Chapter 12

A CHILD'S TRAGEDY

No one in Thrums ever got a word from Aaron Latta about how he spent
those ten days, and Tommy and Elspeth, whom he brought back with him,
also tried to be reticent, but some of the women were too clever for
them. Jean and Aaron did not meet again. Her first intimation that he
had come she got from Shovel, who said that a little high-shouldered man
in black had been inquiring if she was dead, and was now walking up and
down the street, like one waiting. She sent her children out to him, but
he would not come up. He had answered Tommy roughly, but when Elspeth
slipped her hand into his, he let it stay there, and he instructed her
to tell Jean Myles that he would bury her in the Thrums cemetery and
bring up her bairns. Jean managed once to go to the window and look down
at him, and by and by he looked up and saw her. They looked long at each
other, and then he turned away his head and began to walk up and down
again.

At Tilliedrum the coffin was put into a hearse and thus conveyed to
Monypenny, Aaron and the two children sitting on the box-seat. Someone
said, "Jean Myles boasted that when she came back to Thrums it would be
in her carriage and pair, and she has kept her word," and the saying is
still preserved in that Bible for week-days of which all little places
have their unwritten copy, one of the wisest of books, but nearly every
text in it has cost a life.

About a score of men put on their blacks and followed the hearse from
the warper's house to the grave. Elspeth wanted to accompany Tommy, but
Aaron held her back, saying, quietly, "In this part, it's only men that
go to burials, so you and me maun bide at name," and then she cried, no
one understood why, except Tommy. It was because he would see Thrums
first; but he whispered to her, "I promise to keep my eyes shut and no
look once," and so faithfully did he keep his promise on the whole that
the smith held him by the hand most of the way, under the impression
that he was blind.

But he had opened his eyes at the grave, when a cord was put into his
hand, and then he wept passionately, and on his way back to Monypenny,
whether his eyes were open or shut, what he saw was his mother being
shut up in a black hole and trying for ever and ever to get out. He ran
to Elspeth for comfort, but in the meantime she had learned from
Blinder's niece that graves are dark and cold, and so he found her
sobbing even like himself. Tommy could never bear to see Elspeth
crying, and he revealed his true self in his way of drying her tears.

"It will be so cold in that hole," she sobbed.

"No," he said, "it's warm."

"It will be dark."