I believe he thought it was to make some such request
that I had turned back.
“You must tell her nothing about me,”
I exclaimed, in consternation. “Swear that
my name will never cross your lips before her.
No, that is not enough. You must forget me utterly,
whether I live or die, lest some time you should think
of me and she should read your thoughts. Swear,
man!”
“Must this be?” he said, gazing at me.
“Yes,” I answered more calmly, “it
must be. For nearly a score of years I have been
blotted out of your mother’s life, and since
she came to Thrums my one care has been to keep my
existence from her. I have changed my burying-ground
even from Thrums to the glen, lest I should die before
her, and she, seeing the hearse go by the Tenements,
might ask, ‘Whose funeral is this?’”
In my anxiety to warn him, I had said too much.
His face grew haggard, and there was fear to speak
on it; and I saw, I knew, that some damnable suspicion
of Margaret—–
“She was my wife!” I cried sharply.
“We were married by the minister of Harvie.
You are my son.”
When I spoke next, I was back in the school-house,
sitting there with my bonnet on my head, Gavin looking
at me. We had forgotten the cannon at last.
In that chair I had anticipated this scene more than
once of late. I had seen that a time might come
when Gavin would have to be told all, and I had even
said the words aloud, as if he were indeed opposite
me. So now I was only repeating the tale, and
I could tell it without emotion, because it was nigh
nineteen years old; and I did not look at Gavin, for
I knew that his manner of taking it could bring no
change to me.
“Did you never ask your mother,” I said,
addressing the fire rather than him, “why you
were called Gavin?”
“Yes,” he answered, “it was because
she thought Gavin a prettier name than Adam.”
“No,” I said slowly, “it was because
Gavin is my name. You were called after your
father. Do you not remember my taking you one
day to the shore at Harvie to see the fishermen carried
to their boats upon their wives’ backs, that
they might start dry on their journey?”
“No,” he had to reply. “I remember
the women carrying the men through the water to the
boats, but I thought it was my father who—I
mean—–”
“I know whom you mean,” I said. “That
was our last day together, but you were not three
years old. Yet you remembered me when you came
to Thrums. You shake your head, but it is true.
Between the diets of worship that first Sabbath I
was introduced to you, and you must have had some
shadowy recollection of my face, for you asked, ‘Surely
I saw you in church in the forenoon, Mr. Ogilvy?’
I said ‘Yes,’ but I had not been in the
church in the forenoon. You have forgotten even
that, and yet I treasured it.”
