

“But, by faigs!” he continued, with rising wrath, starting up, and stamping up and down the floor as he thought of it all, “I snappit my fingers in his face, an’ telled him I kent what was richt an’ what was wrang as weel’s he did; an’ I said I wouldna sit under him anither Sabbath, no’ if I could get anither _ kirk aw’ anither minister within twenty mile o’ me, A muckle gude-for-naething heepocreet! Nae wonder there’s a crack aboot Disestablishment. It’s him an’ the like o’m that drives folk into the Free Kirk.”

“They say the Free Kirk ane they hae the noo is a fine man,” remarked the wife peaceably. “He liftit his hat to me when he was gaun by the byre door the other day. It’s a peety the Free’s sae ill to haud up.”

“ Aweel, that’s true; the uphaud there has to be considered. But for a’ that oor ane thinks I’m sae eaten up wi’ this world, I'll lat him see that I can pay for a minister when he’s a man to my mind, just as weel’s the rest.”

“ An’ he said naething aboot the eldership 2?”

“The eldership!” snorted Sandy. “TI tell ye I wouldna be an elder in that kirk, no’ if ye was to mak’ me the king on the throne. If religion’s worth haein’, it’s worth payin’ for. Tl no’ be ahint my neebors. An’ whakens? As ae door steeks anither ane opens. There’s naebody can lay onything to my character, I’m sure.”-

“No, Pm sure,” echoed his wife fervently. “ An’ after you bein’ at a’ that trouble dressin’ yersel’, an’ trampin’ a’ the road to the Manse.”

“But it wasna a’ loss,” said Sandy, with sudden recollection. “Jock Smith is bringin’ ane o’ his beas’ here atween three an’ four o’clock the morn’s mornin’,

“A stot?” inquired Mrs. Brunt.

“No, a coo. The beast’s been dwinin’ this while back wi’ some lung trouble—tuber-something or ither; an’ he’s selled her cheap to the butcher on that accoont. He offered me five shillin’s if I would let her stand in the byre till the morn’s nicht after dark, till the butcher cam’ for her. There’s the five .

shillin’s; I didna want to be disobleegin’. A body never kens whan they may need a favour theirsells.”

With this bit of worldly wisdom he handed the five shillings to his wife, who took it and put it in her pocket, she being treasurer.

“ As you say, Sandy, it’s no’ been a’ loss. A gaun fit’s aye gettin’. But when you gang oot to open the door for Jock’s coo, if I was you I would let oor coo oot. The breath o’ a dwinin’ coo’s smittin’, so the horse-doctor says.”

Sandy assented, and soon afterward the two slept the sleep of the just.

It was a fine morning when Sandy went out to look at a piece of ground which he had quietly enclosed, ploughed up and sown with oats last year. This was a long strip which lay between his own two fields, a wide roadway leading from the country down into the town—the old church road, it was called, and had been used as a public road from time immemorial.

Now Sandy, when he took his little farm from the laird, looked at this road, and looked again, noting the grass growing on the edge of the wheel-ruts, and thinking what a waste of good land it was to have that lying uncultivated, for no reason whatever, but that it afforded a short cut to church, when there was a good road which led there only half a mile - farther round. For three or four years he looked at it, even as Mother Eve is said to have looked at the forbidden apples, until, carried away by his desire, he one morning got up early, and drove in a few stakes and nailed a few boards across, not without some inward trepidation, and an answer prepared for whosoever should demand a reason for the fence.

His cattle had a trick of wandering away by this road—or other cattle had a trick of wandering in here and pilfering his fodder; either was a good enough excuse. If an interdict was served—why, he could take it down again; if not, he would have a capital crop of oats. No interdict had been served, however, for what was everybody’s was nobody’s business; and to sundry grumblers, idiots who talked about public rights, he gave the excuse of keeping cattle at once out and in, until he himself actually believed in the righteousness of enclosing the public road, and preventing the public conscience from being chargeable with a wicked waste of land. Yet he had always an uneasy feeling about that strip of oats; it was the first deliberate act of theft he had ever committed, and something of the same nature which impels the murderer to revisit the scene of his crime, brought the filcher of the land hither the first thing every morning.

But when he saw that the fence still stood unbroken, that here as everywhere else the long green blades glistened pearly with the refreshing dews of the night, that the sun shone on this lately appropriated portion as benignly as on the fields which he honestly rented, he again took heart of grace, went back with a good appetite to breakfast, nor over it forgot to thank God for His mercies.

On this particular morning, however, his heart gave a sudden throb of alarm as he looked down between the hedges, and he burst into a wild fit of what he felt to be most justifiable anger. For there, knee-deep among the oats, stood a longlegged, long-ribbed horse, munching with evident enjoyment; while an old withered woman, tawnyskinned and dark-eyed; in a nondescript costume of dingy brown, and with a scarlet ’kerchief bound about her brows, stood speaking encouragingly to it in some unknown tongue.

Sandy made a run toward the animal, but when half-way stopped short, as if thinking better of if, and turning walked up to the broken fence where the old woman stood.

“Ts that your horse?” he queried grufily.

The woman turned her still brilliant eyes upon him, in one swift glance interpreting the man to herself, but she answered him not a word.

“Ts that your horse, I’m speerin’? Hae ye no’ a tongue 1 your head?” he demanded; but she only continued to look with mute scrutiny into his angry eyes. With an oath he turned away and strode towards the horse, seizing hold of the long tether which trailed among the oats several feet behind thie animal, and with an angry jerk leading it down towards the stable. The gipsy woman deliberately followed, wading silently among the oats. So great was Sandy’s anger, that he never once looked over his shoulder until he had the horse tied safely ‘up in the stable, when he turned, and nervously started to see the gipsy standing mutely before the stable-door.

“Well?” he demanded autocratically.

“Thief,” said the gipsy, fixing her glittering eycs upon him, “restore my horse.”

“Thief! ca’ me a thief, ye wanderin’, thievin’ vagabone Uou oetiator bili 7

He could say no more, the woman’s look seemed to melt the marrow within him, his words died on his lips.

“Restore my property,” she said, in a strange, sweet, musical voice.

‘No’ afore you pay the damage done to my corn,” said Sandy, avoiding her eyes.

“Jt isnot your corn. Before you were born the gipsies’ horses fed on the ‘grass by the roadside—on the people's land. It is you who have stolen the land. Restore my horse.”

“Gie me a pound, an’ I'll gie ye the horse,” he said doggedly.

“TY have no pound, I have only gold. Must you take the gipsy’s gold ?”

“Ye maun pay the damage to my aits, or I'll hae ye inside a jail in twa ’oors’ time.”

“Tt would be cruel. estore my horse; we want away by noon; the gipsy is no house-dweller.”

“Gie me a sovereign, or ye gang withoot your horse,” persisted Sandy, feeling that horse and woman were entirely in his power.

“He who unjustly takes gold takes unto himself a curse,” said the old woman, fumbling in her breast, and drawing forth a curiously-wrought silken bag, bordered with hieroglyphic figures.