Christine: A Fife Fisher Girl

“Lat them say their pleasure. They’ll say naething oot o’ the way, while I am here. They ken better.”

“Why not?”

“Because I hae promised ane and all o’ them to call a church session the first ill word I hear. I will hae their names read out frae the pulpit – christened name and surname – and then they will be oot o’ communion wi’ the kirk, till they confess their sin, standing up in the congregation, and asking to be forgiven. Will ye think o’ Sally Johnson, and Kitty Brawn, and a’ that crowd o’ sinful women making such a spectacle o’ themsel’s! Gar! It makes me laugh.” And she laughed, as women of the natural order do laugh, and such laughing is very contagious, and Christine laughed also, as she gurgled out, “You never would do a thing like that, Judith?”

“Wouldn’t I? Lat them try me.”

“The Domine wouldn’t do it.”

“He couldna help himsel’. It is in the ‘Ordering o’ the Kirk.’ He wad be forced to call the session, and I wouldn’t won’ner if he rayther liked the jarring occasion. He dislikes insulting women, and why shouldn’t he like to gie them a galling withstanding. It wad be vera desirable i’ my opinion.”

Cluny had said, in his letter, that his next voyage would be the last before their marriage, and that he would have to sweeten the next half year with the memories of his coming visit. So Christine killed her young, plump, spring chickens, and saved all her eggs, and provided every good thing she could for her expected lover.

The next three days were days taken out of this work-a-day world, and planted in Paradise. Everything appeared to unite to make them so. Judith looked after the house, the lovers wandered in the hill side garden. They were lovely days, green, shot with gold, and the whole sweet place was a caress of scent. The roses in Margot’s garden were in their first spring beauty, and the soul of a white jasmine vine, that surrounded the spot, breathed of heaven. The larkspurs stood around like watchful grenadiers. Lilies and pansies were at their feet, and the laburnum hung its golden droops above them. All the day long, the sea was blue and calm, and the waves seemed to roll themselves asleep upon the shore. At night, there was a full moon above the water, and in its light the projecting rigging of some ships lying on it looked like spider webs on the gray firmament. The sun, and the moon, and the sea were all new, and the whole world was their own.

Talk of their marriage no longer made trouble, for Christine now sweetly echoed his hopes and his dreams. She had said “on the fifteenth of next April, or there-abouts,” and Cluny seized and clung to the positive date. “Let it be the fifteenth,” he decided. “I cannot bear ‘there-abouts,’ or any other uncertainty.”

“The fifteenth might fall on a Sunday.”

“Then let it be Sunday. There can be no better day;” and Christine smiled and lifted her beautiful face, and he wanted to give her a thousand kisses. For nearly three days all the ancient ecstasies of love and youth were theirs. I need say no more. The morning redness of life and love has once tinged us all.

Judith went home the following day. Nothing less than the joys and sorrows and contentions of the whole village, were sufficient for her troubled and troubling spirit. Judith had everyone’s affairs to look after, but she gave the supremacy of her attention to Cluny and Christine. Christine, she said, was a by-ordinary girl. She had written a poem, and got gude siller for it, and there wasna anither lass in Culraine, no, nor i’ the hale o’ Scotland, could do the same thing.

Christine’s first employment was to put her house in perfect order, then she took out her old fisher dresses, and selected one for the work before her. She hoped that her effort to take her mother’s place in the kippering shed would put a stop to the fisherwives’ opinion that she was “setting hersel’ up aboon them a’.” She longed for their good will, and she had no desire whatever to “tak’ her mither’s outstanding place,” a fear of which intention some of the older women professed.

Her first visitor was her brother Norman. He put a stop at once to all her good and kind intentions. “You mustna go near the kippering,” he said. “I hae heard what must put a stop to that intent. The herrin’ are near by, and may be here tonight. If so be, I will send my lad, Willie, to the foot o’ the hill wi’ your feesh, by five o’clock in the morning. He will carry your basket easy, and do your bidding in a’ things. Gae yer ways to the town, and cry your feesh, and you’ll hae the siller in your hand when you come hame.”

“Why can I not kipper my fish, Norman?”

“It isna worth while tellin’ ye. God alone understands quarrelsome women, but if you go to the kippering-shed, there will be trouble – and trouble for me, Christine – for Jessy is in wi’ them.”

“I will do as you tell me, Norman. Hae the fish ready at six o’clock.”

Then Norman went away, and Christine put back in its place the kippering suit, and took out her very prettiest selling suit. For her mourning dress touched only her domestic and social life, her business had its own dress, and the fisher dress was part of the business. She had no sense of humiliation in assuming it, nor yet in the selling of the fish. She had liked very well the little gossip with known householders, and had not been offended by the compliments she received from strangers and passersby. The first morning of this new season was really a little triumph. All her old friends wanted to hear about Margot’s sickness and death, and when her basket was empty, she sent Willie home and stayed with an old friend of her mother’s, and had a cup of tea and a fried herring with her.

They had much to talk about, and Christine resolved to stay with her until the mail should come in, which would be about eleven o’clock. Then if there was any letter for her, she could get it at once. “The Domine is aye thoughtless anent the mail,” she reflected, and then with a little laugh added, “he hasna any love letters coming, or he would be thinking on it.”

She received two letters. One was a letter from Cluny, mailed at Moville, Ireland. The other was from Blackwood’s Publishing House, offering her a hundred and fifty pounds advance, and ten per cent royalty for her novel, or, if she preferred it, three hundred and fifty pounds for all rights. She went to the Domine with this letter, and he advised her to accept three hundred and fifty pounds for all rights. “You will be requiring bride-dresses, and house-napery of many kinds,” he said, “and, my dear girl, God has sent you this check. He knew you would have need of these things. You ought to be very happy in this thought.”

“I am, Sir. You know how ‘just enough’ has been my daily bread; and I was worrying a little about wedding garments, and expenses.”

“Well, Christine, of all life’s fare, God’s daily bread is best. Answer your letter here, and I will mail it for you. In a few days you will have plenty of money. Go at once, and put it in the bank.”

“I will, Sir. And when I get home, I will begin another book at once.”

“Go with the fish, until you have the money in your hand. Things unforeseen might happen to delay payment. Good Fortune does not like us to be too sure of her. I have seen her change her mind in that case.”

“You are always right, Sir. I will do as you say.”

“In three days you may expect the money. Do your work as if you were not expecting it. Miss nothing of your duty.”

So Christine went the second morning, and had extraordinary success. Among the “Quality Houses” they were watching for her. They had never before seen such fine, and such fresh fish. They would have no others. She went home with her little purse full of silver, and her heart singing within her. It was not, after all, so bad to be a fisher-girl. If it was all small money, it was all ready money. And the people who had known her mother had remembered her, and spoken kindly of her, and Christine loved them for it. She had not yet forgotten. Oh no! Many times in the day and night she cried softly, “Mither! Mither! Where are ye? Dinna forget Christine!”

On the third morning she had a little adventure. She was delaying, for she was waiting for the mail, and had taken a cup of tea with her mother’s old friend. She stood in the doorway talking, and Christine was on the sidewalk, at the foot of the steps. Her empty basket was at her feet. She stood beside it, and the sunshine fell all over her. Its searching light revealed nothing but a perfection of form, a loveliness of face, and a charm of manner, that defied all adverse criticism. She looked as the women of that elder world, who were the mothers of godlike heroes, must have looked.

Suddenly her friend ceased her conversation, and in a low hurried voice said,

“Here comes the young master, and his bride! Look at them.”

Then Christine turned her face to the street, and as she did so, a carriage passed slowly, and Angus Ballister looked at her with an unmistakable intention. It was a stern, contemptuous gaze, that shocked Christine. She could make no response but sheer amazement, and when the carriage had passed it required all her strength to say a steady “good-morning” to her friend, and hurry down the road homeward. Not then, and there, would she think of the insult. She put it passionately beneath the surface, until she reached her home, and had locked herself within its shelter. Then, she gave way utterly to her chagrin and sorrow, and wounded pride, and wept such bitter, cruel tears, as no other sorrow had ever caused her. She wept like a wounded child, who knows it has been cruelly treated, who comprehends the injustice of its pain and its own inability to defend itself, and finds no friend or helper in its suffering.

Finally, when perfectly exhausted, she fell asleep and slept till the sun set and the shadows of the night were on sea and land. Then she arose, washed her tear-stained face, and made her tea. In her sleep she had been counseled and comforted, and she looked at the circumstance now with clear eyes.

“I got just what I deserved,” she said bluntly to herself. “Why did I go to the fishing at all? I wasna sent there. God took me awa’ from the fishing, and showed me what to do, just as He took King David from the sheep-cotes, and made him a soldier. If David had feared and doubted, and gone back to the sheep-cotes, he wouldna hae been King o’ Israel. Weel, when God took the nets out o’ my hands, and told me to sing, I got feared singing and story-telling wouldna feed me, and I went back to the nets. Now then, Christine, thank God for the snubbing you got. Yesterday I knew money was coming, plenty o’ it. Why didn’t I sit still or go to the wark He wants me to do. Why? Weel, if I must tell the bottom truth, I rayther fancied mysel’ in my fisher dress. I was pleased wi’ the admiration I got baith frae the men and the women. Something else, Christine? Ay, my Conscience, if I be to tell all, I liked the gossip o’ the women – also the pride I had in my ain strength and beauty, and the power it gave me o’er baith men and women – ay, and I liked to mak’ the siller in my ain fingers, as it were – to say to folk, ‘here’s your fish,’ and then feel their siller in the palm o’ my hand. I was wrang. I was vera wrang. I wad be served as I deserve, if thae book people went back on their word.”

Just here the Domine and Jamie came, and the Domine had the letter with the money in it. Then he noticed that she had been crying, and he asked, “Who has been hurting you, Christine?” and she answered:

“Mysel’, Sir. I hae been hurting mysel’.” Then while he drank a cup of tea, she told him the little circumstance, which even yet made her draw her shoulders together, with a gasp of bitter chagrin.

“Christine, you will remember that I told you it was they who waited patiently on the Lord, who received His blessing. Are you satisfied now?”

“Oh, Sir! Do not ask me that question. You know I am satisfied.”

“Then put this money in the bank, and go to wark with all your mind, and all your soul. Being a woman you cannot preach, so God has chosen you for the pen of a ready writer. Say all that is given you to say, whether you get paid by the handicrafters, or not. God will see that you get your wages. Goodnight! You may let the bit Ballister affair slip out of your mind. The young man isn’t naturally bad. He is ashamed of himself by this time. No doubt of it.”

These things happened at the beginning of the herring season, and for two months Christine had a blessed interval of forgetfulness. Every man, woman and child, was busy about the fish. They had no time to think of the lonely girl, who had begun, and then suddenly abandoned the fishing – nobody knew what for. But they saw her in the kirk every Sabbath, apparently well and happy, and old Judith said she had nae doubt whatever that Cluny had forbidden her to hae any pairt in the clash and quarreling o’ the women folk in the herrin’ sheds, and why not? Cluny would be a full captain, wi’ all his trimmings on, when he came to Culraine next April for his wife, and was it likely he would be wanting his wife cryin’ feesh, and haggling wi’ dirty, clackin’ women, for a few bawbees? Christine was a lady born, she said, and her Cluny would set her among the quality where she belonged. Judith had no doubt whatever that Christine was obeying an order from Cluny, and Jessy Ruleson said she was glad the lass had found a master, she had always had too much o’ her ain ill way.

For nearly three months Christine lived a quiet, methodical life, undisturbed by any outside influence, and free from all care. She rose very early, finding creative writing always easiest before noon. She went to bed very early, knowing that the sleep before midnight is the renewing sleep, and she hemmed the day, night and morn, with prayer, to keep it from unraveling. All that could happen between these two prayers was provided for, and she gave herself heart and soul to the delightful toil of story-writing. She wrote as she felt. She used the dialect and idioms of her people when it was necessary, and no one checked her for it. It was her style, and style is the stamp of individual intellect, as language is the stamp of race. Certainly it is an habitual deviation from accuracy, but it is a deviation for the purpose of communicating freedom and feeling. The pen is neither grammar nor dictionary, its purpose is to be the interpreter of the heart.

One morning in September she had a strange feeling of inability to work. The fog dulled her mind. Nothing was firm and certain in her ideas. She found herself dreaming of incoherent and mysterious things, a woof of thought, as airy as the fog itself. “I’ll put the paper and pencil awa’,” she said, “and I’ll build up the fire, and make some good bread, then if I am no mair awake I’ll red up the house. There’s dust on everything and little wonder if there’s dust on my mind, too.” Then someone tried to open the door and she called out, “Wait a wee! I’ll slip the bolt in a minute.” When she had done so, she opened the door and Neil, in a low broken voice said, “Christine! Let me in! Why am I bolted out?” and he whimpered out the words, like a hurt child, as he passed her.

She looked at him in amazement. She could hardly believe her own senses. This was not her brother – a wan, trembling man, with the clothing of a laborer, and his hair clipped close to his head.

“Bolt the door again,” he said, in his old authoritative way, “and give me something to eat. I am sick with hunger, and cold, and misery of all kinds.”

“I’ll do all that, Neil, but where hae you been this lang time, and what makes you sae poor, and sae broken down?”

“Get me something to eat, and I will tell you.”

So she left him crouching over the fire, with his elbows on his knees, and his face hidden in his hands. And she asked him no more questions, but when he had had a good meal, he said, “You asked where I had been, Christine? I hae been in prison – in the House of Correction. I was put there by that villain Rath, who accused me of obtaining money under false pretenses.”

“I feared something of the kind. A man came here a short time before mother died – ”

“Mother dead!”

“Ay, going on eight months now.”

And he cried out like some hurt animal, and Christine hasted to say, “She left her love and her blessing. At the very last, she spoke o’ you, Neil.”