Blencarrow

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Isabel Mackay. Blencarrow

Blencarrow

Table of Contents

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

CHAPTER NINETEEN

CHAPTER TWENTY

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

CHAPTER THIRTY

CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

THE END

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Isabel Mackay

Published by Good Press, 2021

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There was, for instance, the matter of social position. In Blencarrow, a small town in a big, new country, social position was exactly as important as it is anywhere else. But the conditions governing it were different. There were few lines of inheritance or tradition to border or bound. Yet, as men are not anywhere born either free or equal, borders and bounds there were—distinctions and differences settled, without conscious effort or knowledge, by the community itself. Wealth had its place in these distinctions and as time went on would claim it more and more, but to be of the real elect in Blencarrow it was not necessary to be wealthy nor were all the wealthy of the elect. Birth, too, had its full weight, but good birth, in Blencarrow, meant honourable and God-fearing ancestors, rather than mere antiquity in the matter of family trees. Not that Blencarrow was without its scions of old families, but, save for a certain romantic interest which lingered about their names, they had come to be very much like their neighbours, ranking in general according to their own or their father’s position of importance in the community. Society, as such, had been built-up, as the town grew, through a process of natural selection. It was composed of all kinds, but, roughly speaking, of only two grades. You were either ‘respected’ or you were not.

Needless to say, Janet and Andrew Cameron were highly respected. Ian Cameron, father of Andrew, had been a pioneer of whose courage, honesty, and good works the whole world (of Blencarrow) was aware. To the day of his death, Ian Cameron had spoken only the Gaelic in his own house, though he had made shift with English outside. Andrew, his son, could both speak and understand his father’s tongue, and, though he rarely used it, his ordinary speech was often flavoured with its idioms. Both men had been church elders and close friends of the minister—in itself a title to distinction. Neither had known a college education, but both had been educated men, if solid reading and original thought have anything to do with education. As for Janet Cameron, née Clark, had she not been a daughter of Elspeth Clark, the savour of whose strict and beautiful life was well remembered on the countryside? Certainly she herself was always conscious of that social value and security which rendered pretension absurd.

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