HALKO’S HEAD.
A SEVENTEEN hours’ journey conveyed Mr. Mayfield and his nephew to the
granite city of Aberdeen, with only a quarter of an hour’s pause at
Carlisle, where the travellers were turned out upon the platform at the
chillest hour ’twixt night and morning, and tantalized by the sight of
blazing fires in a luxurious waiting-room.
The travellers arrived at Aberdeen at noon, and devoted the remainder
of that day and the next to the exploration of the city, dismantled
cathedral, and sparse relics of the old town; the narrow street where,
over a grocer’s shop, still exist the rooms once inhabited by the boy
Byron and his mother. They made an excursion to the old bridge of
Don--an easy walk from the city--and loitered there for some time,
leaning on “Balgounie’s brig’s black wall,” and talking of the poet
whose one line has made it famous.
To Eustace every hour’s delay was painful. He longed to push on to that
remote point of the shire where Halko’s stormy headland showed grim and
gray against the broad blue sea. They had made all inquiries about this
culminating point of their journey, and had been informed that Halko’s
Head was a very wild place, where there were but just a few fishermen’s
cottages, but where folks sometimes went in the summer for fishing
and such-like. Railroad to Halko’s Head there was none; but the rail
would convey them about two-thirds of the way, and thence they could
doubtless obtain some mode of conveyance.
“We can walk, if need be,” said Eustace, cheerily; and to this Mr.
Mayfield assented.
“Though ’tis somewhat long since I have distinguished myself as a
pedestrian,” he added, doubtfully.
“You can take your ease at your inn, Uncle Dan, and spin copy for your
ravening editors, while I push on to that place.”
“Perhaps it would be best so, Eustace,” answered Mr. Mayfield,
thoughtfully.
He divined that the young man was anxious that his first visit to that
scene should be made companionless. The memories connected with that
spot were too sad for sympathy--too bitter for friendly commune.
After an evening which the indefatigable essayist, devoted to a review
of a new translation of Juvenal for the _Areopagus_, and Eustace
to meditations of the most sombre hue, they left Aberdeen at daybreak
next morning, and went on to a small station, which was their nearest
point to Halko’s Head.
This nearest point proved five-and-twenty miles distant from the
fishing-village; but on inquiry the travellers discovered that there
was a comfortable halting-place at a village or small town eighteen
miles farther on, and only seven from the wild headland to which
Eustace Thorburn’s steps were bent.
Vehicles were not easily to be obtained at this remote station, and
the travellers decided upon walking the eighteen miles at a leisurely
pace, stopping to examine anything worth seeing which they might find
on their route.
The day was bright and clear, and their road lay across the short turf
of broad uplands overhanging the wide northern sea.
They reached the little town at set of sun, and found the chief inn
a somewhat rude but not comfortless hostelry. Here they dined upon
liberal Scottish fare, and sat long after their meal smoking by the
wide hearth, where sea-coal and odorous pine-logs made a glorious fire.
Even his Uncle Dan’s talk could not distract the younger man’s
thoughts from that one subject upon which he had of late pondered so
deeply. Within seven miles lay the spot where his mother had lived and
suffered, something less than a quarter of a century ago. All day he
had been thinking of her. The wild scene on which he looked was the
landscape over which her sad eyes had wandered wearily, looking for
some faint star of hope where hope was none. The waves of this northern
sea had sounded the monotonous chorus of her melancholy thoughts.
“O mother!” he said to himself, “and of all your young day-dreams,
your girlish sorrows, there were none which you dared speak of to the
son you loved so dearly! Even this bitter penalty you had to pay--the
penalty of a lifelong silence. For your grief there was no sympathy,
for your memories no confidant.”
He left the mountain-shanty quietly at daybreak next morning. Host and
hostess were stirring, but Daniel was sleeping profoundly in his humble
nest--a mere cupboard in the wall of the room where the travellers had
dined. Eustace had occupied a similar cupboard, and was not sorry to
exchange so stifling a couch for the fresh breath of the north wind
blowing over the red mountains.
The path from Killalochie to Halko’s Head traversed a wild and
picturesque country, high above the sea. Eustace looked down from the
mountain-road, across the edge of precipitous cliffs, upon a broad
sweep of sand--the sands on which his nameless father had walked full
of fear on the night of his mother’s disappearance. Before noon he
entered the little village, if village it could be called, a straggling
group of rude stone cottages, inhabited by fishermen, whose nets hung
on the low granite walls, and lay on the stunted turf before the
doors. Two or three cottages of a better class were to be seen on
the outskirts of the little colony, but even these presented small
attraction to the eye of the English traveller.
This was Halko’s Head. Eustace questioned a rough fisher-boy before
he could convince himself that he did indeed tread the scene of his
mother’s sad experiences--of his father’s selfish perfidy.
For artist or poet the place had ample charm, but for the ordinary
pleasure-seeker it would have appeared as barren as it was remote.
Wilder or less fertile landscape was not to be found in North Britain;
and to this untravelled wanderer the rough fishermen and brawny
fisherwives seemed as strange as the inhabitants of Central Africa.
How was he to find the house in which his mother had lived, the people
who had known her, after the lapse of four-and-twenty years? This was
a question which he had not asked himself until this moment, when he
stood a stranger amongst that scanty population, upon the headland he
had come to explore.
He walked about the little place, descended a steep flight of steps cut
in the cliff, which he identified as the Devil’s Staircase of Dion’s
narrative; walked about half a mile along the sands, and then saw,
glimmering in the sunlight, high above him, the little white temple,
where his mother had so often sat alone and pensive, looking out at the
barren sea.
From the sands where he was walking, this classic summer-house was
inaccessible; but Eustace had no doubt of its identity with the temple
described by Dion. How such an elegant affectation as this classic
edifice should exist among those barren moorlands, peopled only by
grouse and ptarmigan, was in itself an enigma, and one which Eustace
was anxious to solve.
As the temple was unapproachable from the sands, the traveller was
fain to retrace his steps to the Devil’s Staircase, and thence to the
village. Here he found a humble place of entertainment, where he asked
for such refreshments as the house could afford him, in order that he
might use the privileges of a customer in the way of asking questions.
A healthy-looking matron, past middle life, neatly clad in linsey
petticoat and cotton bedgown, with snow-white muslin headgear and
brawny bare feet, brought him his meal, and with her he began at once
to converse, though the worthy dame’s dialect sorely puzzled him, and
but for his familiarity with the immortal romancer, would most probably
have baffled him altogether.
Happily, his intimate acquaintance with the Gregoragh, and the Dougal
Creature, his long-standing friendship for Caleb Balderstone and Douce
Davie Deans, with many others of the same immortal family, enabled him
to comprehend the greater part of the guidwife’s discourse, though he
had occasional difficulty in making himself intelligible to her.
The gist of the conversation may be summed-up thus. Did gentlefolks
from the south ever come to Halko’s Head? Yes, some, but not many.
There were but three houses suitable to such folks--Widow Macfarlane’s,
the cottage beyond the Devil’s Staircase; Mistress Ramsay’s on the
Killalochie road; and a shooting-box of Lord Pendarvoch’s. But this
latter had been suffered to fall into decay many years ago. It had been
shut up for the last quarter of a century, except now and then, when my
lord had lent it to one of his friends that came for the shootings. All
the shootings round about, farther than you could see, belonged to Lord
Pendarvoch. But he was just dead, poor old body! and little loss to any
mortal creature, for he had been nothing better than a miser since his
young days, when he was wild and wasteful enough, if folks spoke true.
That “wee bit stone hoosie” on the cliff had been put there by my lord,
who brought the stone “posties” from foreign parts.
Here was the mystery of the classic temple fully explained. Eustace
knew very little of the peers of the realm, and Lord Pendarvoch was to
him only as other lords--an unfamiliar name.
“You have lived here many years, I suppose?” he said to the hostess.
She told him with a pleasant grin, that she had never lived anywhere
else. That pure mountain air she had breathed all her life. On Halko’s
Head her eyes had first opened.
On this Eustace proceeded to question her closely as to her
recollections of any strangers who had made their abode at the
fishing-village about four-and-twenty years before. He described the
young couple--a gentleman and lady--“bride and bridegroom,” he said,
with a faint blush.
After much questioning from Eustace, and profound consideration upon
the worthy dame’s part, a glimmer of light broke in upon her memory.
“Was it at Lord Pendarvoch’s they lived?” she asked.
“That I cannot tell you. But since you say there are only three houses
suitable to strangers of superior condition, I suppose it was at one
of those three the lady and gentleman had lived. They were here some
months. The lady was very young, very pretty. She left suddenly, and
the gentleman followed her a few days afterwards.”
“Ay, ay, puir thing! I mind her the noo!” exclaimed the woman, nodding
her head sympathetically.
After this she told Eustace how such a couple as he described--the
lady “as bonny a lass as ye’d see for mony a lang mile”--had lived for
some months at Lord Pendarvoch’s shooting-box; and how the lady had
been very sad and gentle, and much neglected towards the last by the
gentleman, until she ran away one day, in a fit of jealousy, as it was
thought, because the gentleman had been seen riding and driving with a
strange foreign woman from London; and the gentleman had thought she’d
drowned herself, and had been well-nigh mad for a night and a day, till
news came that quieted him, and then he went away.
This much--full confirmation of Dion’s story--the woman could tell
Eustace; but no more. The name of these southern strangers she had
never heard, or, having heard, had utterly forgotten. Of their
condition, whence they came, and how they had obtained license to
occupy Lord Pendarvoch’s house, she was equally ignorant. Nor could
she direct Eustace to any inhabitant of the village likely to know
more than herself. There had not been for years any care taken of the
shooting-box. Lord Pendarvoch was just dead. His old steward had died
six years before, and a new man from the south--“folks were all for
southrons noo”--had succeeded to his post.
Pendarvoch Castle was a day’s journey off, on the other side of the
county.
To obtain further information seemed hopeless; but Eustace was
determined to leave no stone unturned. Why should he not go to
Pendarvoch Castle before he left Scotland, see the old servants?--for
old servants there must be in a large household, whatever changes time
and death might have brought about in four-and-twenty years. Some one
there might be who would remember to whom Lord Pendarvoch had lent his
house in that particular year. It was at least a chance, and Eustace
resolved upon trying it.
He questioned his hostess as to the way back to Killalochie. She
told him that there were two ways, one by the sands at low tide,
the shorter of the two, since there was an inlet of the sea between
Halko’s Head and Killalochie, which was dry at low tide. It was a
place that strangers went to see, the dame told Eustace, because of a
cavern dug in the face of the cliff, that a saint lived in once upon a
time--“joost a wee bit cavey,” the good woman called it.
Eustace thanked his hostess for her civility, paid her liberally for
his humble refreshment, and bade her good-day, after inquiring his way
to the disused abode of Lord Pendarvoch.
This dwelling he found easily enough. It was built in a hollow of the
cliff, about a quarter of a mile from the village, midway between the
fishermen’s cottages and the classic temple. The house was small, but
built in the Gothic style, and with some attempt at the picturesque.
“Decay’s effacing fingers,” however, had done their worst. The stucco
had peeled off wherever there was stucco to peel; the stone was stained
with damp, and disfigured with patches of moss; the woodwork rotted for
want of an occasional coat of paint. A scanty grove of firs sheltered
the house on its seaward side, and tossed their dark branches drearily
in the spring breeze, as Eustace opened the rusty iron gate and entered
the small domain. No element of desolation was wanting to the dreary
picture. A bony goat cropped the stunted grass pensively, but fled at
sound of the intruder’s footfall.
No barrier defended the deserted dwelling. Eustace walked round the
house, and peered in at the casements, whereof the shutters gaped open,
as if their fastenings had rusted and dropped off with the progress
of time. Within the traveller saw scanty furniture of a remote era,
white with dust. He pulled the rusty handle of a bell, and a discordant
jangle sounded in the distant offices; but he had no hope of finding
any inmate. The abode bore upon its front an unmistakable stamp of
abandonment.
After pulling the jangling bell a second time, Eustace tried one of
the windows. Half a dozen broken panes gaped wide, as if in invitation
to the burglar’s hand. He unhasped the sash, pushed open the spurious
Gothic window, and went in. The room in which he found himself had once
been gaily decorated; but little except the tawdry traces of vanished
colour and tarnished gilding remained in evidence of its former
splendour. The furniture was battered and worn, and of the scantiest
description. Lank, empty book-cases of painted and gilded wood stood
in the recesses of the fire-place. He tried to picture his father
and mother seated together in that dreary room; his mother watching
by that dilapidated casement. The room might have been bright enough
five-and-twenty years ago.
On the same floor there was another room, with less evidence of
departed decoration; above there were four bed-chambers, and here the
furniture was piled pell-mell, as in a lumber-room. The view from
the windows was sublimity itself, and Eustace did not wonder that a
Scottish nobleman should have chosen to build himself a nest on so
picturesque a spot.
He walked slowly through the rooms, wondering where _her_ aching
head had lain, where _her_ sad heart had stifled its griefs, where
_her_ penitent knees had bent to the Heaven her sin had offended.
To tread these floors which she had trodden, to look from these windows
whence she had gazed, seemed to him worth the journey the barren
privilege had cost him.
He lingered in the dusty rooms for some time, thinking of that one sad
inhabitant whose presence had made the house sacred to him as the holy
dwelling of Loretto to faithful pilgrims, and then softly and slowly
departed, pausing only to gather a few sprigs of sweet-brier that grew
in a sheltered corner of the neglected garden. With these in his breast
he went back to the road leading to Killalochie, and bent his steps
towards that humble settlement. He looked at his watch as he regained
the road. It was three o’clock, and by six he could be with his uncle,
who would scarcely care to dine until that hour.
“I can take him to that house to-morrow,” he said to himself, “if he
would like to see it. And I dare say it would be a mournful pleasure
to him to see the rooms, as it has been to me. It is like looking at a
grave.”