PORTLOSSIE AND SCAURNOSE.
Meantime things were going rather badly at Portlossie and Scaurnose;
and the factor was the devil of them. Those who had known him longest
said he must be _fey_, that is _doomed_, so strangely altered was
his behaviour. Others said he took more counsel with his bottle than
had been his wont, and got no good from it. Almost all the fishers
found him surly, and upon some he broke out in violent rage, while
to certain whom he regarded as Malcolm’s special friends, he carried
himself with cruel oppression. The notice to leave at midsummer clouded
the destiny of Joseph Mair and his family, and every householder in
the two villages believed that to take them in would be to call down
the like fate upon himself. But Meg Partan at least was not to be
intimidated. Her outbursts of temper were but the hurricanes of a
tropical heart--not much the less true and good and steadfast that
it was fierce. Let the factor rage as he would, Meg was absolute in
her determination that, if the cruel sentence was carried out, which
she hardly expected, her house should be the shelter of those who had
received her daughter when her severity had driven her from her home.
That would leave her own family and theirs three months to look out
for another abode. Certain of Blue Peter’s friends ventured a visit
of intercession to the factor, and were received with composure and
treated with consideration until their object appeared, when his wrath
burst forth so wildly that they were glad to escape without having
to defend their persons: only the day before had he learned with
certainty from Miss Horn that Malcolm was still in the service of the
marchioness, and in constant attendance upon her when she rode. It
almost maddened him. He had for some time taken to drinking more toddy
after his dinner, and it was fast ruining his temper: his wife, who had
from the first excited his indignation against Malcolm, was now reaping
her reward. To complete the troubles of the fisher-folk, the harbour at
Portlossie had, by a severe equinoctial storm, been so filled with sand
as to be now inaccessible at lower than half tide, nobody as yet having
made it his business to see it attended to.
But, in the midst of his anxieties about Florimel and his interest in
Clementina, Malcolm had not been forgetting them. As soon as he was
a little settled in London, he had written to Mr Soutar, and he to
architects and contractors, on the subject of a harbour at Scaurnose.
But there were difficulties, and the matter had been making but slow
progress. Malcolm, however, had insisted, and in consequence of his
determination to have the possibilities of the thing thoroughly
understood, three men appeared one morning on the rocks at the bottom
of the cliff on the west side of the Nose. The children of the village
discovered them, and carried the news; whereupon, the men being all
out in the bay, the women left their work and went to see what the
strangers were about. The moment they were satisfied that they could
make nothing of their proceedings, they naturally became suspicious.
To whom the fancy first occurred, nobody ever knew, but such was the
unhealthiness of the moral atmosphere of the place, caused by the
injustice and severity of Mr Crathie, that, once suggested, it was
universally received that they were sent by the factor--and that for
a purpose only too consistent with the treatment Scaurnose, they
said, had invariably received ever since first it was the dwelling of
fishers! Had not their fathers told them how unwelcome they were to the
lords of the land? And what rents had they not to pay! and how poor was
the shelter for which they did so much--without a foot of land to grow
a potato in! To crown all, the factor was at length about to drive them
in a body from the place--Blue Peter first, one of the best as well as
the most considerable men among them! His notice to quit was but the
beginning of a clearance. It was easy to see what those villains were
about--on that precious rock, their only friend, the one that did its
best to give them the sole shadow of harbourage they had, cutting off
the wind from the north-east a little, and breaking the eddy round the
point of the Nose! What _could_ they be about but marking the spots
where to bore the holes for the blasting-powder that should scatter it
to the winds, and let death and destruction, and the wild sea howling
in upon Scaurnose, that the cormorant and the bittern might possess
it, the owl and the raven dwell in it? But it would be seen what their
husbands and fathers would say to it when they came home! In the
meantime they must themselves do what they could. What were they men’s
wives for, if not to act for their husbands when they happened to be
away?
The result was a shower of stones upon the unsuspecting surveyors,
who forthwith fled, and carried the report of their reception to Mr
Soutar at Duff Harbour. He wrote to Mr Crathie, who till then had heard
nothing of the business; and the news increased both his discontent
with his superiors, and his wrath with those whom he had come to regard
as his rebellious subjects. The stiff-necked people of the Bible was to
him always now, as often he heard the words, the people of Scaurnose
and the Seaton of Portlossie. And having at length committed this
overt outrage, would he not be justified by all in taking more active
measures against them?
When the fishermen came home and heard how their women had conducted
themselves, they accepted their conjectures, and approved of their
defence of the settlement. It was well for the land-loupers, they said,
that they had only the women to deal with.
Blue Peter did not so soon hear of the affair as the rest, for his
Annie had not been one of the assailants. But when the hurried retreat
of the surveyors was described to him in somewhat graphic language by
one of those concerned in causing it, he struck his clenched fist in
the palm of his other hand, and cried,
“Weel saired! There! that’s what comes o’ yer new----”
He had all but broken his promise, as he had already broken his faith
to Malcolm, when his wife laid her hand on his mouth and stopped the
issuing word. He started with sudden conviction and stood for a moment
in absolute terror at sight of the precipice down which he had been
on the point of falling, then straightway excusing himself to his
conscience on the ground of non intent, was instantly angrier with
Malcolm than before. He could not reflect that the disregarded cause
of the threatened sin was the greater sin of the two. The breach of
that charity which thinketh no evil may be a graver fault than a hasty
breach of promise.
Peter had not been improving since his return from London. He found
less satisfaction in his _religious exercises_; was not unfrequently
clouded in temper, occasionally even to sullenness; referred things
oftener than formerly to the vileness of the human nature, but was far
less willing than before to allow that he might himself be wrong; while
somehow the Bible had no more the same plenitude of relation to the
wants of his being, and he rose from the reading of it unrefreshed. Men
asked each other what had come to Blue Peter, but no one could answer
the question. For himself, he attributed the change, which he could not
but recognise, although he did not understand it, to the withdrawing
of the spirit of God, in displeasure that he had not merely allowed
himself to be inveigled into a playhouse, but, far worse, had enjoyed
the wickedness he saw there. When his wife reasoned that God knew he
had gone in ignorance, trusting his friend, he cried,
“What’s that to him wha judges richteous judgment? What’s a’ oor puir
meeserable excuzes i’ the een ’at can see throu’ the wa’s o’ the hert!
Ignorance is no innocence.”
Thus he lied for God, pleading his cause on the principles of hell. But
the eye of his wife was single, and her body full of light; therefore
to her it was plain that neither the theatre nor his conscience
concerning it was the cause of the change: it had to do with his
feelings towards Malcolm. He wronged his friend in his heart, half knew
it, but would not own it. Fearing to search himself, he took refuge
in resentment, and to support his hard judgment, put false and cruel
interpretations on whatever befell. So that, with love and anger and
wrong acknowledged, his heart was full of bitterness.
“It’s a’ the drumblet (_muddied, troubled_) luve o’ ’im!” said Annie
to herself. “Puir fallow! gien only Ma’colm wad come hame, an’ lat him
ken he’s no the villain he taks him for. I’ll no believe mysel’ ’at the
laad I kissed like my ain mither’s son afore he gaed awa’ wad turn like
that upo’ ’s ’maist the meenute he was oot o’ sicht, an’ a’ for a feow
words aboot a fulish play-actin’. Lord bliss us a’! markises is men!”
“We’ll see, Peter, my man,” she said, when the neighbour took her
leave, “whether the wife, though she hasna been to the ill place, an’
that’s surely Lon’on, canna tell the true frae the fause full better
nor her man, ’at kens sae muckle mair nor she wants to ken? Lat sit an’
lat see.”
Blue Peter made no reply; but perhaps the deepest depth in his fall
was that he _feared_ his wife might be right, and he have one day to
stand ashamed before both her and his friend. But there are marvellous
differences in the _quality_ of the sins of different men, and a
noble nature like Peter’s would have to sink far indeed to be beyond
redemption. Still there was one element mingling with his wrongness
whose very triviality increased the difficulty of long-delaying
repentance: he had been not a little proud at finding himself the
friend of a marquis. From the first they had been friends, when the one
was a youth and the other a child, and had been out together in many
a stormy and dangerous sea. More than once or twice, driven from the
churlish ocean to the scarce less inhospitable shore, they had lain all
night in each other’s arms to keep the life awake within their frozen
garments. And now this marquis spoke English to him! It rankled!
All the time Blue Peter was careful to say nothing to injure Malcolm
in the eyes of his former comrades. His manner when his name was
mentioned, however, he could not honestly school to the conveyance of
the impression that things were as they had been betwixt them. Folk
marked the difference, and it went to swell the general feeling that
Malcolm had done ill to forsake a seafaring life for one upon which all
fishermen must look down with contempt. Some in the Seaton went so far
in their enmity as even to hint at an explanation of his conduct in the
truth of the discarded scandal which had laid Lizzy’s child at his door.
But amongst them was one who, having wronged him thus, and been
convinced of her error, was now so fiercely his partisan as to be
ready to wrong the whole town in his defence: that was Meg Partan,
properly Mistress Findlay, Lizzy’s mother. Although the daughter had
never confessed, the mother had yet arrived at the right conclusion
concerning the father of her child--how, she could hardly herself have
told, for the conviction had grown by accretion; a sign here and a sign
there, impalpable save to maternal sense, had led her to the truth; and
now, if anyone had a word to say against Malcolm, he had better not say
it in the hearing of the Partaness.
One day Blue Peter was walking home from the upper town of
Portlossie, not with the lazy gait of the fisherman off work, poised
backwards, with hands in trouser-pocket, but stooping care-laden
with listless-swinging arms. Thus Meg Partan met him--and of course
attributed his dejection to the factor.
“Deil ha’e ’im for an upsettin’ rascal ’at hasna pride eneuch to haud
him ohn lickit the gentry’s shune! The man maun be fey! I houp he may,
an’ I wuss I saw the beerial o’ ’im makin’ for the kirkyaird. It’s nae
ill to wuss weel to a’ body ’at wad be left! His nose is turnt twise
the colour i’ the last twa month. He’ll be drinkin’ byous. Gien only
Ma’colm MacPhail had been at hame to haud him in order!”
Peter said nothing, and his silence, to one who spake out whatever
came, seemed fuller of restraints and meanings than it was. She
challenged it at once.
“Noo, what mean ye by sayin’ naething, Peter? Guid kens it’s the warst
thing man or woman can say o’ onybody to haud their tongue. It’s a
thing I never was blamed wi’ mysel’, an’ I wadna du ’t.”
“That’s verra true,” said Peter.
“The mair weicht’s intill ’t whan I lay ’t to the door o’ anither,”
persisted Meg. “Peter, gien ye ha’e onything again’ my freen’ Ma’colm
MacPhail, oot wi’ ’t like a man, an’ no playac’ the gunpoother-plot
ower again. Ill wull’s the warst poother ye can lay i’ the boddom o’
ony man’s boat. But say ’at ye like, I s’ uphaud Ma’colm again’ the
haill poustie o’ ye. Gien he was but here! I say ’t again, honest laad!”
But she could not rouse Peter to utterance, and losing what little
temper she had, she rated him soundly, and sent him home saying with
the prophet Jonah, “Do I not well to be angry?” for that also he placed
to Malcolm’s account. Nor was his home any more a harbour for his riven
boat, seeing his wife only longed for the return of him with whom his
spirit chode: she regarded him as an exiled king, one day to reappear,
and justify himself in the eyes of all, friends and enemies.