Complete Works of J. M. Barrie

by Unknown

  Sharp I got the dreadful answer: ‘He had no opportunity, for I had already packed the woman back to Edinburgh.’

  I was to have worse blows than this tonight, though at the moment I could not have credited it; so I will only say that when I rallied I asked with cold politeness when the young lady was coming back.

  Mistress Lindinnock, I could see, was eyeing me closely to find out how I stood the news, but she replied at once, like one prepared for war, ‘Never, I hope; I don’t like your Miss Julie Logan, my good sir.’

  I will not say that even in that stern moment I got no gliff of pleasure out of hearing her called my Miss Julie Logan. Also it gave me an opportunity to reply with the thunderbolt, ‘That is what I want her to be.’

  She stamped her foot at me, but I never weakened. ‘I demand her address,’ I said. She refused it, and I replied loftily that it mattered not as I was confident she would write to me.

  She raised her arms at that, like on appealing to a Higher Power, and said, ‘If she writes to you I give the thing up.’ Once she swung me round with a rage I could not construe and said on her tiptoes, ‘I could tell you things about her any one of which would make you drop her in the burn, though you were standing in the middle of it with the jade in your arms.’

  I replied in my stateliest, which has froze many, that I would stand defiant in the middle of the ocean with Miss Julie Logan on those terms; and I meant it too, though I am no swimmer.

  I dare say I was a rather dignified spectacle towering there, very erect, with my arms folded: at any rate she shuddered like one cowed who had never been cowed before; or else she became cunning, for she prigged with me to do as she, my old friend, wanted, saying endearing things about how much she had liked me in the days when I was sensible, and that if I were not such a calf I would see she was now fonder of me in my imbecility. Her words were not all, as will be seen, fittingly chosen, nor did I like the pity with which she glowered at me, for she was the one in need of it.

  Yet I had a melting for her at moments; especially as I was going away with but a scantling of courtesy. When she said that it would be the first time I had left her house (and she might have added any house in the glen) without calling for a benison on it, I stood rebuked. As we went on our knees she whispered rather tremulously, ‘Pray, dear minister, for all who may be in trouble this night, and even danger,’ and I did so, and it made the tangled woman greet.

  Of course I presumed she meant Christily, but as I was shaking hands with her my mind took a shrewd turn and I said almost threateningly, ‘You were not referring, were you, to Miss Julie Logan?’ It spoilt the comparative friendliness of our parting, for she flared up again and said, ‘‘Deed no; she is the only one that is in no need of those words tonight.’

  Unfortunate being, she little knew, nor did I, the impiety of that remark.

  When I got outside I was like one with no gate to go. The tae half of me was warring with the other half. I sat down very melancholic by the little round of water I have spoken of. The night was forlorn, with the merest rim of the moon in sight, and no reflection on the water beyond some misty stars. I don’t know why I sat there. It was not to keep vigil; I am sure I had no suspicion that Miss Julie Logan was still in the house.

  I may have been there a considerable time before I saw or heard anything. What I heard came first: distant music. It may just have been Posty playing far away the most reprehensible but the loveliest of all the Jacobite cries, ‘Will you no come back again?’ Soon after he finished, if it was mortal man who played, all was as still again as if the death-cart my folk tell about was nearing the glen to cart away the old year.

  Candles to a great number, and very sly, were beginning to get lit in the water. I spied on them interestedly. The full moon was now out of the clouds, and it was one of those nights when she wanders. The big window nearly filled the pond, and through it I saw a throng of people in the hall. So long as my eyes were fixed on the water of course it was only their reflections I saw. I saw them on their heads as in an inverted mirror, and they looked just as agreeable as the other way; maybe Nature herself does things with a disordered mind in the last gasp of the year.

  They were in the Highland dress of lang syne. I never saw them all at once, because if they came nearer they were lost in the weeds and if they went back they had a neat way of going through the walls. The older ladies were in fine headdresses and others in their ringlets; they were more richly attired than the men, and yet the men made the finer show. I could see the trews and an occasional flashing silver button or a gleam of steel; but near all colour had been washed out of them, as if they had been ower long among the caves and the eagles.

  There was plenty of food on a table that sometimes came forward, and they drank toasts thereat. I could not always put a meaning to what they did, but I saw them dancing and conversing, and though they were perhaps poor and desperate, they all, the gentlemen as much as the ladies, seemed to me to be of the great. They did rochly things as if they had forgotten the pretty ways, and next minute there would be a flourish in their manners that would have beat the pipes.

  There was no music, though, and when this came to me I minded that I was not getting a sound across the water from the hall itself, though owing to the quietness of the night I heard in the open as infinitely small a thing as the letting-go of a twig. The company were as quiet as their reflections. This made me look across the pond at the window itself, which so far I had been jouking lest the company there should take tent of me. I had a mistrust they were up to ploys that were not for a minister to see, and would mischief me if they catched me spying. But that stealthy stillness garr’d me look up and I took a step or two to see better. They were all on the move, but at once stopped, hands on dirk, and I opined they suspected a watcher. I doukit, and after that, except for a wink now and again, I looked at nothing but the reflections. I knew I was in danger, but this did not greatly fash me so long as I was not catched.

  I had never lost a feeling that there was an air of expectancy about them. I saw them backing against the walls to leave more space in the middle, and all eyes turned to the door, as if awaiting a great person. I suppose the tune was still swimming in my head, for I thought I knew who was coming in, he who was fed from the eagle’s nest, and I had a sinking that it would be my duty to seize him and hand him over.

  But it was a woman, it was Miss Julie Logan. She was not finely attired like the other ladies, but so poorly that her garments were in tatters. She would have made a braver show if each of the ladies had torn off an oddment and made a frock for her between them.

  It was not, however, as one of little account that they treated her or she treated them. She was the one presence in the hall to them. They approached her only when she signed to them that she could do with it, and as if overpowered by the distinction that was befalling them. The men made profound obeisance, and the ladies sank in that lovely way to the floor. On some she smiled and let them salute her hand, and others she looked at in a way I did not see, but they backed from her as if she had put the fear of Death into them. She gave the back of her hand to Mistress Lindinnock, and I never saw an old woman look so gratified.

  With a few she took a step or two in the dance, mayhap to make others glower, and soon something was taking place that I could not at first fathom.

  It was clear she was about to leave them; for a ceremony similar in most respects to that with which she had been received was repeated and the doors thrown open for her passing. But then they all gathered in the far end of the hall, or sank through it, with their backs to her, which was baffling to me; for up to that moment you could see how carefully they gave her their faces. Yet they did it of set purpose, or possibly at her command, for she was watching them more haughtily than ever.

  As soon as she was sure that every face was to the wall a complete change came over her. She hastened – she almost ran in her eagerness – to a corner of the window and lifted from the floor a good-sized baske
t that I dare say they had placed there for her. She lifted it like one who knew for certain it would be there. She filled it with viands from the table, picking and choosing them with affectionate interest.

  I thought that, being in some way I had to grope for, the one they held highest, she was too proud to let them know how hungry she was, though that very knowledge was what had made them place the basket so handily and look the other way while she filled it.

  I thought that, reckless of correct behaviour, as all on that side were, they were Strangers, come trailing back into the present day under a command to honour and feed one who had long ago been left behind.

  While she had been lording it so imperiously in the hall, she was belike thinking more about the basket than that she was the last sough of a song.

  A moment after she was gone from the hall, with a withering look for any peeping face, I heard the first sound that had reached me from the house since I took to looking in the water. It was the closing of the front door. I hurried forward, and was in time to meet Miss Julie Logan, no longer a reflection, coming down the steps with the basket.

  She said, ‘Carry the basket, Adam,’ and I carried it, but first I put my topcoat on her, and she slipped my hand into one of the pockets along with her own.

  I think it was snowing again, or a tempest or something of the kind, but we were not heeding.

  She took me to a small ruin of a bield for sheltering sheep in, and in a corner of it where was a pile of stones, maybe to mark some old grave, we sat down on them and opened the basket. She was very hungry, and I myself was also slow to desist from eating. For drinking we ate the snow, against which I have warned my Sabbath School scholars. The basket was so crammed with food of an engaging nature that when we paused, replete, there was still near a basketful left. Never in my life was I so merry as sitting on those stones, and she was also very droll. She had a way of shining her face close into mine and showing her pretty teeth like a child. It was the gaiety of her, but I did not quite like it. When we wandered on I wanted to bring the basket, but she said that was the place to leave it.

  We said the kind of things a man and woman never say till they know each other through and through. It was all about ourselves, and love was one of the words I did not scruple to handle.

  We were not bothering about far-back times or Mistress Lindinnock; but when we came to the burn it minded me of what the Old Lady had said I would do in a certain hap. Miss Julie Logan demanded of me to repeat to her the exact words, which I did, with one exception, namely, ‘I could tell you things about her any one of which would make you drop her in the burn, though you were standing in the middle of it with the jade in your arms.’ I omitted the word jade, so as not to lessen the Old Lady.

  Miss Julie Logan was in a dance of delight and handed me back my coat, crying, ‘Adam, let us try it!’

  I said there was danger in it, and she said, ‘I like danger fine,’ and she coaxed me, saying, ‘When you have got me there I’ll tell you what the Old Lady meant, and then, if you don’t drop me, belike I will be yours, Adam.’ I lifted her in my arms, and in the exultation of my man’s strength she was like one without weight. I carried her into the burn. It was deep and sucking. She rubbed her head on my shoulder in a way that would make a man think she liked to be where she was. She peeped up at me, and hod. I am thinking now she was wae for both of us, though she was glittering too.

  She said, ‘Kiss me first, Adam, in case you have to drop me.’ I kissed her. ‘Hold me closer,’ she said, ‘lest by some dread undoing you should let me slip.’ I held her closer. ‘Adam dear,’ she said, ‘It is this, I am a Papist.’ At that awful word I dropped her in the burn. That she is still there I do not doubt, though I suppose she will have been carried farther down.

  I have written this clear statement in the study, to be shown by Laurie to Dr John and by him to the Branders constabulary. I have put down everything exactly as it happened, and I swear to its accuracy.

  I have refused to go to my bed this night, and I know that Laurie is sitting on a chair outside my door. I have told him none of the facts, but I can see that the man already suspects me.

  I can remember nothing after I heard the splash, but he says he found me running up and down the waterside, and that he had to take a high hand with me to get me home. I would not change out of my wet things for all his blustering, but Christily, her face swollen with misery, came bursting in and tore them off me and put me into something dry. This is the last service she will ever render to me.

  CHAPTER X.

  A QUARTER OF A CENTURY

  IT is a quarter of a century since I stopped writing this Diary and put the thing out of my sight. Circumstances made me want to look through it again; and there it was in the garret, between the same two boards of waxcloth where I had kept it hidden from Christily in the days of my windy youth. I had forgotten that it was written on sermon paper, and such dereliction from propriety disturbs my conscience now even more than the vapours set down in it about the Roman woman.

  Of course I am aware now that she never existed. I have been aware all these twentyfive years that I was the one who went queer, and not the self-sacrificing Christily, that it was to watch me that the man Laurie was brought to the manse, and that the story the Old Lady told me was invented for her by Dr John. My two good friends had to work their way through thorns to clear my disordered mind, but they managed it by the time the glen road had come up again like a spring flower.

  I was long pithless and bedded with fevers, for which the doctor blamed the burn, and in that quiet time I got rid of all my delusions; though once in the middle of my rally I escaped everybody and made for the sheep bield to decide for certain that the basket was not still there. I was perfectly sane, and yet I did that. The result of my escapade was to retard my recovery for another month.

  I left the glen for good early in August, just before the return of the English, with whom, though I liked them well, I had no desire to have further discourse about Diaries or what may seem to happen when that glen is locked. I have had two charges since I gave up my first, and for eighteen years I have been minister in this flourishing place in a mining district. Two years after my call I married a lady of the neighbourhood and it has been a blessed union, for my Mima is one in a thousand and the children grow in grace. I tell Mima everything except about the Roman, that being a passage in my life that never took place, nor have I sufficient intellect to be able to speak about it without doing so as if it were real.

  I am thankful to say that the Roman is to me as if she never had been (and of course she never was, that just being a slip of the pen). A Scottish minister has few topcoats in his life, and when any old clothes will suffice I sometimes wear the one that is in the Diary. Many a night in this part where the rain turns black as it alights, I have been out in the old topcoat without remembering how pretty she looked in it; and this is natural, for she never was in it.

  I have only once revisited my first charge, and it was a month ago. I stayed a night at Branders with Dr John, who has got a partner now. My old friend’s hold on life has become little more than a bat’s to a shutter, but he will still be at it, and some day I suppose he will be found among his own hills stiff and content.

  I walked down the glen through the heather, a solitary, unless it may be said that in a sense the young Adam I had been walked with me. The English were on the hills, but they were not my English.

  I lay for two nights in the old manse, and preached twice. They were not great sermons, but are held by some to be my two best, and I keep them for visits. The lad that once I was thought himself a gifted preacher, but the man he became knows better. That is nothing to boast of, for there is naught that houks the spirit from you so much as knowing better.

  Mr Gallacher, who is the new minister, the second in succession to me, was preaching at Branders, and his wife, a genteel thick lady, sat in my old pew, nearest the door. It gave me, may I be forgiven, a sort of scunner of her. G
allacher was very civil, but he is not the kind of man, I think, that the Old Lady would have waved goodnight to with her window-blind. She of course has been away with it this many a year.

  There is a new postman, who, ‘tis said, has trudged a distance equal to round the world since the days of my Posty. Christily is married on a provision merchant in Ireland, and once a year sends me a present of eggs, with a letter enquiring very guardedly about my health. Joanna Minch and the lass have gone to some other glen. The only faces I could give a name to in the Five Houses are the smith and two of his sons. The once lusty man is now an old carl sitting on his dyke, having reached that terrible time for a Scotsman of knowing that he will never be allowed by his well-intentioned offspring to do another day’s work for ever and ever. Sometimes, to give him an hour’s pride, they let him wheel a barrow. He will have to die gradual on a fine bed of straw, but he would rather be gotten with his hammer in his hands.

  There have been great changes at the manse, inside and out. One hardly knows the study now, for there is a sofa fornent the fireplace. It has a grate. They burn coal. I had sold the grandy to Mr Gallacher, and one could see by the look of it that it had never missed me. There is an erection containing a foreign plant on the identical spot where the Roman sat; but she never sat there.

  Outside, the chief change in the manse is that Mr Gallacher has lifted the henhouse to the gable-end, which I consider a great mistake. He has also cut down my gean tree.

  The glen has not been what can be called locked for the last eight years, and Mr Gallacher knows very little about the old superstitions that plagued young Adam. He had heard something nonsensical about a red-shanked man on a horse whose hoofs made no marks, a poor affair though unaccountable. Mr Gallacher was very sound about the hallucinations all being clavers unworthy of investigation, and on that point at least we were in agreement. I asked him, just to keep the conversation going, if any Stranger woman had been seen, but he had heard of none, nor could he, for there never was one.