James Matthew Barrie - The Complete Works of J. M. Barrie (With Illustrations)

That evening he was seen by many persons crossing the square. He went up the brae to his old home, and asked leave to go through the house for the last time. First he climbed up into the attic, and stood looking in, his feet still on the stair. Then he came down and stood at the door of the room, but he went into the kitchen.

"I'll ask one last favour o' ye," he said to the woman: "I would like ye to leave me here alane for juist a little while."

"I gaed oot," the woman said, "meanin' to leave 'im to 'imsel', but my bairn wouldna come, an' he said, 'Never mind her,' so I left her wi' 'im, an' closed the door. He was in a lang time, but I never kent what he did, for the bairn juist aye greets when I speir at her.

"I watched 'im frae the corner window gang doon the brae till he came to the corner. I thocht he turned round there an' stood lookin' at the hoose. He would see me better than I saw him for my lamp was i' the window, whaur I've heard tell his mother keepit her cruizey. When my man came in I speired at 'im if he'd seen onybody standin' at the corner o' the brae, an' he said he thocht he'd seen somebody wi' a little staff in his hand. Davit gaed doon to see if he was aye there after supper-time, but he was gone."

Jamie was never again seen in Thrums.

Table of Contents

Table of Contents

Chapter One. The Love-Light

Chapter Two. Runs Alongside the Making of a Minister

Chapter Three. The Night-Watchers

Chapter Four. First Coming of the Egyptian Woman

Chapter Five. A Warlike Chapter, Culminating in the Flouting of the Minister by the Woman

Chapter Six. In Which the Soldiers Meet the Amazons of Thrums

Chapter Seven. Has the Folly of Looking Into a Woman’s Eyes by Way of Text

Chapter Eight. 3 A.M.—Monstrous Audacity of the Woman

Chapter Nine. The Woman Considered in Absence—Adventures of a Military Cloak

Chapter Ten. First Sermon Against Women

Chapter Eleven. Tells in a Whisper of Man’s Fall During the Curling Season

Chapter Twelve. Tragedy of a Mud House

Chapter Thirteen. Second Coming of the Egyptian Woman

Chapter Fourteen. The Minister Dances to the Woman’s Piping

Chapter Fifteen. The Minister Bewitched—Second Sermon Against Women

Chapter Sixteen. Continued Misbehaviour of the Egyptian Woman

Chapter Seventeen. Intrusion of Haggart Into These Pages Against the Author’s Wish

Chapter Eighteen. Caddam—Love Leading to a Rupture

Chapter Nineteen. Circumstances Leading to the First Sermon in Approval of Women

Chapter Twenty. End of the State of Indecision

Chapter Twenty-One. Night—Margaret—Flashing of a Lantern

Chapter Twenty-Two. Lovers

Chapter Twenty-Three. Contains a Birth, Which is Sufficient for One Chapter

Chapter Twenty-Four. The New World, and the Woman Who May Not Dwell Therein

Chapter Twenty-Five. Beginning of the Twenty-Four Hours

Chapter Twenty-Six. Scene at the Spittal

Chapter Twenty-Seven. First Journey of the Dominie to Thrums During the Twenty-Four Hours

Chapter Twenty-Eight. The Hill Before Darkness Fell—Scene of the Impending Catastrophe

Chapter Twenty-Nine. Story of the Egyptian

Chapter Thirty. The Meeting for Rain

Chapter Thirty-One. Various Bodies Converging on the Hill

Chapter Thirty-Two. Leading Swiftly to the Appalling Marriage

Chapter Thirty-Three. While the Ten O’clock Bell was Ringing

Chapter Thirty-Four. The Great Rain

Chapter Thirty-Five. The Glen at Break of Day

Chapter Thirty-Six. Story of the Dominie

Chapter Thirty-Seven. Second Journey of the Dominie to Thrums During the Twenty-Four Hours

Chapter Thirty-Eight. Thrums During the Twenty-Four Hours—Defence of the Manse

Chapter Thirty-Nine. How Babbie Spent the Night of August Fourth

Chapter Forty. Babbie and Margaret—Defence of the Manse Continued

Chapter Forty-One. Rintoul and Babbie—Breakdown of the Defence of the Manse

Chapter Forty-Two. Margaret, the Precentor, and God Between

Chapter Forty-Three. Rain—Mist—The Jaws

Chapter Forty-Four. End of the Twenty-Four Hours

Chapter Forty-Five. Talk of a Little Maid Since Grown Tall

“I’LL GI’E YOU MY RABBIT,” MICAH SAID, “IF YOU’LL GANG AWA’.”

Table of Contents

Long ago, in the days when our caged blackbirds never saw a king’s soldier without whistling impudently, “Come ower the water to Charlie,” a minister of Thrums was to be married, but something happened, and he remained a bachelor. Then, when he was old, he passed in our square the lady who was to have been his wife, and her hair was white, but she, too, was still unmarried. The meeting had only one witness, a weaver, and he said solemnly afterwards, “They didna speak, but they just gave one another a look, and I saw the love-light in their een.” No more is remembered of these two, no being now living ever saw them, but the poetry that was in the soul of a battered weaver makes them human to us for ever.

It is of another minister I am to tell, but only to those who know that light when they see it. I am not bidding good-bye to many readers, for though it is true that some men, of whom Lord Rintoul was one, live to an old age without knowing love, few of us can have met them, and of women so incomplete I never heard.

Gavin Dishart was barely twenty-one when he and his mother came to Thrums, light-hearted like the traveller who knows not what awaits him at the bend of the road. It was the time of year when the ground is carpeted beneath the firs with brown needles, when split-nuts patter all day from the beech, and children lay yellow corn on the dominie’s desk to remind him that now they are needed in the fields. The day was so silent that carts could be heard rumbling a mile away. All Thrums was out in its wynds and closes—a few of the weavers still in knee-breeches—to look at the new Auld Licht minister. I was there too, the dominie of Glen Quharity, which is four miles from Thrums; and heavy was my heart as I stood afar off so that Gavin’s mother might not have the pain of seeing me. I was the only one in the crowd who looked at her more than at her son.

Eighteen years had passed since we parted. Already her hair had lost the brightness of its youth, and she seemed to me smaller and more fragile; and the face that I loved when I was a hobbledehoy, and loved when I looked once more upon it in Thrums, and always shall love till I die, was soft and worn. Margaret was an old woman, and she was only forty-three; and I am the man who made her old. As Gavin put his eager boyish face out at the carriage window, many saw that he was holding her hand, but none could be glad at the sight as the dominie was glad, looking on at a happiness in which he dared not mingle. Margaret was crying because she was so proud of her boy. Women do that. Poor sons to be proud of, good mothers, but I would not have you dry those tears.

A STREET IN THRUMS.

When the little minister looked out at the carriage window, many of the people drew back humbly, but a little boy in a red frock with black spots pressed forward and offered him a sticky parly, which Gavin accepted, though not without a tremor, for children were more terrible to him then than bearded men. The boy’s mother, trying not to look elated, bore him away, but her face said that he was made for life. With this little incident Gavin’s career in Thrums began. I remembered it suddenly the other day when wading across the wynd where it took place. Many scenes in the little minister’s life come back to me in this way. The first time I ever thought of writing his love story as an old man’s gift to a little maid since grown tall, was one night while I sat alone in the school-house; on my knees a fiddle that has been my only living companion since I sold my hens. My mind had drifted back to the first time I saw Gavin and the Egyptian together, and what set it wandering to that midnight meeting was my garden gate shaking in the wind. At a gate on the hill I had first encountered these two. It rattled in his hand, and I looked up and saw them, and neither knew why I had such cause to start at the sight. Then the gate swung to. It had just such a click as mine.