When a Man's Single: A Tale of Literary Life

'Ye was lang in gettin' a man yersel, Jinny,' said Tammas to an elderly woman.

'Fower-an'-forty year,' replied Jinny. 'It was like a stockin', lang i' the futin', but turned at last.'

'Lasses nooadays,' said the old woman who smoked, 'is partikler by what they used to be. I mind when Jeames Gowrie speired me: "Ye wud raither hae Davit Curly, I ken," he says. "I dinna deny 't," I says, for the thing was well kent, "but ye'll do vara weel, Jeames," says I, an' mairy him I did.'

'He was a harmless crittur, Jeames,' said Haggart, 'but queer. Ay, he was full o' maggots.'

'Ay,' said Jeames's widow, 'but though it's no for me to say 't, he deid a deacon.'

'There's some rale queer wys o' speirin' a wuman,' began the mole-catcher.

'Vary true, Jamie,' said a stone-breaker. 'I mind hoo – '

'There was a chappy ower by Blair,' continued Jamie, raising his voice, ''at micht hae been a single man to this day if it hadna been for the toothache.'

'Ay, man?'

'Joey Fargus was the stock's name. He was oncommon troubled wi' the toothache till he found a cure.'

'I didna ken o' ony cure for sair teeth?'

'Joey's cure was to pour cauld watter strecht on into his mooth for the maiter o' twa 'oors, an' ae day he cam into Blair an' found Jess McTaggart (a speerity bit thingy she was – ou, she was so) fair greetin' wi' sair teeth. Joey advised the crittur to try his cure, an' when he left she was pourin' the watter into her mooth ower the sink. Weel, it so happened 'at Joey was in Blair again aboot twa month after, an' he gies a cry in at Willie's – that's Jess's father's, as ye'll un'erstan'. Ay, then, Jess had haen anither fit o' the toothache, an' she was hingin' ower the sink wi' a tanker o' watter in her han', just as she'd been when he saw her last. "What!" says Joey, wi' rale consairn, "nae better yet?" The stock thocht she had been haddin' gaen at the watter a' thae twa month.'

'I call to mind,' the stone-breaker broke in again, 'hoo a body – '

'So,' continued Jamie, 'Joey cudna help but admire the patience o' the lassie, an' says he, "Jess," he says, "come oot by to Mortar Pits, an' try oor well." That's hoo Joey Fargus speired's wife, an' if ye dinna believe's, ye've nae mair to do but ging to Mortar Pits an' see the well yersels.'

'I recall,' said the stone-breaker, 'a vary neat case o' speirin'. It was Jocky Wilkie, him 'at's brither was grieve to Broken Busses, an' the lass was Leeby Lunan. She was aye puttin' Jocky aff when he was on the point o' speirin' her, keepin' 'im hingin' on the hook like a trout, as ye may say, an' takkin her fling wi' ither lads at the same time.'

'Ay, I've kent them do that.'

'Weel, it fair maddened Jocky, so ae nicht he gings to her father's hoose wi' a present o' a grand thimble to her in his pooch, an' afore the hale hoosehold he perdooces't an' flings't wi' a bang on the dresser:

"Tak it," he says to Leeby, "or leave't." In coorse the thing's bein' done sae public-like, Leeby kent she had to mak up her mind there an' then. Ay, she took it.'

'But hoo did ye speir Chirsty yersel, Dan'l?' asked Jinny of the speaker.

There was a laugh at this, for, as was well known, Dan'l had jilted Chirsty.

'I never kent I had speired,' replied the stone-breaker, 'till Chirsty told me.'

'Ye'll no say ye wasna fond o' her?'

'Sometimes I was, an' syne at other times I was indifferent-like. The mair I thocht o't the mair risky I saw it was, so i' the tail o' the day I says to Chirsty, says I, "Na, na, Chirsty, lat's be as I am."'

'They say she took on terrible, Dan'l.'

'Ay, nae doot, but a man has 'imsel to conseeder.'

By this time they had crossed the moor of whins. It was a cold, still evening, and as they paused before climbing down into the town they heard the tinkle of a bell.

'That's Snecky's bell,' said the mole-catcher; 'what can he be cryin' at this time o' nicht?'

'There's something far wrang,' said one of the women. 'Look, a'body's rinnin' to the square.'

The troubled look returned to Tammas Haggart's face, and he stopped to look back across the fast-darkening moor.

'Did ony o' ye see little Davy Dundas, the saw-miller's bairny?' he began.

At that moment a young man swept by. His teeth were clenched, his eyes glaring.

'Speak o' the deil,' said the mole-catcher; 'that was Rob Angus.'

CHAPTER II

ROB BECOMES FREE

As Haggart hobbled down into the square, in the mole-catcher's rear, Hobart's cracked bell tinkled up the back-wynd, and immediately afterwards the bellman took his stand by the side of Tam Peter's fish-cart. Snecky gave his audience time to gather, for not every day was it given to him to cry a lost bairn. The words fell slowly from his reluctant lips. Before he flung back his head and ejected his proclamation in a series of puffs he was the possessor of exclusive news, but his tongue had hardly ceased to roll round the concluding sentence when the crowd took up the cry themselves. Wives flinging open their windows shouted their fears across the wynds. Davy Dundas had wandered from the kirkyard, where Rob had left her in Kitty Wilkie's charge till he returned from the woods. What had Kitty been about? It was believed that the litlin had taken with her a letter that had come for Rob. Was Rob back from the woods yet? Ay, he had scoured the whole countryside already for her.

Men gathered on the saw-mill brig, looking perplexedly at the burn that swivelled at this point, a sawdust colour, between wooden boards; but the women pressed their bairns closely to their wrappers and gazed in each other's face.

A log of wood, with which some one had sought to improvise a fire between the bricks that narrowed Rob Angus's grate, turned peevishly to charcoal without casting much light on the men and women in the saw-mill kitchen. Already the burn had been searched near the mill, with Rob's white face staring at the searchers from his door.

The room was small and close. A closet-bed with the door off afforded seats for several persons; and Davit Lunan, the tinsmith, who could read Homer with Rob in the original, sat clumsily on the dresser. The pendulum of a wag-at-the-wa' clock swung silently against the wall, casting a mouse-like shadow on the hearth. Over the mantelpiece was a sampler in many colours, the work of Rob's mother when she was still a maid. The bookcase, fitted into a recess that had once held a press, was Rob's own handiwork, and contained more books than any other house in Thrums. Overhead the thick wooden rafters were crossed with saws and staves.

There was a painful silence in the gloomy room. Snecky Hobart tried to break the log in the fireplace, using his leg as a poker, but desisted when he saw every eye turned on him. A glitter of sparks shot up the chimney, and the starling in the window began to whistle. Pete Todd looked undecidedly at the minister, and, lifting a sack, flung it over the bird's cage, as if anticipating the worst. In Thrums they veil their cages if there is a death in the house.

'What do ye mean, Pete Todd?' cried Rob Angus fiercely.

His voice broke, but he seized the sack and cast it on the floor. The starling, however, whistled no more.

Looking as if he could strike Pete Todd, Rob stood in the centre of his kitchen, a saw-miller for the last time. Though they did not know it, his neighbours there were photographing him in their minds, and their children were destined to gape in the days to come over descriptions of Rob Angus in corduroys.

These pictures showed a broad-shouldered man of twenty-six, whose face was already rugged. A short brown beard hid the heavy chin, and the lips were locked as if Rob feared to show that he was anxious about the child. His clear grey eyes were younger-looking than his forehead, and the swollen balls beneath them suggested a student rather than a working man. His hands were too tanned and hard ever to be white, and he delved a little in his walk, as if he felt uncomfortable without a weight on his back. He was the best saw-miller in his county, but his ambition would have scared his customers had he not kept it to himself. Many a time strangers had stared at him as he strode along the Whunny road, and wondered what made this stalwart man whirl the axe that he had been using as a staff. Then Rob was thinking of the man he was going to be when he could safely leave little Davy behind him, and it was not the firs of the Whunny wood that were in his eye, but a roaring city and a saw-miller taking it by the throat. There had been a time when he bore no love for the bairn who came between him and his career.

Rob was so tall that he could stand erect in but few rooms in Thrums, and long afterwards, when very different doors opened to him, he still involuntarily ducked, as he crossed a threshold, to save his head. Up to the day on which Davy wandered from home he had never lifted his hat to a lady; when he did that the influence of Thrums would be broken for ever.

'It's oncommon foolish o' Rob,' said Pete Todd, retreating to the side of the mole-catcher, 'no to be mair resigned-like.'

'It's his ind'pendence,' answered Jamie; 'ay, the wricht was sayin' the noo, says he, "If Davy's deid, Rob'll mak the coffin 'imsel, he's sae michty ind'pendent."'

Tammas Haggart stumbled into the saw-miller's kitchen. It would have been a womanish kind of thing to fling-to the door behind him.

'Fine growin' day, Rob,' he said deliberately.

'It is so, Tammas,' answered the saw-miller hospitably, for Haggart had been his father's bosom friend.

'No much drowth, I'm thinkin',' said Hobart, relieved by the turn the conversation had taken.