Her part on waking was merely to ring her bell, and so rouse Jean, for Margaret had given Gavin a promise to breakfast in bed, and remain there till her fire was lit. Accustomed all her life, however, to early rising, her feet were usually on the floor before she remembered her vow5, and then it was but a step to the window to survey the morning. To Margaret, who seldom went out, the weather was not of great moment, while it mattered much to Gavin, yet she always thought of it the first thing, and he not at all until he had to decide whether his companion should be an umbrella or a staff.
On this morning Margaret only noticed that there had been rain since Gavin came in. Forgetting that the water obscuring the outlook was on the other side of the panes6, she tried to brush it away with her fist. It was of the soldiers she was thinking. They might have been awaiting her appearance at the window as their signal to depart, for hardly had she raised the blind when they began their march out of Thrums. From the manse she could not see them, but she heard them, and she saw some people at the Tenements7 run 80 to their houses at sound of the drum. Other persons, less timid, followed the enemy with execrations halfway8 to Tilliedrum. Margaret, the only person, as it happened, then awake in the manse, stood listening for some time. In the summer-seat of the garden, however, there was another listener protected from her sight by thin spars.
Despite the lateness of the hour Margaret was too soft-hearted to rouse Jean, who had lain down in her clothes, trembling for her father. She went instead into Gavin’s room to look admiringly at him as he slept. Often Gavin woke to find that his mother had slipped in to save him the enormous trouble of opening a drawer for a clean collar, or of pouring the water into the basin with his own hand. Sometimes he caught her in the act of putting thick socks in the place of thin ones, and it must be admitted that her passion for keeping his belongings9 in boxes, and the boxes in secret places, and the secret places at the back of drawers, occasionally led to their being lost when wanted. “They are safe, at any rate, for I put them away some gait,” was then Margaret’s comfort, but less soothing10 to Gavin. Yet if he upbraided11 her in his hurry, it was to repent12 bitterly his temper the next instant, and to feel its effects more than she, temper being a weapon that we hold by the blade. When he awoke and saw her in his room he would pretend, unless he felt called upon to rage at her for self-neglect, to be still asleep, and then be filled with tenderness for her. A great writer has spoken sadly of the shock it would be to a mother to know her boy as he really is, but I think she often knows him better than he is known to cynical14 friends. We should be slower to think that the man at his worst is the real man, and certain that the better we are ourselves the less likely is he to be at his worst in our company. Every time he talks away his own character before us he is signifying contempt for ours.
81
On this morning Margaret only opened Gavin’s door to stand and look, for she was fearful of awakening15 him after his heavy night. Even before she saw that he still slept she noticed with surprise that, for the first time since he came to Thrums, he had put on his shutters16. She concluded that he had done this lest the light should rouse him. He was not sleeping pleasantly, for now he put his open hand before his face, as if to guard himself, and again he frowned and seemed to draw back from something. He pointed17 his finger sternly to the north, ordering the weavers18, his mother thought, to return to their homes, and then he muttered to himself so that she heard the words, “And if thy right hand offend thee cut it off, and cast it from thee, for it is profitable for thee that one of thy members should perish, and not that thy whole body should be cast into hell.” Then suddenly he bent19 forward, his eyes open and fixed20 on the window. Thus he sat, for the space of half a minute, like one listening with painful intentness. When he lay back Margaret slipped away. She knew he was living the night over again, but not of the divit his right hand had cast, nor of the woman in the garden.
Gavin was roused presently by the sound of voices from Margaret’s room, where Jean, who had now gathered much news, was giving it to her mistress. Jean’s cheerfulness would have told him that her father was safe had he not wakened to thoughts of the Egyptian. I suppose he was at the window in an instant, unsnibbing the shutters and looking out as cautiously as a burglar might have looked in. The Egyptian was gone from the summer-seat. He drew a great breath.
But his troubles were not over. He had just lifted his ewer21 of water when these words from the kitchen capsized it:—
“Ay, an Egyptian. That’s what the auld22 folk call a gypsy. Weel, Mrs. Dishart, she led police and sojers sic a dance through Thrums as would baffle description, 82 though I kent the fits and fors o’t as I dinna. Ay, but they gripped her in the end, and the queer thing is——”
Gavin listened to no more. He suddenly sat down. The queer thing, of course, was that she had been caught in his garden. Yes, and doubtless queerer things about this hussy and her “husband” were being bawled23 from door to door. To the girl’s probable sufferings he gave no heed24. What kind of man had he been a few hours ago to yield to the machinations of a woman who was so obviously the devil? Now he saw his folly25 in the face.
The tray in Jean’s hands clattered26 against the dresser, and Gavin sprang from his chair. He thought it was his elders at the front door.
In the parlour he found Margaret sorrowing for those whose mates had been torn from them, and Jean with a face flushed by talk. On ordinary occasions the majesty27 of the minister still cowed Jean, so that she could only gaze at him without shaking when in church, and then because she wore a veil. In the manse he was for taking a glance at sideways and then going away comforted, as a respectable woman may once or twice in a day look at her brooch in the pasteboard box as a means of helping28 her with her work. But with such a to-do in Thrums, and she the possessor of exclusive information, Jean’s reverence29 for Gavin only took her to-day as far as the door, where she lingered half in the parlour and half in the lobby, her eyes turned politely from the minister, but her ears his entirely30.
“I thought I heard Jean telling you about the capture of the—of an Egyptian woman,” Gavin said to his mother, nervously31.
“Did you cry to me?” Jean asked, turning round longingly32. “But maybe the mistress will tell you about the Egyptian hersel.”
“Has she been taken to Tilliedrum?” Gavin asked in a hollow voice.
83
“Sup up your porridge, Gavin,” Margaret said. “I’ll have no speaking about this terrible night till you’ve eaten something.”
“I have no appetite,” the minister replied, pushing his plate from him. “Jean, answer me.”
“’Deed, then,” said Jean willingly, “they hinna ta’en her to Tilliedrum.”
“For the reason that they couldna catch her,” Jean answered. “She spirited hersel awa’, the magerful crittur.”
“What! But I heard you say——”
“Ay, they had her aince, but they couldna keep her. It’s like a witch story. They had her safe in the town-house, and baith shirra and captain guarding her, and syne34 in a clink she wasna there. A’ nicht they looked for her, but she hadna left so muckle as a foot-print ahint her, and in the tail of the day they had to up wi’ their tap in their lap and march awa without her.”
Gavin’s appetite returned.
“Has she been seen since the soldiers went away?” he asked, laying down his spoon with a new fear. “Where is she now?”
“No human eye has seen her,” Jean answered impressively. “Whaur is she now? Whaur does the flies vanish to in winter? We ken13 they’re some gait, but whaur?”
“But what are the people saying about her?”
“Daft things,” said Jean. “Old Charles Yuill gangs the length o’ hinting that she’s dead and buried.”
“She could not have buried herself, Jean,” Margaret said, mildly.
“I dinna ken. Charles says she’s even capable o’ that.”
Then Jean retired35 reluctantly (but leaving the door ajar) and Gavin fell to on his porridge. He was now so cheerful that Margaret wondered.
84
“Less, you mean, mother,” Gavin said, with conviction. “She is a woman, and a sinful one.”
“Did you see her, Gavin?”
“The daring tawpie!” exclaimed Margaret.
“She is all that,” said the minister.
“Was she dressed just like an ordinary gypsy body? But you don’t notice clothes much, Gavin.”
“I noticed hers,” Gavin said, slowly, “she was in a green and red, I think, and barefooted.”
“Ay,” shouted Jean from the kitchen, startling both of them; “but she had a lang grey-like cloak too. She was seen jouking up closes in’t.”
Gavin rose, considerably37 annoyed, and shut the parlour door.
“Was she as bonny as folks say?” asked Margaret. “Jean says they speak of her beauty as unearthly.”
“Beauty of her kind,” Gavin explained learnedly, “is neither earthly nor heavenly.” He was seeing things as they are very clearly now. “What,” he said, “is mere physical beauty? Pooh!”
“And yet,” said Margaret, “the soul surely does speak through the face to some extent.”
“Do you really think so, mother?” Gavin asked, a little uneasily.
“I have always noticed it,” Margaret said, and then her son sighed.
“But I would let no face influence me a jot,” he said, recovering.
“Ah, Gavin, I’m thinking I’m the reason you pay so little regard to women’s faces. It’s no natural.”
“You’ve spoilt me, you see, mother, for ever caring for another woman. I would compare her to you, and then where would she be?”
85
“Sometime,” Margaret said, “you’ll think differently.”
“Never,” answered Gavin, with a violence that ended the conversation.
Soon afterwards he set off for the town, and in passing down the garden walk cast a guilty glance at the summer-seat. Something black was lying in one corner of it. He stopped irresolutely38, for his mother was nodding to him from her window. Then he disappeared into the little arbour. What had caught his eye was a Bible. On the previous day, as he now remembered, he had been called away while studying in the garden, and had left his Bible on the summer-seat, a pencil between its pages. Not often probably had the Egyptian passed a night in such company.
But what was this? Gavin had not to ask himself the question. The gypsy’s cloak was lying neatly39 folded at the other end of the seat. Why had the woman not taken it with her? Hardly had he put this question when another stood in front of it. What was to be done with the cloak? He dared not leave it there for Jean to discover. He could not take it into the manse in daylight. Beneath the seat was a tool-chest without a lid, and into this he crammed40 the cloak. Then, having turned the box face downwards41, he went about his duties. But many a time during the day he shivered to the marrow42, reflecting suddenly that at this very moment Jean might be carrying the accursed thing (at arms’ length, like a dog in disgrace) to his mother.
Now let those who think that Gavin has not yet paid toll43 for taking the road with the Egyptian, follow the adventures of the cloak. Shortly after gloaming fell that night Jean encountered her master in the lobby of the manse. He was carrying something, and when he saw her he slipped it behind his back. Had he passed her openly she would have suspected nothing, but this made her look at him.
86
“Why do you stare so, Jean?” Gavin asked, conscience-stricken, and he stood with his back to the wall until she had retired in bewilderment.
“I have noticed her watching me sharply all day,” he said to himself, though it was only he who had been watching her.
Gavin carried the cloak to his bedroom, thinking to lock it away in his chest, but it looked so wicked lying there that he seemed to see it after the lid was shut.
The garret was the best place for it. He took it out of the chest and was opening his door gently, when there was Jean again. She had been employed very innocently in his mother’s room, but he said tartly—
Gavin stowed the cloak beneath the garret bed, and an hour afterwards was engaged on his sermon, when he distinctly heard some one in the garret. He ran up the ladder with a terrible brow for Jean, but it was not Jean; it was Margaret.
“Mother,” he said in alarm, “what are you doing here?”
“I am only tidying up the garret, Gavin.”
“Yes, but—it is too cold for you. Did Jean—did Jean ask you to come up here?”
“Jean? She knows her place better.”
Gavin took Margaret down to the parlour, but his confidence in the garret had gone. He stole up the ladder again, dragged the cloak from its lurking45 place, and took it into the garden. He very nearly met Jean in the lobby again, but hearing him coming she fled precipitately46, which he thought very suspicious.
In the garden he dug a hole, and there buried the cloak, but even now he was not done with it. He was wakened early by a noise of scraping in the garden, and his first thought was “Jean!” But peering from the 87 window, he saw that the resurrectionist was a dog, which already had its teeth in the cloak.
That forenoon Gavin left the manse unostentatiously carrying a brown-paper parcel. He proceeded to the hill, and having dropped the parcel there, retired hurriedly. On his way home, nevertheless, he was over-taken by D. Fittis, who had been cutting down whins. Fittis had seen the parcel fall, and running after Gavin, returned it to him. Gavin thanked D. Fittis, and then sat down gloomily on the cemetery47 dyke48. Half an hour afterwards he flung the parcel into a Tillyloss garden.
In the evening Margaret had news for him, got from Jean.
“Do you remember, Gavin, that the Egyptian every one is still speaking of, wore a long cloak? Well, would you believe it, the cloak was Captain Halliwell’s, and she took it from the town-house when she escaped. She is supposed to have worn it inside out. He did not discover that it was gone until he was leaving Thrums.”
“Mother, is this possible?” Gavin said.
“The policeman, Wearyworld, has told it. He was ordered, it seems, to look for the cloak quietly, and to take any one into custody49 in whose possession it was found.”
“Has it been found?”
“No.”
The minister walked out of the parlour, for he could not trust his face. What was to be done now? The cloak was lying in mason Baxter’s garden, and Baxter was therefore, in all probability, within four-and-twenty hours of the Tilliedrum gaol50.
“Does Mr. Dishart ever wear a cap at nichts?” Femie Wilkie asked Sam’l Fairweather three hours later.
“Na, na, he has ower muckle respect for his lum 88 hat,” answered Sam’l; “and richtly, for it’s the crowning stone o’ the edifice51.”
“Then it couldna hae been him I met at the back o’ Tillyloss the now,” said Femie, “though like him it was. He joukit back when he saw me.”
While Femie was telling her story in the Tenements, mason Baxter, standing52 at the window which looked into his garden, was shouting, “Wha’s that in my yard?” There was no answer, and Baxter closed his window, under the impression that he had been speaking to a cat. The man in the cap then emerged from the corner where he had been crouching53, and stealthily felt for something among the cabbages and pea sticks. It was no longer there, however, and by-and-by he retired empty-handed.
“The Egyptian’s cloak has been found,” Margaret was able to tell Gavin next day. “Mason Baxter found it yesterday afternoon.”
“In his garden?” Gavin asked hurriedly.
“No; in the quarry54, he says, but according to Jean he is known not to have been at the quarry to-day. Some seem to think that the gypsy gave him the cloak for helping her to escape, and that he has delivered it up lest he should get into difficulties.”
“Whom has he given it to, mother?” Gavin asked.
“To the policeman.”
“And has Wearyworld sent it back to Halliwell?”
“Yes. He told Jean he sent it off at once, with the information that the masons had found it in the quarry.”
The next day was Sabbath, when a new trial, now to be told, awaited Gavin in the pulpit; but it had nothing to do with the cloak, of which I may here record the end. Wearyworld had not forwarded it to its owner; Meggy, his wife, took care of that. It made its reappearance in Thrums, several months after the riot, as two pairs of Sabbath breeks for her sons, James and Andrew.
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1
dire
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| adj.可怕的，悲惨的，阴惨的，极端的 | |
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softened
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| （使）变软( soften的过去式和过去分词 )； 缓解打击； 缓和； 安慰 | |
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distress
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| n.苦恼，痛苦，不舒适；不幸；vt.使悲痛 | |
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mere
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| adj.纯粹的；仅仅，只不过 | |
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vow
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| n.誓(言)，誓约；v.起誓，立誓 | |
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panes
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| 窗玻璃( pane的名词复数 ) | |
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tenements
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| n.房屋，住户，租房子( tenement的名词复数 ) | |
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halfway
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| adj.中途的，不彻底的，部分的；adv.半路地，在中途，在半途 | |
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belongings
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| n.私人物品，私人财物 | |
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soothing
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| adj.慰藉的；使人宽心的；镇静的 | |
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upbraided
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| v.责备，申斥，谴责( upbraid的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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repent
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| v.悔悟，悔改，忏悔，后悔 | |
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ken
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| n.视野，知识领域 | |
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cynical
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| adj.(对人性或动机)怀疑的，不信世道向善的 | |
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awakening
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| n.觉醒，醒悟 adj.觉醒中的；唤醒的 | |
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shutters
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| 百叶窗( shutter的名词复数 )； （照相机的）快门 | |
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pointed
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| adj.尖的，直截了当的 | |
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weavers
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| 织工，编织者( weaver的名词复数 ) | |
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bent
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| n.爱好，癖好；adj.弯的；决心的，一心的 | |
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fixed
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| adj.固定的，不变的，准备好的；(计算机)固定的 | |
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ewer
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| n.大口水罐 | |
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auld
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| adj.老的，旧的 | |
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bawled
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| v.大叫，大喊( bawl的过去式和过去分词 )；放声大哭；大声叫出；叫卖（货物） | |
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heed
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| v.注意，留意；n.注意，留心 | |
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folly
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| n.愚笨，愚蠢，蠢事，蠢行，傻话 | |
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clattered
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| 发出咔哒声（clatter的过去式与过去分词形式） | |
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majesty
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| n.雄伟，壮丽，庄严，威严；最高权威，王权 | |
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helping
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| n.食物的一份&adj.帮助人的，辅助的 | |
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reverence
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| n.敬畏，尊敬，尊严；Reverence:对某些基督教神职人员的尊称；v.尊敬，敬畏，崇敬 | |
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entirely
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| ad.全部地，完整地；完全地，彻底地 | |
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nervously
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| adv.神情激动地，不安地 | |
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longingly
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| adv. 渴望地 热望地 | |
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dread
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| vt.担忧，忧虑；惧怕，不敢；n.担忧，畏惧 | |
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syne
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| adv.自彼时至此时，曾经 | |
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retired
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| adj.隐退的，退休的，退役的 | |
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flouted
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| v.藐视，轻视( flout的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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considerably
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| adv.极大地；相当大地；在很大程度上 | |
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irresolutely
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| adv.优柔寡断地 | |
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neatly
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| adv.整洁地，干净地，灵巧地，熟练地 | |
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crammed
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| adj.塞满的，挤满的；大口地吃；快速贪婪地吃v.把…塞满；填入；临时抱佛脚( cram的过去式) | |
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downwards
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| adj./adv.向下的（地），下行的（地） | |
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marrow
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| n.骨髓；精华；活力 | |
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toll
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| n.过路(桥)费；损失，伤亡人数；v.敲(钟) | |
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apron
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| n.围裙；工作裙 | |
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lurking
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| 潜在 | |
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precipitately
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| adv.猛进地 | |
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cemetery
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| n.坟墓，墓地，坟场 | |
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48
dyke
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| n.堤，水坝，排水沟 | |
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custody
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| n.监护，照看，羁押，拘留 | |
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50
gaol
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| n.(jail)监狱；(不加冠词)监禁；vt.使…坐牢 | |
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51
edifice
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| n.宏伟的建筑物(如宫殿，教室) | |
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52
standing
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| n.持续，地位；adj.永久的，不动的，直立的，不流动的 | |
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53
crouching
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| v.屈膝，蹲伏( crouch的现在分词 ) | |
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quarry
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| n.采石场；v.采石；费力地找 | |
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