THE infamy of Chirstie’s condition, becoming known, had been scarcely less interesting than the scandal of Isobel McLaughlin’s attitude toward it. She herself had told her sister and her sisters-in-law what was soon to be expected from the girl, and all her cousins and friends. She had informed them of it casually, without the flutter of an eyelid, as if, to be sure, a little less haste might have been from some points of view desirable, but, after all, Wully’s marriage was the one she would have chosen for him if she had had her choice, and the young pair would be happier with a baby. The neighbors had certainly never expected Isobel McLaughlin to “take on” in such a fashion. Some of them had been annoyed at times by her self-reliance, her full trust in her own powers, and were not exactly sorry to hear of this affair which must “set her down a notch.” But not a notch down would she go! Her pride, it appeared, was too strong for even this blow. The way she talked about her expectations scandalized the righteous. Maggie Stewart said one would have supposed Wully had waited ten years for that baby. It had been bad enough in the beginning, but after the child was born it grew out of all bounds. Her husband’s younger sister, Janet, a woman still[138] of childbearing age, came to remonstrate with her. For the sake of the other young people in the community, to say nothing of her own family of half-grown boys and girls, she really ought to moderate her raptures somewhat. She was just encouraging them in wrongdoing! But Isobel replied simply that since she had always had to be painfully modest in praising her own children, she was going to say exactly what she thought about this grandchild. She philosophized shamelessly about the privileges of grandmothers. And, after all, if she was his own grandmother who was saying it, Janet would have to acknowledge that the baby was an unusually fine child.
Janet did have to grant that. She was the first one, too, to notice the remarkable resemblance the child bore to his father. Isobel was grateful to her for that hint, and after that day no visitor departed without agreeing that wee Johnnie was a living picture of great Wully. Isobel would recall her son’s infant features. Wully’s nose had been just like that. And his eyes. She minded it well, now. This child brought it all back to her. She had occasion to repeat these reminiscences, for baby-judging, giving a decision about his family traits, was nothing less than a ritual among these Scots. A woman could hardly acquit herself with distinction in it with less than six or eight of her own. And men, even fathers of thirteen, knowing how far short of the occasion they would come, generally avoided it as best they might.
[139]Squire McLaughlin, of course, was just brazen enough to enjoy such a ceremony. He may have had some secret sympathy for Wully’s predicament, for he came over to inspect the child only a few days after it was born. The Squire was the playboy of the community. None of them ever took him seriously, and none failed to welcome him heartily in for a “crack.” It appears that even his absurd pretensions endeared him to his friends. He fancied himself a great lord, before an acre of his “estate” was subdued, and sang a silly song about gravel walks and peacocks. He never hauled a load of gravel to fill the mudhole before his cabin door. But he did the easier thing. He managed to have some gullible soul send him a pair of peacocks. They died promptly upon arrival. He said, laughing with the neighbors at himself, that it was the shock of seeing their laird barefooted that killed them. He was a farmer who rode forth to preside at theorizing agricultural meetings, while the forests of weeds on his land grew unchecked up to the heavens. (Even two years ago, the wild sunflowers near a culvert on that farm reached the telephone wires.) He was later on one of the first men west of the Mississippi to have pure-bred bulls, and east or west, no man confused pedigrees more convivially. From the first he considered it his duty to see that no Scottish folly was forgotten in the new world, or even hogmanay allowed to pass unobserved. He was the man who all but popularized curling in the west. Three times he[140] had been left an undaunted widower with a family of small, half-clothed children, his esteemed heirs and heiresses of only his gay fancies. Just now he was looking for a fourth helper to relieve him of the responsibilities of his family, and such a man he was that, in spite of his follies, all wished him success in the venture. He consulted Isobel about various possibilities and she gave him her opinion, with the frank statement that she pitied any woman who married him. However, he still liked her. He had always liked her since that time in Ayrshire, soon after she had married his older brother, when she had saved him from a long and well-earned term in prison for poaching. His successful pursuers were almost upon him when they turned suddenly in the wrong direction, from which they had just heard firing. She had seen his plight, and fired cunningly into the air, and when the men had rushed into her cottage they found only a young woman demurely sewing on baby clothes. Now since, of course, it was impossible to poach in a land where not even God preserved game, he was a reformed man, and an eminent huntsman. But sometimes he still said jovially that he might as well have gone to prison as to have to listen to all she said to him on that occasion. Even yet he was not averse to giving her occasions of finding fault with him.
So when she lifted the baby up for his inspection, he rose, and squinted down thoughtfully upon the little bundle. He turned his head appraisingly[141] from one side to the other. Then, knowing very well what she thought, he said recklessly;
“He’s a perfect little McNair, Isobel. He’s like Alex. That nose of his——”
She enlightened him stoutly. He persisted in his error, and only asked:
“What’s he called?”
Now what to name the child was a question not altogether easy for Wully, who had been standing near his mother, looking with proper paternal pride upon the child. Each McLaughlin named his first-born son, not boastingly, for himself, but gratefully, for his father; so that Johns and Williams came alternatingly down through the generations. That was the rub. Perhaps John McLaughlin might not relish having this irregular child bear his name. So Wully was too proud to seem to desire it.
“He’s such a husky little fighter for what he wants, we thought we’d call him Grant. There’s no better name than that, is there?”
His father was sitting by the stove, smoking, seeming as usual absorbed in a dream and only half-conscious of what was going on about him. At this he took his pipe from his mouth and said, without a sign of emotion;
“I wonder at you, Wully. The laddie’s name is John.”
Wully was greatly relieved.
“Oh, well,” he said lightly. “Maybe that would be better. There won’t be more than fourteen or[142] fifteen John McLaughlins about in twenty years. Grant’ll keep. We’ll save it for the next one.”
Wully had rejoiced beyond measure at the child’s birth, not for the reason some supposed, but solely because Chirstie was safely through her ordeal. So gay he had become, so light-hearted, after that burden of anxiety for her had been taken from him, that he seemed quite like a rejoicing young father. It had been terrible for him to see her time unescapably approaching. Those days seemed to him now like a nightmare. He had planned what he would say to his wife when he adopted her baby for his own. He would go blithely in, and cry to her gayly, “Where’s my son, Chirstie?” And the child would be his. He had planned that. But it had been different. That one irrepressible moan he had heard from her before his mother had sent him for the doctor had driven him through the night cursing. Cursing that man, whose very name he hated to recall, cursing any man who lightly forced such hours upon any woman—to say nothing of a dear woman like Chirstie. He wanted to kill such men, to pound them to bits. And yet, lightly or not lightly, what would his love of her bring her to, eventually, if not to such hours as these! It was a hellish night. Afterwards he had gone in to see her, not blithely, but otherwise. He had found her lying there, hollow-eyed, exhausted, all her strength taken from her, and her roundness, leaving her reduced, it seemed, to her essential womanhood. And then[143] suddenly he had not been able to see her for the tears that burned his eyes. He had knelt down beside her, to put his face near hers, so unseeing that she had cried sharply, “Don’t! Be careful!” He had hurt her! But her hand was seeking for his. When she had shown him the child—well he remembered that she had never asked him for pity for herself. But now her eyes were praying, “My baby! Love my baby, Wully!” With her lying there, even her familiar hands looking frail, her hair lying wearily against her pillow, if she had asked him to love a puppy, would he not have bent down to kiss it! Later he had marveled to see her with the child. A farmer, a man judging his very female animals by the sureness of their instincts for their young, he wouldn’t have wanted a wife not greatly maternal, he told himself. It came to be soon that in loving the child he was playing no r?le; he liked all his wife’s adornments.
So the terrible days passed away. His wife became altogethe............