Part 6 (2/2)
Men who have been lads in Thrums sometimes go back to it from London or from across the seas, to look again at some battered little house and feel the blasts of their bairnhood playing through the old wynds, and they may take with them a foreign wife. They show her everything, except the Cuttle Well; they often go there alone. The well is sacred to the memory of first love. You may walk from the well to the round cemetery in ten minutes. It is a common walk for those who go back.
First love is but a boy and girl playing at the Cuttle Well with a bird's egg. They blow it on one summer evening in the long gra.s.s, and on the next it is borne away on a coa.r.s.e laugh, or it breaks beneath the burden of a tear. And yet--I once saw an aged woman, a widow of many years, cry softly at mention of the Cuttle Well. ”John was a good man to you,” I said, for John had been her husband. ”He was a leal man to me,”
she answered with wistful eyes, ”ay, he was a leal man to me--but it wasna John I was thinking o'. You dinna ken what makes me greet so sair,” she added, presently, and though I thought I knew now I was wrong. ”It's because I canna mind his name,” she said.
So the Cuttle Well has its sad memories and its bright ones, and many of the bright memories have become sad with age, as so often happens to beautiful things, but the most mournful of all is the story of Aaron Latta and Jean Myles. Beside the well there stood for long a great pink stone, called the Shoaging, Stone, because it could be rocked like a cradle, and on it lovers used to cut their names. Often Aaron Latta and Jean Myles sat together on the Shoaging Stone, and then there came a time when it bore these words cut by Aaron Latta:
HERE LIES THE MANHOOD OF AARON LATTA, A FOND SON, A FAITHFUL FRIEND AND A TRUE LOVER, WHO VIOLATED THE FEELINGS OF s.e.x ON THIS SPOT, AND IS NOW THE SCUNNER OF G.o.d AND MAN
Tommy's mother now heard these words for the first time, Aaron having cut them on the stone after she left Thrums, and her head sank at each line, as if someone had struck four blows at her.
The stone was no longer at the Cuttle Well. As the easiest way of obliterating the words, the minister had ordered it to be broken, and of the pieces another mason had made stands for watches, one of which was now in Thrums Street.
”Aaron Latta ain't a mason now,” Tommy rattled on: ”he is a warper, because he can warp in his own house without looking on mankind or speaking to mankind. Auld Petey said he minded the day when Aaron Latta was a merry loon, and then Andrew McVittie said, 'G.o.d behears, to think that Aaron Latta was ever a merry man!' and Baker Lumsden said, 'Curse her!'”
His mother shrank in her chair, but said nothing, and Tommy explained: ”It was Jean Myles he was cursing; did you ken her, mother? she ruined Aaron Latta's life.”
”Ay, and wha ruined Jean Myles's life?” his mother cried pa.s.sionately.
Tommy did not know, but he thought that young Petey might know, for young Petey had said: ”If I had been Jean Myles I would have spat in Aaron's face rather than marry him.”
Mrs. Sandys seemed pleased to hear this.
”They wouldna tell me what it were she did,” Tommy went on; ”they said it was ower ugly a story, but she were a bad one, for they stoned her out of Thrums. I dinna know where she is now, but she were stoned out of Thrums!”
”No alane?”
”There was a man with her, and his name was--it was--”
His mother clasped her hands nervously while Tommy tried to remember the name. ”His name was Magerful Tam,” he said at length.
”Ay,” said his mother, knitting her teeth, ”that was his name.”
”I dinna mind any more,” Tommy concluded. ”Yes, I mind they aye called Aaron Latta 'Poor Aaron Latta.'”
”Did they? I warrant, though, there wasna one as said 'Poor Jean Myles'?”
She began the question in a hard voice, but as she said ”Poor Jean Myles” something caught in her throat, and she sobbed, painful dry sobs.
”How could they pity her when she were such a bad one?” Tommy answered briskly.
”Is there none to pity bad ones?” said his sorrowful mother.
Elspeth plucked her by the skirt. ”There's G.o.d, ain't there?” she said, inquiringly, and getting no answer she flopped upon her knees, to say a babyish prayer that would sound comic to anybody except to Him to whom it was addressed.
”You ain't praying for a woman as was a disgrace to Thrums!” Tommy cried, jealously, and he was about to raise her by force, when his mother stayed his hand.
”Let her alane,” she said, with a twitching mouth and filmy eyes. ”Let her alane. Let my bairn pray for Jean Myles.”
<script>