Were Jess still alive to tell the life-story of Sam'l Fletcher and his wife, you could not hear it and sit still. The ghost cradle is but a page from the black history of a woman who married, to be blotted¹ out from that hour. One case of the kind I myself have known, of a woman so good mated to a man so selfish that I cannot think of her even now with a steady mouth. Hers was the tragedy of living on, more mournful than the tragedy that kills. In Thrums the weavers² spoke⁴ of "lousing" from their looms⁵, removing the chains, and there is something woeful in that. But pity poor Nanny Coutts, who took her chains to bed with her.  
Nanny was buried a month or more before I came to the house on the brae, and even in Thrums the dead are seldom remembered for so long a time as that. But it was only after Sanders was left alone that we learned what a woman she had been, and how basely we had wronged her. She was an angel, Sanders went about whining⁷ when he had no longer a woman to ill-treat. He had this sentimental⁸ way with him, but it lost its effect after we knew the man.
 
"A deevil couldna hae deserved waur treatment," Tammas Haggart said to him; "gang oot o' my sicht, man."
 
"I'll blame mysel till I die," Jess said, with tears in her eyes, "for no understandin' puir Nanny better."
 
So Nanny got sympathy at last, but not until her forgiving soul had left her tortured body. There was many a kindly⁹ heart in Thrums that would have gone out to her in her lifetime, but we could not have loved her without upbraiding¹⁰ him, and she would not buy sympathy at the price. What a little story it is, and how few words are required to tell it! He was a bad husband to her, and she kept it secret. That is Nanny's life summed up. It is all that was left behind when her coffin¹¹ went down the brae. Did she love him to the end, or was she only doing what she thought her duty? It is not for me even to guess. A good woman who suffers is altogether beyond man's reckoning. To such heights of self-sacrifice we cannot rise. It crushes us; it ought to crush us on to our knees. For us who saw Nanny, infirm, shrunken, and so weary, yet a type of the noblest womanhood, suffering for years, and misunderstood her to the end, what expiation¹³ can there be? I do not want to storm at the man who made her life so burdensome. Too many years have passed for that, nor would Nanny take it kindly if I called her man names.
 
Sanders worked little after his marriage. He had a sore back, he said, which became a torture if he leant forward at his loom⁶. What truth there was in this I cannot say, but not every weaver³ in Thrums could "louse" when his back grew sore. Nanny went to the loom in his place, filling as well as weaving, and he walked about, dressed better than the common, and with cheerful words for those who had time to listen. Nanny got no approval even for doing his work as well as her own, for they were understood to have money, and Sanders let us think her merely greedy. We drifted into his opinions.
 
Had Jess been one of those who could go about, she would, I think, have read Nanny better than the rest of us, for her intellect was bright, and always led her straight to her neighbours' hearts. But Nanny visited no one, and so Jess only knew her by hearsay¹⁴. Nanny's standoffishness, as it was called, was not a popular virtue¹⁵, and she was blamed still more for trying to keep her husband out of other people's houses. He was so frank and full of gossip, and she was so reserved. He would go everywhere, and she nowhere. He had been known to ask neighbours to tea, and she had shown that she wanted them away, or even begged them not to come. We were not accustomed to go behind the face of a thing, and so we set down Nanny's inhospitality to churlishness or greed. Only after her death, when other women had to attend him, did we get to know what a tyrant¹⁶ Sanders was at his own hearth¹⁷. The ambition of Nanny's life was that we should never know it, that we should continue

Join or Log In! You need to log in to continue reading

Create a new account   I have a account already

	Create an New Account
Email:  (User Name)
Password:	Letters and numbers only. 6-20 characters.
Retype Password:
Screen Name:	Letters and numbers only. 6-50 Characters.
Confirmation Code:	(Please type in the characters in the green image.)

	Login into Your Account
Email:
Password:
	Remember me on this computer.