A Window in Thrums | Page 2

manse, with Hendry's cot to
watch the brae. The house stood bare, without a shrub, in a garden
whose paling did not go all the way round, the potato pit being only
kept out of the road, that here sets off southward, by a broken dyke of
stones and earth. On each side of the slate-coloured door was a window
of knotted glass. Ropes were flung over the thatch to keep the roof on
in wind.
Into this humble abode I would take any one who cares to accompany
me. But you must not come in a contemptuous mood, thinking that the
poor are but a stage removed from beasts of burden, as some cruel
writers of these days say; nor will I have you turn over with your foot
the shabby horse-hair chairs that Leeby kept so speckless, and Hendry
weaved for years to buy, and Jess so loved to look upon.

I speak of the chairs, but if we go together into the "room" they will not
be visible to you. For a long time the house has been to let. Here, on the
left of the doorway, as we enter, is the room, without a shred of
furniture in it except the boards of two closed-in beds. The flooring is
not steady, and here and there holes have been eaten into the planks.
You can scarcely stand upright beneath the decaying ceiling. Worn
boards and ragged walls, and the rusty ribs fallen from the fireplace, are
all that meet your eyes, but I see a round, unsteady, waxcloth-covered
table, with four books lying at equal distances on it. There are six prim
chairs, two of them not to be sat upon, backed against the walls, and
between the window and the fireplace a chest of drawers, with a snowy
coverlet. On the drawers stands a board with coloured marbles for the
game of solitaire, and I have only to open the drawer with the loose
handle to bring out the dambrod. In the carved wood frame over the
window hangs Jamie's portrait; in the only other frame a picture of
Daniel in the den of lions, sewn by Leeby in wool. Over the
chimney-piece with its shells, in which the roar of the sea can be heard,
are strung three rows of birds' eggs. Once again we might be expecting
company to tea.
The passage is narrow. There is a square hole between the rafters, and a
ladder leading up to it. You may climb and look into the attic, as Jess
liked to hear me call my tiny garret-room. I am stiffer now than in the
days when I lodged with Jess during the summer holiday I am trying to
bring back, and there is no need for me to ascend. Do not laugh at the
newspapers with which Leeby papered the garret, nor at the yarn
Hendry stuffed into the windy holes. He did it to warm the house for
Jess. But the paper must have gone to pieces and the yarn rotted
decades ago.
I have kept the kitchen for the last, as Jamie did on the dire day of
which I shall have to tell. It has a flooring of stone now, where there
used only to be hard earth, and a broken pane in the window is
indifferently stuffed with rags. But it is the other window I turn to, with
a pain at my heart, and pride and fondness too, the square foot of glass
where Jess sat in her chair and looked down the brae.

[Illustration: The square foot of glass where Jess sat in her chair and
looked down the brae.]
Ah, that brae! The history of tragic little Thrums is sunk into it like the
stones it swallows in the winter. We have all found the brae long and
steep in the spring of life. Do you remember how the child you once
were sat at the foot of it and wondered if a new world began at the top?
It climbs from a shallow burn, and we used to sit on the brig a long
time before venturing to climb. As boys we ran up the brae. As men
and women, young and in our prime, we almost forgot that it was there.
But the autumn of life comes, and the brae grows steeper; then the
winter, and once again we are as the child pausing apprehensively on
the brig. Yet are we no longer the child; we look now for no new world
at the top, only for a little garden and a tiny house, and a handloom in
the house. It is only a garden of kail and potatoes, but there may be a
line of daisies, white and red, on each side of the narrow footpath,