The Penguin Book of the British Short Story, Volume 1 Read online

  Thenceforward, John’s meals became somewhat more plentiful, but improved nothing in quality. He had been so long used to a life of poverty, that parsimony was become natural to him, and it was but seldom that he applied to the two birds for assistance. He could not rest however until he digged below one other tree, that he might have some guess what the extent of his treasure was, and what he had to depend on.

  He accordingly began, and digged all round the next, and in beneath it, until the pits on each side met below the stem of the tree at a great depth, so that every one of the downward roots were cut; but for all that he could do, he could find no treasure whatever, and was obliged to give up the scrutiny considerably disappointed. Having, however, discovered, in the former adventure, that the removal of a part of the immense quantity of miry sour dung, from about his cowhouse, had been attended with some conveniences, he likewise filled up this latter pit with a farther portion of that, and again betook himself to his loom and his twa black craws.

  The next year, to the astonishment of all, but more particularly to John himself, who had never once calculated on such an event, these two trees, after being literally covered over with healthy blossoms, bore such a load of fruit as never had been witnessed in that country. Almost every branch required a prop to prevent it being torn from the tree, by the increasing weight. John pulled the apples always as they ripened, and sent a quantity down every week by the carrier to his friend, the Cobler of Kelso, whose wife and daughter, it will be remembered, kept a fruit shop in one end of his dwelling. At the close of the year, when John went down to settle with his old friend, and the three-cocked hat, the latter paid him gratefully £7, 10s. for the produce of these two trees, and thanked him for his credit; not forgetting to treat him at breakfast with a cut of broiled salmon and a glass of brandy.

  John, perceiving that this was good interest for a few wheel-barrows full of sour mire, followed the same mode with all his apple-trees, and planted more, so that in the course of a few years, the cobler paid him annually from 30 to 45 pounds Sterling for fruit, a great sum in those days; and thus was the cobler’s extraordinary dream thoroughly fulfilled, not alone with regard to the main pose in the old pan, but that below every tree of the garden.

  John now lived comfortably, with his family, all the days of his life, and there were no lasses had such trim and elegant cockernonies in all the Antiburgher meeting-house of Middleholm as the daughters of the lang weaver. But Tibby Stott, poor creature! believed till her dying-day, that their wealth was supplied by the twa mysterious black craws, whose place of concealment she never found out, nor ever sought after.

  John Galt

  The Howdie

  Part I – Anent Births

  When my gudeman departed this life, he left me with a heavy handful of seven childer, the youngest but a baby at the breast, and the elder a lassie scant of eight years old. With such a small family what could a lanely widow woman do? Greatly was I grieved, not only for the loss of our bread-winner, but the quenching of that cheerful light which was my solace and comfort in straitened circumstances, and in the many cold and dark hours which the needs of our necessitous condition obliged us to endure.

  James Blithe was my first and only Jo; and but for that armed man, Poverty, who sat ever demanding at our hearth, there never was a brittle minute in the course of our wedded life. It was my pleasure to gladden him at home, when out-of-door vexations ruffled his temper; which seldom came to pass, for he was an honest young man, and pleasant among those with whom his lot was cast. I have often, since his death, thought, in calling him to mind, that it was by his natural sweet nature that the Lord was pleased, when He took him to Himself, to awaken the sympathy of others for me and the bairns, in our utmost distress.

  He was the head gairdner to the Laird of Rigs, as his father had been before him; and the family had him in great respect. Besides many a present of useful things which they gave to us, when we were married, they came to our wedding; a compliment that James often said was like the smell of the sweet briar in a lown and dewy evening, a cherishment that seasoned happiness. It was not however till he was taken away that I experienced the extent of their kindness. The ladies of the family were most particular to me; the Laird himself, on the Sabbath after the burial, paid me a very edifying visit; and to the old Leddy Dowager, his mother, I owe the meal that has ever since been in the basin, by which I have been enabled to bring up my childer in the fear of the Lord.

  The Leddy was really a managing motherly character; no grass grew beneath her feet when she had a turn to do, as was testified by my case: for when the minister’s wife put it into her head that I might do well in the midwife-line, Mrs Forceps being then in her declining years, she lost no time in getting me made, in the language of the church and gospel, her helper and successor. A blessing it was at the time, and the whole parish has, with a constancy of purpose, continued to treat me far above my deserts; for I have ever been sure of a shortcoming in my best endeavours to give satisfaction. But it’s not to speak of the difficulties that the hand of a considerate Providence has laid upon me with a sore weight for an earthly nature to bear, that I have sat down to indite this history book. I only intend hereby to show, how many strange things have come to pass in my douce way of life; and sure am I that in every calling, no matter however humble, peradventures will take place that ought to be recorded for the instruction, even of the wisest. Having said this, I will now proceed with my story.

  All the har’st before the year of dearth, Mrs Forceps, my predecessor, had been in an ailing condition; insomuch that, on the Halloween, she was laid up, and never after was taken out of her bed a living woman. Thus it came to pass that, before the turn of the year, the midwifery business of our countryside came into my hands in the natural way.

  I cannot tell how it happened that there was little to do in the way of trade all that winter; but it began to grow into a fashion that the genteeler order of ladies went into the towns to have there han’lings among the doctors. It was soon seen, however, that they had nothing to boast of by that manœuvre, for their gudemen thought the cost overcame the profit; and thus, although that was to a certainty a niggardly year, and great part of the next no better, it pleased the Lord, by the scanty upshot of the har’st before spoken of, that, whatever the ladies thought of the doctors, their husbands kept the warm side of frugality towards me and other poor women that had nothing to depend upon but the skill of their ten fingers.

  Mrs Forceps being out of the way, I was called in; and my first case was with an elderly woman that was long thought by all her friends to be past bearing; but when she herself came to me, and rehearsed the state she was in, with a great sough for fear, instead of a bairn, it might turn out a tympathy, I called to her mind how Sarah the Patriarchess, the wife of Abraham, was more than fourscore before Isaac was born: which was to her great consolation; for she was a pious woman in the main, and could discern in that miracle of Scripture an admonition to her to be of good cheer.

  From that night, poor Mrs Houselycat grew an altered woman; and her gudeman, Thomas Houselycat, was as caidgy a man as could be, at the prospect of having an Isaac in his old age; for neither he nor his wife had the least doubt that they were to be blest with a man-child. At last the fulness of time came; and Thomas having provided a jar of cinnamon brandy for the occasion, I was duly called in.

  Well do I remember the night that worthy Thomas himself came for me, with a lantern or a bowit in his hand. It was pitch-dark; the winds rampaged among the trees, the sleet was just vicious, and every drop was as salt as pickle. He had his wife’s shawl tied over his hat, by a great knot under the chin, and a pair of huggars drawn over his shoes, and above his knees; he was just a curiosity to see coming for me.

  I went with him; and to be sure when I got to the house, there was a gathering; young and old were there, all speaking together; widows and grannies giving advice, and new-married wives sitting in the expectation of getting insight. Really it was
a ploy; and no wonder that there was such a collection; for Mrs Houselycat was a woman well-stricken in years, and it could not be looked upon as any thing less than an inadvertency that she was ordained to be again a mother. I very well remember that her youngest daughter of the first clecking was there, a married woman, with a wean at her knee, I’se warrant a year-and-a-half old; it could both walk alone, and say many words almost as intelligible as the minister in the poopit, when it was a frosty morning; for the cold made him there shavelin-gabbit, and every word he said was just an oppression to his feckless tongue.

  By and by the birth came to pass: but, och on! the long faces that were about me when it took place; for instead of a lad-bairn it proved a lassie; and to increase the universal dismay at this come-to-pass, it turned out that the bairn’s cleading had, in a way out of the common, been prepared for a man child; which was the occasion of the innocent being, all the time of its nursing in appearance a very doubtful creature.

  The foregoing case is the first that I could properly say was my own; for Mrs Forceps had a regular finger in the pie in all my heretofores. It was, however, good erls; for no sooner had I got Mrs Houselycat on her feet again, than I received a call from the head inns in the town, from a Captain’s lady, that was overtaken there as the regiment was going through.

  In this affair there was something that did not just please me in the conduct of Mrs Facings, as the gentlewoman was called; and I jaloused, by what I saw with the tail of my eye, that she was no better than a light woman. However, in the way of trade, it does not do to stand on trifles of that sort; for ours is a religious trade, as witness what is said in the Bible of the midwives of the Hebrews; and if it pleased Providence to ordain children to be, it is no less an ordained duty of the midwife to help them into the world. But I had not long been satisfied in my own mind that the mother was no better than she should be, when my kinder feelings were sorely tried, for she had a most extraordinar severe time o’t; and I had but a weak hope that she would get through. However, with my help and the grace of God, she did get through: and I never saw, before nor since, so brave a baby as was that night born.

  Scarcely was the birth over, when Mrs Facings fell into a weakly dwam that was very terrifying; and if the Captain was not her gudeman, he was as concerned about her, as any true gudeman could be, and much more so than some I could name, who have the best of characters.

  It so happened that this Mrs Facings had been, as I have said, overtaken on the road, and had nothing prepared for a sore foot, although she well knew that she had no time to spare. This was very calamitous, and what was to be done required a consideration. I was for wrapping the baby in a blanket till the morning, when I had no misdoubt of gathering among the ladies of the town a sufficient change of needfu’ baby clouts; but among other regimental clanjamphry that were around this left-to-hersel’ damsel, was a Mrs Gooseskin, the drum-major’s wife, a most devising character. When I told her of our straits and jeopardy, she said to give myself no uneasiness, for she had seen a very good substitute for child-linen, and would set about making it without delay.

  What she proposed to do was beyond my comprehension; but she soon returned into the room with a box in her hand, filled with soft-teazed wool, which she set down on a chair at the bed-stock, and covering it with an apron, she pressed the wool under the apron into a hollow shape, like a goldfinch’s nest, wherein she laid the infant, and covering it up with the apron, she put more wool over it, and made it as snug as a silk-worm in a cocoon, as it has been described to me. The sight of this novelty was, however, an affliction, for if she had intended to smother the bairn, she could not have taken a more effectual manner; and yet the baby lived and thrived, as I shall have occasion to rehearse.

  Mrs Facings had a tedious recovery, and was not able to join him that in a sense was her gudeman, and the regiment, which was to me a great cause of affliction; for I thought that it might be said that her case was owing to my being a new hand, and not skilful enough. It thus came to pass that she, when able to stand the shake, was moved to private lodgings, where, for a season, she dwined and dwindled, and at last her life went clean out; but her orphan bairn was spared among us, and was a great means of causing a tenderness of heart to arise among the lasses, chiefly on account of its most thoughtless and ne’er-do-weel father, who never inquired after he left the town, concerning the puir thing; so that if there had not been a seed of charity bred by its orphan condition, nobody can tell what would have come of it. The saving hand of Providence was, however manifested. Old Miss Peggy Needle, who had all her life been out of the body about cats and dogs, grew just extraordinar to make a pet, in the place of them all, of the laddie Willie Facings; but, as I have said, I will by and by have to tell more about him; so on that account I will make an end of the second head of my discourse, and proceed to the next, which was one of a most piteous kind.

  In our parish there lived a young lad, a sticket minister, not very alluring in his looks; indeed, to say the truth, he was by many, on account of them, thought to be no far short of a haverel; for he was lank and most uncomely, being in-kneed; but, for all that, the minister said he was a young man of great parts, and had not only a streak of geni, but a vast deal of inordinate erudition. He went commonly by the name of Dominie Quarto; and it came to pass, that he set his affections on a weel-faured lassie, the daughter of Mrs Stoups, who keepit the Thistle Inn. In this there was nothing wonderful, for she was a sweet maiden, and nobody ever saw her without wishing her well. But she could not abide the Dominie: and, indeed, it was no wonder, for he certainly was not a man to pleasure a woman’s eye. Her affections were settled on a young lad called Jock Sym, a horse-couper, a blithe heartsome young man, of a genteel manner, and in great repute, therefore, among the gentlemen.

  He won Mally Stoups’ heart; they were married, and, in the fulness of time thereafter, her pains came on, and I was sent to ease her. She lay in a back room, that looked into their pleasant garden. Half up the lower casement of the window, there was a white muslin curtain, made out of her mother’s old-fashioned tamboured aprons, drawn across from side to side, for the window had no shutters. It would be only to distress the reader to tell what she suffered. Long she struggled, and weak she grew; and a sough of her desperate case went up and down the town like the plague that walketh in darkness. Many came to enquire for her, both gentle and semple; and it was thought that the Dominie would have been in the crowd of callers: but he came not.

  In the midst of her suffering, when I was going about my business in the room, with the afflicted lying-in woman, I happened to give a glint to the window, and startled I was, to see, like a ghost, looking over the white curtain, the melancholious visage of Dominie Quarto, with watery eyes glistening like two stars in the candle light.

  I told one of the women who happened to be in the way, to go out to the sorrowful young man, and tell him not to look in at the window; whereupon she went out, and remonstrated with him for some time. While she was gone, sweet Mally Stoups and her unborn baby were carried away to Abraham’s bosom. This was a most unfortunate thing; and I went out before the straighting-board could be gotten, with a heavy heart, on account of my poor family, that might suffer, if I was found guilty of being to blame.

  I had not gone beyond the threshold of the back-door that led into the garden, when I discerned a dark figure between me and the westling scad of the setting moon. On going towards it, I was greatly surprised to find the weeping Dominie, who was keeping watch for the event there, and had just heard what had happened, by one of the women telling another.

  This symptom of true love and tenderness made me forget my motherly anxieties, and I did all I could to console the poor lad; but he was not to be comforted, saying, ‘It was a great trial when it was ordained that she should lie in the arms of Jock Sym, but it’s far waur to think that the kirk-yard hole is to be her bed, and her bridegroom the worm.’

  Poor forlorn creature! I had not a word to say. Indeed, he made
my heart swell in my bosom; and I could never forget the way in which he grat over my hand, that he took between both of his, as a dear thing, that he was prone to fondle and mourn over.

  But this cutting grief did not end that night; on Sabbath evening following, as the custom is in our parish, Mrs Sym was ordained to be interred; and there was a great gathering of freends and neighbours; for both she and her gudeman were well thought of. Everybody expected the Dominie would be there, for his faithfulness was spoken of by all pitiful tongues; but he stayed away for pure grief; he hid himself from the daylight and the light of every human eye. In the gloaming, however, after, as the betherel went to ring the eight o’clock bell, he saw the Dominie standing with a downcast look, near the new grave, all which made baith a long and a sad story, for many a day among us: I doubt if it’s forgotten yet. As for me, I never thought of it without a pang, but all trades have their troubles and the death of a young wife and her unborn baby, in her nineteenth year, is not one of the least that I have had to endure in mine.

  But, although I met like many others in my outset both mortifications and difficulties, and what was worse than all, I could not say that I was triumphant in my endeavours; yet, like the Doctors, either good luck or experience made me gradually gather a repute for skill and discernment, insomuch that I became just wonderful for the request I was in. It is therefore needless for me to make a strive for the entertainment of the reader, by rehearsing all the han’lings that I had; but, as some of them were of a notable kind, I will pass over the generality and only make a Nota Bena here of those that were particular, as well as the births of the babies that afterwards came to be something in the world.

  Between the death of Mally Stoups and the Whitsunday of that year, there was not much business in my line, not above two cases; but, on the day after, I had a doing, no less than of twins in a farmer’s family, that was already overstocked with weans to a degree that was just a hardship; but, in that case, there was a testimony that Providence never sends mouths into the world without at the same time giving the wherewithal to fill them.