THE WANDERER.
It was a lovely summer evening, and the sun, going down just beyond
the point of the Scaurnose, shone straight upon the Partan’s door.
That it was closed in such weather had a significance--general as
well as individual. Doors were oftener closed in the Seaton now.
The spiritual atmosphere of the place was less clear and open than
hitherto. The behaviour of the factor, the trouble of their neighbours,
the conviction that the man who depopulated Scaurnose would at least
raise the rents upon them, had brought a cloud over the feelings and
prospects of its inhabitants--which their special quarrel with the
oppressor for Malcolm’s sake, had drawn deeper around the Findlays; and
hence it was that the setting sun shone upon the closed door of their
cottage.
But a shadow darkened it, cutting off the level stream of rosy red. An
aged man, in Highland garments, stood and knocked. His overworn dress
looked fresher and brighter in the friendly rays, but they shone very
yellow on the bare hollows of his old knees. It was Duncan MacPhail,
the supposed grandfather of Malcolm. He was older and feebler--I
had almost said blinder, but that could not be-- certainly shabbier
than ever. The glitter of dirk and broadsword at his sides, and the
many-coloured ribbons adorning the old bagpipes under his arms, somehow
enhanced the look of more than autumnal, of wintry desolation in his
appearance.
Before he left the Seaton, the staff he carried was for show rather
than use, but now he was bent over it, as if but for it he would fall
into his grave. His knock was feeble and doubtful, as if unsure of a
welcoming response. He was broken, sad, and uncomforted.
A moment passed. The door was unlatched, and within stood the
Partaness, wiping her hands in her apron, and looking thunderous. But
when she saw who it was, her countenance and manner changed utterly.
“Preserve ’s a’! Ye’re a sicht for sair e’en, Maister MacPhail!” she
cried, holding out her hand, which the blind man took as if he saw as
well as she. “Come awa’ but the hoose. Wow! but ye’re walcome.”
“She thanks your own self, Mistress Partan,” said Duncan, as he
followed her in; “and her heart will pe thanking you for ta coot
welcome; and it will pe a long time since she’ll saw you howefer.”
“Noo, noo!” exclaimed Meg, stopping in the middle of her little
kitchen, as she was getting a chair for the old man, and turning upon
him to revive on the first possible chance what had been a standing
quarrel between them, “what _can_ be the rizon ’at gars ane like you,
’at never saw man or wuman i’ yer lang life, the verra meenute ye open
yer mou’, say it’s lang sin’ ye _saw_ me. A mensefu’ body like you,
Maister MacPhail, sud speyk mair to the p’int.”
“Ton’t you’ll pe preaking her heart with ta one hand while you’ll pe
clapping her head with ta other,” said the piper. “Ton’t be taking her
into your house to pe telling her she can’t see. Is it that old Tuncan
is not a man as much as any woman in ta world, tat you’ll pe telling
her she can’t see? I tell you she _can_ see, and more tan you’ll pe
think. And I will tell it to you, tere iss a pape in this house, and
tere was pe none when Tuncan she’ll co away.”
“We a’ ken ye ha’e the _second_ sicht,” said Mrs Findlay, who had not
expected such a reply; “an’ it was only o’ the first I spak. Haith! it
wad be ill set o’ me to anger ye the moment ye come back to yer ain.
Sit ye doon there by the chimla-neuk, till I mak ye a dish o’ tay. Or
maybe ye wad prefar a drap o’ parritch an’ milk? It’s no muckle I ha’e
to offer ye, but ye cudna be mair walcome.”
As easily appeased as irritated, the old man sat down with a grateful,
placid look, and while the tea was _drawing_, Mrs Findlay, by judicious
questions, gathered from him the history of his adventures.
Unable to rise above the disappointment and chagrin of finding that
the boy he loved as his own soul, and had brought up as his own son
was actually the child of a Campbell woman, one of the race to which
belonged the murderer of his people in Glencoe, and which therefore
he hated with an absolute passion of hatred; unable also to endure
the terrible schism in his being occasioned by the conflict between
horror at the Campbell blood, and ineffaceable affection for the
youth in whose veins it ran, and who so fully deserved all the love
he had lavished upon him, he had concluded to rid himself of all the
associations of place and people and event now grown so painful,
to make his way back to his native Glencoe, and there endure his
humiliation as best he might, beheld of the mountains which had beheld
the ruin of his race. He would end the few and miserable days of his
pilgrimage amid the rushing of the old torrents, and the calling of
the old winds about the crags and precipices that had hung over his
darksome yet blessed childhood. These were still his friends. But he
had not gone many days’ journey before a farmer found him on the road
insensible, and took him home. As he recovered, his longing after
his boy Malcolm grew, until it rose to agony, but he fought with his
heart, and believed he had overcome it. The boy was a good boy, he
said to himself; the boy had been to him as the son of his own heart;
there was no fault to find with him or in him; he was as brave as he
was kind, as sincere as he was clever, as strong as he was gentle; he
could play on the bagpipes, and very nearly talk Gaelic, but his mother
was a Campbell, and for that there was no help. To be on loving terms
with one in whose veins ran a single drop of the black pollution was
a thing no MacDhonuill must dream of. He had lived a man of honour,
and he would die a man of honour, hating the Campbells to their last
generation. How should the bard of his clan ever talk to his own soul
if he knew himself false to the name of his fathers! Hard fate for him!
As if it were not enough that he had been doomed to save and rear a
child of the brood abominable, he was yet further doomed, worst fate of
all, to love the evil thing! he could not tear the lovely youth from
his heart. But he could go further and further from him.
As soon as he was able, he resumed his journey westward, and at length
reached his native glen, the wildest spot in all the island. There
he found indeed the rush of the torrents and the call of the winds
unchanged, but when his soul cried out in its agonies, they went on
with the same song that had soothed his childhood; for the heart of the
suffering man they had no response. Days passed before he came upon
a creature who remembered him; for more than twenty years were gone,
and a new generation had come up since he forsook the glen. Worst of
all, the clan-spirit was dying out, the family type of government all
but extinct, the patriarchal vanishing in a low form of the feudal,
itself already in abject decay. The hour of the Celt was gone by, and
the long-wandering raven, returning at last, found the ark it had left
afloat on the waters dry and deserted and rotting to dust. There was
not even a cottage in which he could hide his head. The one he had
forsaken when cruelty and crime drove him out, had fallen to ruins,
and now there was nothing of it left but its foundations. The people
of the inn at the mouth of the valley did their best for him, but he
learned by accident that they had Campbell connections, and, rising
that instant, walked from it for ever. He wandered about for a time,
playing his pipes, and everywhere hospitably treated; but at length
his heart could endure its hunger no more: he _must_ see his boy, or
die. He walked therefore straight to the cottage of his quarrelsome but
true friend, Mrs Partan--to learn that his benefactor, the marquis,
was dead, and Malcolm gone. But here alone could he hope ever to see
him again, and the same night he sought his cottage in the grounds of
Lossie House, never doubting his right to re-occupy it. But the door
was locked, and he could find no entrance. He went to the House, and
there was referred to the factor. But when he knocked at his door, and
requested the key of the cottage, Mr Crathie, who was in the middle
of his third tumbler, came raging out of his dining-room, cursed him
for an old Highland goat, and heaped insults on him and his grandson
indiscriminately. It was well he kept the door between him and the
old man, for otherwise he would never have finished the said third
tumbler. That door carried in it thenceforth the marks of every weapon
that Duncan bore, and indeed the half of his sgian dhu[3] was the next
morning found sticking in it, like the sting which the bee is doomed to
leave behind her. He returned to Mistress Partan white and trembling,
in a mountainous rage with “ta low-pred hount of a factor.” Her
sympathy was enthusiastic, for they shared a common wrath. And now came
the tale of the factor’s cruelty to the fishers, his hatred of Malcolm,
and his general wildness of behaviour. The piper vowed to shed the
last drop of his blood in defence of his Mistress Partan. But when, to
strengthen the force of his asseveration, he drew the dangerous-looking
dirk from its sheath, she threw herself upon him, wrenched it from
his hand, and testified that “fules sudna hae chappin’-sticks, nor
yet teylors guns.” It was days before Duncan discovered where she had
hidden it. But not the less heartily did she insist on his taking up
his abode with her; and the very next day he resumed his old profession
of lamp-cleaner to the community.
[Footnote 3: or _skene dhu_]
When Miss Horn heard that he had come and where he was, old feud with
Meg Partan rendering it imprudent to call upon him, she watched for him
in the street, and welcomed him home, assuring him that, if ever he
should wish to change his quarters, her house was at his service.
“I’m nae Cam’ell, ye ken, Duncan,” she concluded, “an’ what an auld
wuman like mysel’ can du to mak ye coamfortable sall no fail, an’ that
I promise ye.”
The old man thanked her with the perfect courtesy of the Celt,
confessed that he was not altogether at ease where he was, but said he
must not hurt the feelings of Mistress Partan, “for she’ll not pe a
paad womans,” he added, “but her house will pe aalways in ta flames,
howefer.”
So he remained where he was, and the general heart of the Seaton was
not a little revived by the return of one whose presence reminded them
of a better time, when no such cloud as now threatened them heaved its
ragged sides above their horizon.
The factor was foolish enough to attempt inducing Meg to send her guest
away.
“We want no landloupin’ knaves, old or young, about Lossie,” he
said. “If the place is no keepit dacent, we’ll never get the young
marchioness to come near ’s again.”
“’Deed, factor,” returned Meg, enhancing the force of her utterance by
a composure marvellous from it’s rarity, “the first thing to mak the
place--I’ll no say dacent, sae lang ’s there’s sae mony claverin’ wives
in ’t, but mair dacent nor it has been for the last ten year, wad be to
sen’ factors back whaur they cam frae.”
“And whaur may that be?” asked Mr Crathie.
“That’s mair nor I richtly can say,” answered Meg Partan, “but
auld-farand fouk threepit it was somewhaur ’ithin the swing o’ Sawtan’s
tail.”
The reply on the factor’s lips as he left the house, tended to justify
the rude sarcasm.