Shenac's Work at Home Part 9

Few people made the labour of the week an excuse for turning the Sabbath into a day of rest for the body only. The old hereditary respect for G.o.d's day and house still prevailed among them, and the great, grey, barn-like house of worship, which had been among the first built in the settlement, was always filled to overflowing with a grave and reverent congregation.

But among them, during all that long summer, Shenac was seldom seen.

Her mother went when it was not too warm to walk the long three miles that lay between their house and the kirk, or when she got a seat in a neighbour's waggon; and Hamish and Dan were seldom away. But Shenac as seldom went.

"What is the use of going?" she said, in answer to her mother's expostulations, "when I fall asleep the moment the text is given out.

It's easy to say I should pay attention to the sermon. The minister's voice would put me to sleep if I were standing at the wheel. Sometimes it takes the sound of the water, and sometimes of the wind; but it's hush-a-by that it says to me all the time. And, mother, I think it's a shame to sleep in the kirk, like old Donald or Elspat Smith. Somebody must stay at home, and it may as well be me."

I daresay it was not altogether the fault of the minister that Shenac fell asleep, though his voice was a drowsy drone to many a one besides her. The week's activity was quite sufficient to account for her drowsiness, to say nothing of the bright sunshine streaming in through ten uncurtained windows, and the air growing heavy with the breathing of a mult.i.tude. Shenac tried stoutly, once and again; but it would not do.

The very earnestness with which she fixed her eyes on the kindly, inanimate face of the minister hastened the slumber; and, touched by her mother or Hamish, she would waken to see two or three pairs of laughing eyes fastened upon her. Indeed she did think it a shame; but it was a hard struggle listening to words which bore little interest, scarcely a meaning, to her. So she stayed at home, and made the Sabbath-day a day of rest literally; for as soon as the others were away, and her light household tasks finished, she took her book and fell asleep, as surely, and far more comfortably, than she did when she went to the kirk; so that, as a day in which to grow wiser and better, the Sabbath was lost to Shenac.

She was by no means satisfied with herself because of this, for in her heart she did not believe her weariness was a sufficient excuse for staying away from the kirk; so whenever there was a meeting of any sort in the school-house, which happened once a month generally, Shenac was sure to be there. It was close by, and it was in the evening, and she could take Flora and her little brothers, who could seldom go so far as the kirk.

"Shenac," said her cousin one day, "why were you not at the kirk last Sabbath? Such a fine day as it was; and to think of your letting Hamish go by himself!"

"He did not go by himself; Dan went with him, and you came home with him. And I did go to the kirk--at least I went to the school-house, where old Mr Forbes preached," said Shenac.

"Toch!" exclaimed Shenac Dhu scornfully; "do you call _that_ going to the kirk? Yon poor old body--do you call _him_ a minister? They say he used to make shoes at home. I'm amazed at you, Shenac! you that's held up to the rest of us as a woman of sense!"

Shenac Bhan laughed.

"Oh, as to his making shoes, you mind Paul made tents; and his sermons are just like other folk's sermons: I see no difference."

"The texts are like other folk's, you mean," said Shenac Dhu slyly. "I daresay you take a nap when he's preaching."

"No," said Shenac Bhan, not at all offended; "that's just the difference. I never sleep in the school-house. I suppose because it's cool, and I have a sleep before I go," she added candidly. "But as for the sermons, they are just like other folk's."

"But that is nonsense," said Shenac Dhu. "He's just a common man, and does not even preach in Gaelic."

"But our Shenac would say Paul did not do that, nor Dr Chalmers, nor plenty more," said Hamish, laughing.

"Hamish," said Shenac Dhu severely, "don't encourage her in what is wrong. Elder McMillan says it's wrong to go, and so does my father.

They don't even sing the Psalms, they say."

"That's nonsense, at any rate," said Shenac Bhan. "The very last Sabbath they sang,--

"'I to the hills will lift mine eyes.'

"You can tell the elder that, and your father, if it will be any consolation to them."

"Our Shenac sang it," said little Hugh. "John Keith wasn't there, and the minister himself began the tune of Dundee. You should have heard him when he came to the high part."

"I've heard him," said Shenac Dhu; and she raised her voice in a shrill, broken quaver, that made them all laugh, though Shenac Bhan was indignant too, and bade her cousin mind about the bears that tore the mocking children.

"But our Shenac sang it after, and me and little Flora," continued Hugh.

"And, Shenac, what was it that the minister said afterwards about the new song?"

But Shenac would have no more said about it. She cared very little for Shenac Dhu's opinion, or for her father's either. She went to the school whenever the old man held a meeting there, and took the children with her. It was a great deal less trouble than taking them all so far as to the kirk, she told her mother; and whatever the elder and Angus Dhu might say, the old man's sermons were just like other folk's sermons.

About this time there came a letter from Allister. The tidings of his father's death had reached him just as he was about to start for the mining district with his cousin and others; he had entered into engagements which made it necessary for him to go with them,--or he thought so. He said he would return home as soon as possible; but for the sake of all there he must not come till he had at least got gold enough to pay the debt, so that he might start fair. He could not, at so great a distance, advise his mother what to do; but he knew she had kind friends and neighbours, who would not let things go wrong till he came home, which would be at the earliest possible day. In the meantime, he sent some money--not much, but all he had--and he begged his mother to keep her courage up, for the sake of the children with her, and for his sake who was far away.

This letter had been so long in coming, that somehow they had fallen into the way of thinking that there would be no letter, but that Allister must be on his way; so, when Shenac got it, it was with many doubts and fears that she carried it home to her mother. She dreaded the effect this disappointment might have on her in her enfeebled state, and shrank in dismay from a renewal of the scenes that had followed her father's death and the burning of the house.

But she need not have feared. It was indeed a disappointment to the mother that the coming home of her son must be delayed, and she grieved for a day or two. But everything went on just as usual, and gradually she settled down contentedly to her spinning and knitting again; and you may be sure that whatever troubles fell to the lot of Shenac, she did not suffer her mother to be worried by them.

And Shenac had many anxieties about this time. Of course she had none peculiar to herself; that is, she had none which were not shared by Hamish, and in a certain sense by Dan. But Hamish would have been content with moderate things. Just to rub on as quietly and easily as possible till Allister came home, was all he thought they should try to do. And as for Dan, the future and its troubles lay very lightly on him.

But with Shenac it was different. That the hay and grain were safely in was by no means enough to satisfy her. If Allister had been coming soon, it might have been; but now there was the fall ploughing, and the sowing of the wheat, and the flax must be broken and dressed, and the winter's wood must be got up, and there were fifty other things that ought to be done before the snow came. There was far more to do than could be done by herself, or she would not have fretted. But when Hamish told her to "take no thought for the morrow," and that she ought to trust as well as work, she lost patience with him. And when Dan quoted Angus Dhu, and spoke vaguely of what must be done in the spring, quite losing sight of what lay ready at his hand to do, she nearly lost patience with him too. Not quite, though. It was a perilous experiment to try on Dan--a boy who might be led, but who would not be driven; and many a time Shenac wearied herself with efforts so to arrange matters that what fell to Dan to do might seem to be his own proposal, and many a time he was suffered to do things in his own way, though his way was not always the best, because otherwise there was some danger that he would not do them at all.

Not that Dan was a bad boy, or very wilful, considering all things. But he was approaching the age when boys are supposed to see very clearly their masculine superiority; and to be directed by a woman how to do a man's work was more than a man could stand.

If he could have been trusted, Shenac thought, she would gladly have given up to him the guidance of affairs, and put herself at his disposal to be directed. Perhaps she was mistaken in this. She enjoyed the leadership. She enjoyed encountering and conquering difficulties. She enjoyed astonishing (and, as she thought, disappointing) Angus Dhu; and though she would have scorned the thought, she enjoyed the knowledge that all the neighbours saw and wondered at, and gave her the credit of, the successful summer's work.

But her being willing or unwilling made no difference. Dan was not old enough nor wise enough to be trusted with the management. The burden of care must fall on her, and the burden of labour too; and she set herself to the task with more intentness than ever when the letter came saying that Allister was not coming home.

CHAPTER NINE.

It was a bright day in the end of September. Shenac had been busy at the wheel all the morning, but the very last thread of their flannel was spun now. The wheel was put away, and Shenac stood before her mother, dressed in her black gown made for mourning when her father died. Her mother looked surprised, for this gown was never worn except at church, or when a visit was to be made.

"Mother," said Shenac, "I have made ready the children's supper, and filled the sacks in case Dan should want to go to the mill, and I want to go over to see if Shenac and Maggie can come some day to help me with the flax."

The mother a.s.sented, well pleased, for it was a long time since Shenac had gone to the house of Angus Dhu of her own will.

"And, mother, maybe I'll go with Shenac as far as The Eleventh. It's a long time since I have seen Mary Matheson, and I'll be home before dark."

"Well, well, go surely, if you like," said her mother; "and you might speak to McLean about the flannel, and bespeak McCallum the tailor to come as soon as he can to make the lads' clothes; and you might ask about the shoes."

"Yes, mother, I'll mind them all. I'll just speak to Hamish first, and then I'll away."

Hamish was in the garden digging and smoothing the ground where their summer's potatoes had grown, because he had nothing else to do, he said, and it would be so much done before the spring. Shenac seated herself on the fence, and began pulling, one by one, the brown oak leaves that hung low over it. There was no gate to the garden. It was doubtful whether a gate could have been made with sufficient strength, or fastened with sufficient ingenuity, to prevent the incursions of the pigs and calves, which, now that the fields were clear from grain, were permitted to wander over them at their will. So the garden was entered by a sort of stile--a board was placed with one end on the ground, and the other on the middle rail of the fence--and it was on this that Shenac sat down.

"Hamish," she said after a little, "what do you think of my asking John Firinn to plough the land for the wheat--and to sow it too, for that matter?"

"I don't think you had better call him by _that_ name, if you want him to do you a favour," said Hamish, laughing. "But why ask John Firinn of all the folk in the world?"

("Firinn" is the Gaelic name for "truth," and it was added to the name of one of the many John McDonalds of the neighbourhood; not, I am sorry to say, because he always spoke the truth, but because he did not.)

Shenac laughed.

"No; it's not likely. But I'm doing it for him because his wife has been sick all the summer, and has not a thread of her wool spun yet, and I am going to change work with them."

"But, Shenac," said Hamish gravely, "does our mother know? I am sure she will think you have enough to do at home, without going to spin at John Firinn's."

"I should not go there, of course; they must let me bring the wool home.

And there's no use in telling my mother till I see whether they'll agree. It would only vex her. And, Hamish, it's all nonsense about my having too much to do. There's only the potatoes; and Hugh can bide at home from the school to gather them and the turnips, and Dan will be as well pleased if I leave them to him. I am only afraid that he has been fancying he is to plough, and he's not fit for it."

"No, he's not fit for it," said Hamish. "But I don't like John Firinn.

Is there no one else?"