foundation has disappeared; but the little grassy eminence on which the
house stood may still be seen. There is a deep-wooded ravine behind,
which, after winding through the table-land of the parish, like a huge
crooked furrow--the bed evidently of some antediluvian stream--opens far
below to the sea; an undulating tract of field and moor--with here and
there a thicket of bushes, and here and there a heap of stone--spreads
in front. When I last looked on the scene, 'twas in the evening of a
pleasant day in June. One half the eminence was bathed in the red light
of the setting sun--the other lay brown and dark in the shadow. A flock
of sheep were scattered over the sunny side; the herd-boy sat on the
top, solacing his leisure with a music famous in the pastoral history of
Scotland, but now well-nigh exploded--that of the _stock_ and _horn_;
and the air seemed filled with its echoes. I stood picturing to myself
the appearance of the place, ere all the inmates of this evening, young
and old, had gone to the churchyard, and left no successors behind them;
and as I sighed over the vanity of human hopes, I could almost fancy I
saw an apparition of the cottage rising on the knoll. I could see the
dark turf walls; the little square windows, barred below and glazed
above; the straw roof, embossed with moss and stone-crop; and, high
overhead, the row of venerable elms, with their gnarled trunks and
twisted branches that rose out of the garden wall. Fancy gives an
interest to all her pictures--yes, even when the subject is but a humble
cottage; and when we think of human enjoyment--of the pride of strength
and the light of beauty--in connection with a few mouldering and
nameless bones hidden deep from the sun, there is a sad poetry in the
contrast which rarely fails to affect the heart. It is now two thousand
years since Horace sung of the security of the lowly, and the
unfluctuating nature of their enjoyments; and every year of the two
thousand has been adding proof to proof that the poet, when he chose his
theme, must have thrown aside his philosophy. But the inmates of the
farm-house thought little this evening of coming misfortune--nor would
it have been well if they had; their sorrow was neither heightened nor
hastened by their joy.
Old William Stewart, the farmer, was one of a class well-nigh worn out
in the southern Lowlands, even at this period; but which still comprised
in the northern districts no inconsiderable portion of the people; and
which must always obtain in countries only partially civilized and
little amenable to the laws. Man is a fighting animal from very
instinct; and his second nature, custom, mightily improves the
propensity. A person naturally courageous, who has defended himself
successfully in half-a-dozen different frays, will, very probably, begin
the seventh himself; and there are few who have fought often and well
for safety and the right, who have not at length learned to love
fighting for its own sake. The old farmer had been a man of war from his
youth. He had fought at fairs, and trysts, and weddings, and funerals;
and, without one ill-natured or malignant element in his composition,
had broken more heads than any two men in the country side. His late
quarrel at the tryst, and the much more serious affair among the bushes,
had arisen out of this disposition; for, though well-nigh in his
sixtieth year, he was still as warlike in his habits as ever. Thomson
sat fronting him beside the fire, admiring his muscular frame, huge
limbs, and immense structure of bone. Age had grizzled his hair and
furrowed his cheeks and forehead; but all the great strength, and
well-nigh all the activity of his youth, it had left him still. His
wife, a sharp-featured, little woman, seemed little interested in either
the details of his adventure or his guest, whom he described as the
"brave, hardy chield, wha had beaten twasome at the cudgel--the vera
littlest o' them as big as himsel."
"Och, guidman," was her concluding remark, "ye aye stick to the auld
trade, bad though it be; an' I'm feared that, or ye mend, ye maun be
aulder yet. I'm sure ye ne'er made your ain money o't."
"Nane o' yer nonsense," rejoined the farmer--"bring butt the bottle an'
your best cheese."
"The guidwife an' I dinna aye agree," continued the old man, turning to
Thomson. "She's baith near-gaun an' new-fangled; an' I like aye to hae
routh o' a' things, an' to live just as my faithers did afore me. Why
sould I bother my head wi' _improvidments_, as they ca' them? The
country's gane clean gite wi' pride, Thomson. Naething less sairs folk
noo, forsooth, than carts wi' wheels to them; an' it's no a fortnight
syne sin' little Sandy Martin, the trifling cat, jeered me for yoking my
owsen to the plough by the tail. What ither did they get tails for?"
Thomson had not sufficiently studied the grand argument of design in
this special instance, to hazard a reply.
"The times hae gane clean oot o' joint," continued the old man. "The law
has come a' the length o' Cromarty noo; an' for breaking the head o' an
impudent fallow, ane runs the risk o' being sent aff to the plantations.
Faith, I wish oor Parliamenters had mair sense. What do they ken aboot
us or oor country? Diel haet difference do they mak atween the shire o'
Cromarty an' the shire o' Lunnon; just as if we could be as quiet beside
the red-wud Hielanmen here, as they can be beside the queen. Na,
na--naething like a guid cudgel;--little wad their law hae dune for me
at the burn o' Newhall the nicht."
Thomson found the character of the old man quite a study in its way; and
that of his wife--a very different, and, in the main, inferior sort of
person, for she was mean-spirited and a niggard--quite a study too. But
by far the most interesting inmate of the cottage was the old man's
daughter--the child of a former marriage. She was a pale, delicate,
blue-eyed girl, who, without possessing much positive beauty of feature,
had that expression of mingled thought and tenderness which attracts
more powerfully than beauty itself. She spoke but little--that little,
however, was expressive of gratitude and kindness to the deliverer of
her father--sentiments which, in the breast of a girl so gentle, so
timid, so disposed to shrink from the roughnesses of active courage, and
yet so conscious of her need of a protector, must have mingled with a
feeling of admiration at finding, in the powerful champion of the recent
fray, a modest, sensible young man, of manners nearly as quiet and
unobtrusive as her own. She dreamed that night of Thomson, and her first
thought, as she awakened next morning, was whether, as her father had
urged, he was to be a frequent visitor at Meikle Farness. But an entire
week passed away, and she saw no more of him.
He was sitting one evening in his cottage, poring over a book--a huge
fire of brushwood was blazing against the earthen wall, filling the
upper part of the single rude chamber of which the cottage consisted
with a dense cloud of smoke, and glancing brightly on the few rude
implements which occupied the lower--when the door suddenly opened, and
the farmer of Meikle Farness entered, accompanied by his daughter.
"Ha! Allan, man," he said, extending his large hand and grasping that of
the fisherman; "if you winna come an' see us, we maun just come an' see
you. Lillias an' mysel were afraid the guidwife had frichtened you
awa--for she's a near-gaun sort o' body, an' maybe no owre kind spoken;
but ye maun just come an' see us whiles, an' no mind her. Except at
counting-time, I never mind her mysel." Thomson accommodated his
visitors with seats. "Yer life maun be a gay lonely ane here, in this
eerie bit o' a glen," remarked the old man, after they had conversed for
some time on indifferent subjects; "but I see ye dinna want company
a'thegither, such as it is"--his eye glancing as he spoke over a set of
deal shelves, occupied by some sixty or seventy volumes. "Lillias there
has a liking for that kind o' company too, an' spends some days mair o'
her time amang her books than the guidwife or mysel would wish."
Lillias blushed at the charge, and hung down her head; it gave, however,
a new turn to the conversation; and Thomson was gratified to find that
the quiet, gentle girl, who seemed so much interested in him, and whose
gratitude to him, expressed in a language less equivocal than any spoken
one, he felt to be so delicious a compliment, possessed a cultivated
mind and a superior understanding. She had lived, under the roof of her
father, in a little paradise of thoughts and imaginations, the
spontaneous growth of her own mind; and, as she grew up to womanhood,
she had recourse to the companionship of books--for in books only could
she find thoughts and imaginations of a kindred character.
It is rarely that the female mind educates itself. The genius of the sex
is rather fine than robust; it partakes rather of the delicacy of the
myrtle, than the strength of the oak; and care and culture seem
essential to its full development. Who ever heard of a female Burns or
Bloomfield? And yet there have been instances, though rare, of women
working their way from the lower levels of intellect to well-nigh the
highest--not wholly unassisted, 'tis true--the age must be a cultivated
one, and there must be opportunities of observation; but, if not wholly
unassisted, with helps so slender, that the second order of masculine
minds would find them wholly inefficient. There is a quickness of
perception and facility of adaptation in the better class of female
minds--an ability of catching the tone of whatever is good from the
sounding of a single note, if I may so express myself, which we almost
never meet with in the mind of man. Lillias was a favourable specimen of
the better and more intellectual order of women; but she was yet very
young, and the process of self-cultivation carrying on in her mind was
still incomplete. And Thomson found that the charm of her society arose
scarcely more from her partial knowledge, than from her partial
ignorance. The following night saw him seated by her side in the
farm-house of Meikle Farness; and scarcely a week passed during the
winter in which he did not spend at least one evening in her company.
Who is it that has not experienced the charm of female
conversation--that poetry of feeling which developes all of tenderness
and all of imagination that lies hidden in our nature? When following
the ordinary concerns of life, or engaged in its more active businesses,
many of the better faculties of our minds seem overlaid; there is little
of feeling and nothing of fancy; and those sympathies which should bind
us to the good and fair of nature, lie repressed and inactive. But in
the society of an intelligent and virtuous female, there is a charm that
removes the pressure. Through the force of sympathy, we throw our
intellects for the time into the female mould; our tastes assimilate to
the tastes of our companion; our feelings keep pace with hers; our
sensibilities become nicer, and our imaginations more expansive; and,
though the powers of our mind may not much excel, in kind or degree,
those of the great bulk of mankind, we are sensible that, for the time,
we experience some of the feelings of genius. How many common men have
not female society and the fervour of youthful passion sublimed into
poets! I am convinced the Greeks displayed as much sound philosophy as
good taste in representing their muses as beautiful women.
Thomson had formerly been but an admirer of the poets--he now became a
poet; and, had his fate been a kindlier one, he might perhaps have
attained a middle place among at least the minor professors of the
incommunicable art. He was walking with Lillias one evening through the
wooded ravine. It was early in April, and the day had combined the
loveliest smiles of spring with the fiercer blasts of winter. There was
snow in the hollows; but, where the sweeping sides of the dell reclined
to the south, the violet and the primrose were opening to the sun. The
drops of a recent shower were still hanging on the half-expanded buds,
and the streamlet was yet red and turbid; but the sun, nigh at his
setting, was streaming in golden glory along the field, and a lark was
caroling high in the air, as if its day were but begun. Lillias pointed
to the bird, diminished almost to a speck, but relieved by the red light
against a minute cloudlet.
"Happy little creature!" she exclaimed--"does it not seem rather a thing
of heaven than of earth? Does not its song frae the cloud mind you of
the hymn heard by the shepherds? The blast is but just owre, an' a few
minutes syne it lay cowering and chittering in its nest; but its sorrows
are a' gane, an' its heart rejoices in the bonny blink, without ae
thought o' the storm that has passed, or the night that comes on. Were
you a poet, Allan, like any o' your two namesakes--he o' "The Seasons,"
or he o' the "Gentle Shepherd"--I would ask you for a song on that bonny
burdie." Next time the friends met, Thomson produced the following
verses:--
TO THE LARK.
Sweet minstrel of the April cloud!
Dweller the flowers among!
Would that my heart were formed like thine,
And tun'd like thine my song!
Not to the earth, like earth's low gifts,
Thy soothing strain is given;
It comes a voice from middle sky,
A solace breathed from heaven.
Thine is the morn; and when the sun
Sinks peaceful in the west,
The mild light of departing day
Purples thy happy breast.
And, ah! though all beneath that sun
Dire pains and sorrows dwell,
Rarely they visit, short they stay,
Where thou hast built thy cell.
When wild winds rave, and snows descend
And dark clouds gather fast,
And on the surf-encircled shore
The seaman's bark is cast--
Long human grief survives the storm,
But thou, thrice happy bird!
No sooner has it passed away,
Than, lo! thy voice is heard.
When ill is present, grief is thine;
It flies, and thou art free;
But, ah! can aught achieve for man
What nature does for thee!
Man grieves amid the bursting storms
When smiles the calm he grieves;
Nor cease his woes, nor sinks his plaint
Till dust his dust receives.
As the latter month of spring came on, the fisherman again betook
himself to his wears, and nearly a fortnight passed in which he saw none
of the inmates of the farm-house. Nothing is so efficient as absence,
whether self-imposed or the result of circumstances, in convincing a
lover that he is truly such, and in teaching him how to estimate the
strength of his attachment. Thomson had sat, night after night, beside
Lillias Stewart, delighted with the delicacy of her taste and the
originality and beauty of her ideas--delighted, too, to watch the still
partially developed faculties of her mind, shooting forth and expanding
into bud and blossom under the fostering influence of his own more
matured powers. But the pleasure which arises from the interchange of
idea and the contemplation of mental beauty, or the interest which every
thinking mind must feel in marking the aspirations of a superior
intellect towards its proper destiny, is not love; and it was only now
that Thomson ascertained the true scope and nature of his feelings.
"She is already my _friend_," thought he; "if my schemes prosper, I
shall be in a few years what her father is now; and may then ask her
whether she will not be _more_. Till then, however, she shall be my
friend, and my friend only; I find I love her too well to make her the
wife of either a poor, unsettled speculator, or still poorer labourer."
He renewed his visits to the farm-house, and saw, with a discernment
quickened by his feelings, that his mistress had made a discovery with
regard to her own affections somewhat similar to his, and at a somewhat
earlier period. She herself could have, perhaps, fixed the date of it by
referring to that of their acquaintance. He imparted to her his scheme
and the uncertainties which attended it, with his determination, were he
unsuccessful in his designs, to do battle with the evils of penury and
dependence without a companion; and, though she felt that she could deem
it a happiness to make common cause with him even in such a contest, she
knew how to appreciate his motives, and loved him all the more for them.
Never, perhaps, in the whole history of the passion, were there two
lovers happier in their hopes and each other. But there was a cloud
gathering over them.
Thomson had never been an especial favourite with the stepmother of
Lillias. She had formed plans of her own for the settlement of her
daughter, with which the attentions of the salmon-fisher threatened
materially to interfere. And there was a total want of sympathy between
them besides. Even William, though he still retained a sort of rough
regard for him, had begun to look askance on his intimacy with
Lillias;--his avowed love, too, for the modern, gave no little offence.
The farm of Meikle Farness was obsolete enough in its usages and modes
of tillage, to have formed no uninteresting study to the antiquary.
Towards autumn, when the fields vary most in colour, it resembled a
rudely executed chart of some large island--so irregular were the
patches which composed it, and so broken on every side by a surrounding
sea of moor, that here and there went winding into the interior in long
river-like strips, or expanded, within, into friths and lakes. In one
corner there stood a heap of stones, in another a thicket of furze--here
a piece of bog, there a broken bank of clay. The implements with which
the old man laboured in his fields were as primitive in their appearance
as the fields themselves--there was the one-stilted plough, the
wooden-toothed harrow, and the basket-woven cart, with its rollers of
wood. With these, too, there was the usual misproportion on the farm, to
its extent, of lean, inefficient cattle, four half-starved animals
performing, with incredible effort, the work of one. Thomson would fain
have induced the old man, who was evidently sinking in the world, to
have recourse to a better system--but he gained wondrous little by his
advice. And there was another cause which operated still more decidedly
against him: a wealthy young farmer in the neighbourhood had been, for
the last few months, not a little diligent in his attentions to Lillias.
He had lent the old man, at the preceding term, a considerable sum of
money; and had ingratiated himself with the stepmother, by chiming in
on all occasions with her humour, and by a present or two besides. Under
the auspices of both parents, therefore, he had now paid his addresses
to Lillias; and, on meeting with a repulse, had stirred them both up
against Thomson.
The fisherman was engaged one evening in fishing his nets; the ebb was
that of a stream tide, and the bottom of almost the entire bay lay
exposed to the light of the setting sun, save that a river-like strip of
water wound through the midst. He had brought his gun with him, in the
hope of finding a seal or otter asleep on the outer banks; but there
were none this evening; and, laying down his piece against one of the
poles of the wear, he was employed in capturing a fine salmon that went
darting like a bird from side to side of the inner enclosure, when he
heard some one hailing him by name from outside the nets. He looked up,
and saw three men, one of whom he recognised as the young farmer who was
paying his addresses to Lillias, approaching from the opposite side of
the bay. They were all apparently much in liquor, and came staggering
towards him in a zig-zag track along the sands. A suspicion crossed his
mind that he might find them other than friendly; and, coming out of the
enclosure, where, from the narrowness of the space and the depth of the
water, he would have lain much at their mercy, he employed himself in
picking off the patches of sea-weed that adhered to the nets, when they
came up to him and assailed him with a torrent of threats and
reproaches. He pursued his occupation with the utmost coolness, turning
round, from time to time, to repay their abuse by some cutting repartee.
His assailants discovered they were to gain little in this sort of
contest; and Thomson found in turn that they were much less disguised in
liquor than he had at first supposed, or than they seemed desirous to
make it appear. In reply to one of his more cutting sarcasms, the
tallest of the three, a ruffian-looking fellow, leaped forward and
struck him on the face; and in a moment he had returned the blow with
such hearty good-will that the fellow was dashed against one of the
poles. The other two rushed in to close with him. He seized his gun,
and, springing out from beside the nets to the open bank, dealt the
farmer, with the but-end a tremendous blow on the face, which prostrated
him in an instant; and then cocking the piece and presenting it, he
commanded the other two, on peril of their lives, to stand aloof. Odds
of weapons, when there is courage to avail oneself of them, forms a
thorough counterbalance to odds of number. After an engagement of a
brief half minute, Thomson's assailants left him in quiet possession of
the field; and he found, on his way home, that he could trace their
route by the blood of the young farmer. There went abroad an exaggerated
and very erroneous edition of the story, highly unfavourable to the
salmon-fisher; and he received an intimation, shortly after, that his
visits at the farm-house were no longer expected: But the intimation
came not from Lillias.
The second year of his speculation had well-nigh come to a close, and,
in calculating on the quantum of his shipments and the state of the
markets, he could deem it a more successful one than even the first. But
his agent seemed to be assuming a new and worse character: he either
substituted promises and apologies for his usual remittances, or
neglected writing altogether; and, as the fisherman was employed one day
in dismantling his wares for the season, his worst fears were realized
by the astounding intelligence that the embarrassments of the merchant
had at length terminated in a final suspension of payments!
"There," said he, with a coolness which partook in its nature in no
slight degree of that insensibility of pain and injury which follows a
violent blow--"there go well-nigh all the hard-earned savings of twelve
years, and all my hopes of happiness with Lillias!" He gathered up his
utensils with an automaton-like carefulness, and, throwing them over his
shoulders, struck across the sands in the direction of the cottage. "I
must see _her_," he said, "once more, and bid her farewell." His heart
swelled to his throat at the thought; but, as if ashamed of his
weakness, he struck his foot firmly against the sand, and, proudly
raising himself to his full height, quickened his pace. He reached the
door, and, looking wistfully, as he raised the latch, in the direction
of the farm-house, his eye caught a female figure coming towards the
cottage through the bushes of the ravine. "'Tis poor Lillias!" he
exclaimed. "Can she already have heard that I am unfortunate, and that
we must part?" He went up to her, and, as he pressed her hand between
both his, she burst into tears.
It was a sad meeting--meetings must ever be such when the parties that
compose them bring each a separate grief, which becomes common when
imparted.
"I cannot tell you," said Lillias to her lover, "how unhappy I am. My
stepmother has not much love to bestow on any one; and so, though it be
in her power to deprive me of the quiet I value so much, I care
comparatively little for her resentment. Why should I not? She is
interested in no one but herself. As for Simpson, I can despise without
hating him; wasps sting, just because it is their nature, and some
people seem born in the same way, to be mean-spirited and despicable.
But my poor father, who has been so kind to me, and who has so much
heart about him--his displeasure has the bitterness of death to me. And
then he is so wildly and unjustly angry with you. Simpson has got him,
by some means, into his power--I know not how; my stepmother annoys him
continually; and, from the state of irritation in which he is kept, he
is saying and doing the most violent things imaginable, and making me so
unhappy by his threats." And she again burst into tears.
Thomson had but little of comfort to impart to her. Indeed he could
afterwards wonder at the indifference with which he beheld her tears,
and the coolness with which he communicated to her the story of his
disaster. But he had not yet recovered his natural tone of feeling. Who
has not observed that, while, in men of an inferior and weaker cast, any
sudden and overwhelming misfortune unsettles their whole minds, and all
is storm and uproar, in minds of a superior order, when subjected to the
same ordeal, there takes place a kind of freezing, hardening process,
under which they maintain at least apparent coolness and
self-possession? Grief acts as a powerful solvent to the one class--to
the other, it is as the waters of a petrifying spring.