WINTER ON THE MOORS
1. _At Hermiston_
The road to Hermiston runs for a great part of the way up the valley of
a stream, a favourite with anglers and with midges, full of falls and
pools, and shaded by willows and natural woods of birch. Here and there,
but at great distances, a byway branches off, and a gaunt farmhouse may
be descried above in a fold of the hill; but the more part of the time,
the road would be quite empty of passage and the hills of habitation.
Hermiston parish is one of the least populous in Scotland; and, by the
time you came that length, you would scarce be surprised at the
inimitable smallness of the kirk, a dwarfish, ancient place seated for
fifty, and standing in a green by the burn-side among two-score
gravestones. The manse close by, although no more than a cottage, is
surrounded by the brightness of a flower-garden and the straw roofs of
bees; and the whole colony, kirk and manse, garden and graveyard, finds
harbourage in a grove of rowans, and is all the year round in a great
silence broken only by the drone of the bees, the tinkle of the burn,
and the bell on Sundays. A mile beyond the kirk the road leaves the
valley by a precipitous ascent, and brings you a little after to the
place of Hermiston, where it comes to an end in the back-yard before the
coach-house. All beyond and about is the great field of the hills; the
plover, the curlew, and the lark cry there; the wind blows as it blows
in a ship's rigging, hard and cold and pure; and the hill-tops huddle
one behind another, like a herd of cattle, into the sunset.
The house was sixty years old, unsightly, comfortable; a farmyard and a
kitchen-garden on the left, with a fruit wall where little hard green
pears came to their maturity about the end of October.
The policy (as who should say the park) was of some extent, but very ill
reclaimed; heather and moor-fowl had crossed the boundary wall and
spread and roosted within; and it would have tasked a landscape gardener
to say where policy ended and unpolicied nature began. My lord had been
led by the influence of Mr. Sheriff Scott into a considerable design of
planting; many acres were accordingly set out with fir, and the little
feathery besoms gave a false scale and lent a strange air of a toy-shop
to the moors. A great, rooty sweetness of bogs was in the air, and at
all seasons an infinite melancholy piping of hill birds. Standing so
high and with so little shelter, it was a cold, exposed house, splashed
by showers, drenched by continuous rains that made the gutters to spout,
beaten upon and buffeted by all the winds of heaven; and the prospect
would be often black with tempest, and often white with the snows of
winter. But the house was wind and weather proof, the hearths were kept
bright, and the rooms pleasant with live fires of peat; and Archie might
sit of an evening and hear the squalls bugle on the moorland, and watch
the fire prosper in the earthy fuel, and the smoke winding up the
chimney, and drink deep of the pleasures of shelter.
Solitary as the place was, Archie did not want neighbours. Every night,
if he chose, he might go down to the manse and share a "brewst" of toddy
with the minister--a hare-brained ancient gentleman, long and light and
still active, though his knees were loosened with age, and his voice
broke continually in childish trebles--and his lady wife, a heavy,
comely dame, without a word to say for herself beyond good-even and
good-day. Harum-scarum, clodpole young lairds of the neighbourhood paid
him the compliment of a visit. Young Hay of Romanes rode down to call,
on his crop-eared pony; young Pringle of Drumanno came up on his bony
grey. Hay remained on the hospitable field, and must be carried to bed;
Pringle got somehow to his saddle about 3 A.M., and (as Archie stood
with the lamp on the upper doorstep) lurched, uttered a senseless
view-holloa, and vanished out of the small circle of illumination like a
wraith. Yet a minute or two longer the clatter of his break-neck flight
was audible, then it was cut off by the intervening steepness of the
hill; and again, a great while after, the renewed beating of phantom
horsehoofs, far in the valley of the Hermiston, showed that the horse at
least, if not his rider, was still on the homeward way.
There was a Tuesday club at the "Crosskeys" in Crossmichael, where the
young bloods of the countryside congregated and drank deep on a
percentage of the expense, so that he was left gainer who should have
drunk the most. Archie had no great mind to this diversion, but he took
it like a duty laid upon him, went with a decent regularity, did his
manfullest with the liquor, held up his head in the local jests, and got
home again and was able to put up his horse, to the admiration of
Kirstie and the lass that helped her. He dined at Driffel, supped at
Windielaws. He went to the new year's ball at Huntsfield and was made
welcome, and thereafter rode to hounds with my Lord Muirfell, upon whose
name, as that of a legitimate Lord of Parliament, in a work so full of
Lords of Session, my pen should pause reverently. Yet the same fate
attended him here as in Edinburgh. The habit of solitude tends to
perpetuate itself, and an austerity of which he was quite unconscious,
and a pride which seemed arrogance, and perhaps was chiefly shyness,
discouraged and offended his new companions. Hay did not return more
than twice, Pringle never at all, and there came a time when Archie even
desisted from the Tuesday Club, and became in all things--what he had
had the name of almost from the first--the Recluse of Hermiston.
High-nosed Miss Pringle of Drumanno and high-stepping Miss Marshall of
the Mains were understood to have had a difference of opinion about him
the day after the ball--he was none the wiser, he could not suppose
himself to be remarked by these entrancing ladies. At the ball itself my
Lord Muirfell's daughter, the Lady Flora, spoke to him twice, and the
second time with a touch of appeal, so that her colour rose and her
voice trembled a little in his ear, like a passing grace in music. He
stepped back with a heart on fire, coldly and not ungracefully excused
himself, and a little after watched her dancing with young Drumanno of
the empty laugh, and was harrowed at the sight, and raged to himself
that this was a world in which it was given to Drumanno to please, and
to himself only to stand aside and envy. He seemed excluded, as of
right, from the favour of such society--seemed to extinguish mirth
wherever he came, and was quick to feel the wound, and desist, and
retire into solitude. If he had but understood the figure he presented,
and the impression he made on these bright eyes and tender hearts; if he
had but guessed that the Recluse of Hermiston, young, graceful, well
spoken, but always cold, stirred the maidens of the county with the
charm of Byronism when Byronism was new, it may be questioned whether
his destiny might not even yet have been modified. It may be questioned,
and I think it should be doubted. It was in his horoscope to be
parsimonious of pain to himself, or of the chance of pain, even to the
avoidance of any opportunity of pleasure; to have a Roman sense of duty,
an instinctive aristocracy of manners and taste; to be the son of Adam
Weir and Jean Rutherford.
2. _Kirstie_
Kirstie was now over fifty, and might have sat to a sculptor. Long of
limb, and still light of foot, deep-breasted, robust-loined, her golden
hair not yet mingled with any trace of silver, the years had but
caressed and embellished her. By the lines of a rich and vigorous
maternity, she seemed destined to be the bride of heroes and the mother
of their children; and behold, by the iniquity of fate, she had passed
through her youth alone, and drew near to the confines of age, a
childless woman. The tender ambitions that she had received at birth had
been, by time and disappointment, diverted into a certain barren zeal of
industry and fury of interference. She carried her thwarted ardours into
housework, she washed floors with her empty heart. If she could not win
the love of one with love, she must dominate all by her temper. Hasty,
wordy, and wrathful, she had a drawn quarrel with most of her
neighbours, and with the others not much more than armed neutrality. The
grieve's wife had been "sneisty"; the sister of the gardener who kept
house for him had shown herself "upsitten"; and she wrote to Lord
Hermiston about once a year demanding the discharge of the offenders,
and justifying the demand by much wealth of detail. For it must not be
supposed that the quarrel rested with the wife and did not take in the
husband also--or with the gardener's sister, and did not speedily
include the gardener himself. As the upshot of all this petty
quarrelling and intemperate speech, she was practically excluded (like a
lightkeeper on his tower) from the comforts of human association; except
with her own indoor drudge, who, being but a lassie and entirely at her
mercy, must submit to the shifty weather of "the mistress's" moods
without complaint, and be willing to take buffets or caresses according
to the temper of the hour. To Kirstie, thus situate and in the Indian
summer of her heart, which was slow to submit to age, the gods sent this
equivocal good thing of Archie's presence. She had known him in the
cradle and paddled him when he misbehaved; and yet, as she had not so
much as set eyes on him since he was eleven and had his last serious
illness, the tall, slender, refined, and rather melancholy young
gentleman of twenty came upon her with the shock of a new acquaintance.
He was "Young Hermiston," "the laird himsel'": he had an air of
distinctive superiority, a cold straight glance of his black eyes, that
abashed the woman's tantrums in the beginning, and therefore the
possibility of any quarrel was excluded. He was new, and therefore
immediately aroused her curiosity; he was reticent, and kept it awake.
And lastly he was dark and she fair, and he was male and she female, the
everlasting fountains of interest.
Her feeling partook of the loyalty of a clanswoman, the hero-worship of
a maiden aunt, and the idolatry due to a god. No matter what he had
asked of her, ridiculous or tragic, she would have done it and joyed to
do it. Her passion, for it was nothing less, entirely filled her. It was
a rich physical pleasure to make his bed or light his lamp for him when
he was absent, to pull off his wet boots or wait on him at dinner when
he returned. A young man who should have so doted on the idea, moral and
physical, of any woman, might be properly described as being in love,
head and heels, and would have behaved himself accordingly. But
Kirstie--though her heart leaped at his coming footsteps--though, when
he patted her shoulder, her face brightened for the day--had not a hope
or thought beyond the present moment and its perpetuation to the end of
time. Till the end of time she would have had nothing altered, but still
continue delightedly to serve her idol, and be repaid (say twice in the
month) with a clap on the shoulder.
I have said her heart leaped--it is the accepted phrase. But rather,
when she was alone in any chamber of the house, and heard his foot
passing on the corridors, something in her bosom rose slowly until her
breath was suspended, and as slowly fell again with a deep sigh, when
the steps had passed and she was disappointed of her eyes' desire. This
perpetual hunger and thirst of his presence kept her all day on the
alert. When he went forth at morning, she would stand and follow him
with admiring looks. As it grew late and drew to the time of his return,
she would steal forth to a corner of the policy wall and be seen
standing there sometimes by the hour together, gazing with shaded eyes,
waiting the exquisite and barren pleasure of his view a mile off on the
mountains. When at night she had trimmed and gathered the fire, turned
down his bed, and laid out his night-gear--when there was no more to be
done for the king's pleasure, but to remember him fervently in her
usually very tepid prayers, and go to bed brooding upon his perfections,
his future career, and what she should give him the next day for
dinner--there still remained before her one more opportunity; she was
still to take in the tray and say good-night. Sometimes Archie would
glance up from his book with a preoccupied nod and a perfunctory
salutation which was in truth a dismissal; sometimes--and by degrees
more often--the volume would be laid aside, he would meet her coming
with a look of relief; and the conversation would be engaged, last out
the supper, and be prolonged till the small hours by the waning fire. It
was no wonder that Archie was fond of company after his solitary days;
and Kirstie, upon her side, exerted all the arts of her vigorous nature
to ensnare his attention. She would keep back some piece of news during
dinner to be fired off with the entrance of the supper tray, and form as
it were the _lever de rideau_ of the evening's entertainment. Once he
had heard her tongue wag, she made sure of the result. From one subject
to another she moved by insidious transitions, fearing the least
silence, fearing almost to give him time for an answer lest it should
slip into a hint of separation. Like so many people of her class, she
was a brave narrator; her place was on the hearthrug and she made it a
rostrum, miming her stories as she told them, fitting them with vital
detail, spinning them out with endless "quo' he's" and "quo' she's," her
voice sinking into a whisper over the supernatural or the horrific;
until she would suddenly spring up in affected surprise, and pointing to
the clock, "Mercy, Mr. Archie!" she would say, "whatten a time o' night
is this of it! God forgive me for a daft wife!" So it befell, by good
management, that she was not only the first to begin these nocturnal
conversations, but invariably the first to break them off; so she
managed to retire and not to be dismissed.
3. _A Border Family_
Such an unequal intimacy has never been uncommon in Scotland, where the
clan spirit survives; where the servant tends to spend her life in the
same service, a help-meet at first, then a tyrant, and at last a
pensioner; where, besides, she is not necessarily destitute of the pride
of birth, but is, perhaps, like Kirstie, a connection of her master's,
and at least knows the legend of her own family, and may count kinship
with some illustrious dead. For that is the mark of the Scot of all
classes: that he stands in an attitude towards the past unthinkable to
Englishmen, and remembers and cherishes the memory of his forebears,
good or bad; and there burns alive in him a sense of identity with the
dead even to the twentieth generation. No more characteristic instance
could be found than in the family of Kirstie Elliott. They were all, and
Kirstie the first of all, ready and eager to pour forth the particulars
of their genealogy, embellished with every detail that memory had handed
down or fancy fabricated; and, behold! from every ramification of that
tree there dangled a halter. The Elliotts themselves have had a
chequered history; but these Elliotts deduced, besides, from three of
the most unfortunate of the border clans--the Nicksons, the Ellwalds,
and the Crozers. One ancestor after another might be seen appearing a
moment out of the rain and the hill mist upon his furtive business,
speeding home, perhaps, with a paltry booty of lame horses and lean
kine, or squealing and dealing death in some moorland feud of the
ferrets and the wild cats. One after another closed his obscure
adventures in mid-air, triced up to the arm of the royal gibbet or the
Baron's dule-tree. For the rusty blunderbuss of Scots criminal justice,
which usually hurt nobody but jurymen, became a weapon of precision for
the Nicksons, the Ellwalds, and the Crozers. The exhilaration of their
exploits seemed to haunt the memories of their descendants alone, and
the shame to be forgotten. Pride glowed in their bosoms to publish their
relationship to "Andrew Ellwald of the Laverockstanes, called 'Unchancy
Dand,' who was justifeed wi' seeven mair of the same name at Jeddart in
the days of King James the Sax." In all this tissue of crime and
misfortune, the Elliotts of Cauldstaneslap had one boast which must
appear legitimate: the males were gallows-birds, born outlaws, petty
thieves, and deadly brawlers; but, according to the same tradition, the
females were all chaste and faithful. The power of ancestry on the
character is not limited to the inheritance of cells. If I buy ancestors
by the gross from the benevolence of Lyon King of Arms, my grandson (if
he is Scottish) will feel a quickening emulation of their deeds. The men
of the Elliotts were proud, lawless, violent as of right, cherishing and
prolonging a tradition. In like manner with the women. And the woman,
essentially passionate and reckless, who crouched on the rug, in the
shine of the peat fire, telling these tales, had cherished through life
a wild integrity of virtue.
Her father Gilbert had been deeply pious, a savage disciplinarian in the
antique style, and withal a notorious smuggler. "I mind when I was a
bairn getting mony a skelp and being shoo'd to bed like pou'try," she
would say. "That would be when the lads and their bit kegs were on the
road. We've had the riffraff of two-three counties in our kitchen,
mony's the time, betwix' the twelve and the three; and their lanterns
would be standing in the forecourt, ay, a score o' them at once. But
there was nae ungodly talk permitted at Cauldstaneslap; my faither was a
consistent man in walk and conversation; just let slip an aith, and
there was the door to ye! He had that zeal for the Lord, it was a fair
wonder to hear him pray, but the faim'ly has aye had a gift that way."
This father was twice married, once to a dark woman of the old Ellwald
stock, by whom he had Gilbert, presently of Cauldstaneslap; and,
secondly, to the mother of Kirstie. "He was an auld man when he married
her, a fell auld man wi' a muckle voice--you could hear him rowting from
the top o' the Kye-skairs," she said; "but for her, it appears she was a
perfit wonder. It was gentle blood she had, Mr. Archie, for it was your
ain. The country-side gaed gyte about her and her gowden hair. Mines is
no to be mentioned wi' it, and there's few weemen has mair hair than
what I have, or yet a bonnier colour. Often would I tell my dear Miss
Jeannie--that was your mother, dear, she was cruel ta'en up about her
hair, it was unco tender, ye see--'Hoots, Miss Jeannie,' I would say,
'just fling your washes and your French dentifrishes in the back o' the
fire, for that's the place for them; and awa' down to a burn side, and
wash yersel' in cauld hill water, and dry your bonny hair in the caller
wind o' the muirs, the way that my mother aye washed hers, and that I
have aye made it a practice to have wishen mines--just you do what I
tell ye, my dear, and ye'll give me news of it! Ye'll have hair, and
routh of hair, a pigtail as thick's my arm,' I said, 'and the bonniest
colour like the clear gowden guineas, so as the lads in kirk'll no can
keep their eyes off it!' Weel, it lasted out her time, puir thing! I
cuttit a lock of it upon her corp that was lying there sae cauld. I'll
show it ye some of thir days if ye're good. But, as I was sayin', my
mither----"
On the death of the father there remained golden-haired Kirstie, who
took service with her distant kinsfolk, the Rutherfords, and
black-a-vised Gilbert, twenty years older, who farmed the
Cauldstaneslap, married, and begot four sons between 1773 and 1784, and
a daughter, like a postscript, in '97, the year of Camperdown and Cape
St. Vincent. It seemed it was a tradition in the family to wind up with
a belated girl. In 1804, at the age of sixty, Gilbert met an end that
might be called heroic. He was due home from market any time from eight
at night till five in the morning, and in any condition from the
quarrelsome to the speechless, for he maintained to that age the goodly
customs of the Scots farmer. It was known on this occasion that he had a
good bit of money to bring home; the word had gone round loosely. The
laird had shown his guineas, and if anybody had but noticed it, there
was an ill-looking, vagabond crew, the scum of Edinburgh, that drew out
of the market long ere it was dusk and took the hill-road by Hermiston,
where it was not to be believed that they had lawful business. One of
the country-side, one Dickieson, they took with them to be their guide,
and dear he paid for it! Of a sudden, in the ford of the Broken Dykes,
this vermin clan fell on the laird, six to one, and him three parts
asleep, having drunk hard. But it is ill to catch an Elliott. For a
while, in the night and the black water that was deep as to his
saddle-girths, he wrought with his staff like a smith at his stithy, and
great was the sound of oaths and blows. With that the ambuscade was
burst, and he rode for home with a pistol-ball in him, three knife
wounds, the loss of his front teeth, a broken rib and bridle, and a
dying horse. That was a race with death that the laird rode. In the mirk
night, with his broken bridle and his head swimming, he dug his spurs to
the rowels in the horse's side, and the horse, that was even worse off
than himself, the poor creature! screamed out like a person as he went,
so that the hills echoed with it, and the folks at Cauldstaneslap got to
their feet about the table and looked at each other with white faces.
The horse fell dead at the yard gate, the laird won the length of the
house and fell there on the threshold. To the son that raised him he
gave the bag of money. "Hae," said he. All the way up the thieves had
seemed to him to be at his heels, but now the hallucination left him--he
saw them again in the place of the ambuscade--and the thirst of
vengeance seized on his dying mind. Raising himself and pointing with an
imperious finger into the black night from which he had come, he uttered
the single command, "Brocken Dykes," and fainted. He had never been
loved, but he had been feared in honour. At that sight, at that word,
gasped out at them from a toothless and bleeding mouth, the old Elliott
spirit awoke with a shout in the four sons. "Wanting the hat," continues
my author, Kirstie, whom I but haltingly follow, for she told this tale
like one inspired, "wanting guns, for there wasna twa grains o' pouder
in the house, wi' nae mair weepons than their sticks into their hands,
the fower o' them took the road. Only Hob, and that was the eldest,
hunkered at the door-sill where the blood had rin, fyled his hand wi'
it, and haddit it up to Heeven in the way o' the auld Border aith. 'Hell
shall have her ain again this nicht!' he raired, and rode forth upon his
earrand." It was three miles to Broken Dykes, down hill, and a sore
road. Kirstie had seen men from Edinburgh dismounting there in plain day
to lead their horses. But the four brothers rode it as if Auld Hornie
were behind and Heaven in front. Come to the ford, and there was
Dickieson. By all tales, he was not dead, but breathed and reared upon
his elbow, and cried out to them for help. It was at a graceless face
that he asked mercy. As soon as Hob saw, by the glint of the lantern,
the eyes shining and the whiteness of the teeth in the man's face, "Damn
you!" says he; "ye hae your teeth, hae ye?" and rode his horse to and
fro upon that human remnant. Beyond that, Dandie must dismount with the
lantern to be their guide; he was the youngest son, scarce twenty at the
time. "A' nicht long they gaed in the wet heath and jennipers, and whaur
they gaed they neither knew nor cared, but just followed the
bluid-stains and the footprints o' their faither's murderers. And a'
nicht Dandie had his nose to the grund like a tyke, and the ithers
followed and spak' naething, neither black nor white. There was nae
noise to be heard, but just the sough of the swalled burns, and Hob, the
dour yin, risping his teeth as he gaed." With the first glint of the
morning they saw they were on the drove-road, and at that the four
stopped and had a dram to their breakfasts, for they knew that Dand must
have guided them right, and the rogues could be but little ahead, hot
foot for Edinburgh by the way of the Pentland Hills. By eight o'clock
they had word of them--a shepherd had seen four men "uncoly mishandled"
go by in the last hour. "That's yin a piece," says Clem, and swung his
cudgel. "Five o' them!" says Hob. "God's death, but the faither was a
man! And him drunk!" And then there befell them what my author termed "a
sair misbegowk," for they were overtaken by a posse of mounted
neighbours come to aid in the pursuit. Four sour faces looked on the
reinforcement. "The Deil's broughten you!" said Clem, and they rode
thenceforward in the rear of the party with hanging heads. Before ten
they had found and secured the rogues, and by three of the afternoon, as
they rode up the Vennel with their prisoners, they were aware of a
concourse of people bearing in their midst something that dripped. "For
the boady of the saxt," pursued Kirstie, "wi' his head smashed like a
hazel-nit, had been a' that nicht in the chairge o' Hermiston Water, and
it dunting in on the stanes, and grunding it on the shallows, and
flinging the deid thing heels-ower-hurdie at the Fa's o' Spango; and in
the first o' the day, Tweed had got a hold o' him and carried him off
like a wind, for it was uncoly swalled, and raced wi' him, bobbing under
braesides, and was long playing with the creature in the drumlie lynns
under the castle, and at the hinder end of all cuist him up on the
sterling of Crossmichael brig. Sae there they were a'thegither at last
(for Dickieson had been brought in on a cart long syne), and folk could
see what mainner o' man my brither had been that had held his head again
sax and saved the siller, and him drunk!" Thus died of honourable
injuries and in the savour of fame Gilbert Elliott of the
Cauldstaneslap; but his sons had scarce less glory out of the business.
Their savage haste, the skill with which Dand had found and followed the
trail, the barbarity to the wounded Dickieson (which was like an open
secret in the county), and the doom which it was currently supposed they
had intended for the others, struck and stirred popular imagination.
Some century earlier the last of the minstrels might have fashioned the
last of the ballads out of that Homeric fight and chase; but the spirit
was dead, or had been reincarnated already in Mr. Sheriff Scott, and the
degenerate moorsmen must be content to tell the tale in prose, and to
make of the "Four Black Brothers" a unit after the fashion of the
"Twelve Apostles" or the "Three Musketeers."
Robert, Gilbert, Clement, and Andrew--in the proper Border diminutives,
Hob, Gib, Clem, and Dand Elliott--these ballad heroes, had much in
common; in particular, their high sense of the family and the family
honour; but they went diverse ways, and prospered and failed in
different businesses. According to Kirstie, "they had a' bees in their
bonnets but Hob." Hob the laird was, indeed, essentially a decent man.
An elder of the Kirk, nobody had heard an oath upon his lips, save,
perhaps, thrice or so at the sheep-washing, since the chase of his
father's murderers. The figure he had shown on that eventful night
disappeared as if swallowed by a trap. He who had ecstatically dipped
his hand in the red blood, he who had ridden down Dickieson, became,
from that moment on, a stiff and rather graceless model of the rustic
proprieties; cannily profiting by the high war prices, and yearly
stowing away a little nest-egg in the bank against calamity; approved of
and sometimes consulted by the greater lairds for the massive and placid
sense of what he said, when he could be induced to say anything; and
particularly valued by the minister, Mr. Torrance, as a right-hand man
in the parish, and a model to parents. The transfiguration had been for
the moment only; some Barbarossa, some old Adam of our ancestors, sleeps
in all of us till the fit circumstance shall call it into action; and,
for as sober as he now seemed, Hob had given once for all the measure of
the devil that haunted him. He was married, and, by reason of the
effulgence of that legendary night, was adored by his wife. He had a mob
of little lusty, barefoot children who marched in a caravan the long
miles to school, the stages of whose pilgrimage were marked by acts of
spoliation and mischief, and who were qualified in the country-side as
"fair pests." But in the house, if "faither was in," they were quiet as
mice. In short, Hob moved through life in a great peace--the reward of
any one who shall have killed his man, with any formidable and
figurative circumstance, in the midst of a country gagged and swaddled
with civilisation.
It was a current remark that the Elliotts were "guid and bad, like
sanguishes"; and certainly there was a curious distinction, the men of
business coming alternately with the dreamers. The second brother, Gib,
was a weaver by trade, had gone out early into the world to Edinburgh,
and come home again with his wings singed. There was an exaltation in
his nature which had led him to embrace with enthusiasm the principles
of the French Revolution, and had ended by bringing him under the hawse
of my Lord Hermiston in that furious onslaught of his upon the Liberals,
which sent Muir and Palmer into exile and dashed the party into chaff.
It was whispered that my lord, in his great scorn for the movement, and
prevailed upon a little by a sense of neighbourliness, had given Gib a
hint. Meeting him one day in the Potterrow, my lord had stopped in front
of him: "Gib, ye eediot," he had said, "what's this I hear of you?
Poalitics, poalitics, poalitics, weaver's poalitics, is the way of it, I
hear. If ye arena a'thegither dozened with eediocy, ye'll gang your ways
back to Cauldstaneslap, and ca' your loom, and ca' your loom, man!" And
Gilbert had taken him at the word and returned, with an expedition
almost to be called flight, to the house of his father. The clearest of
his inheritance was that family gift of prayer of which Kirstie had
boasted; and the baffled politician now turned his attention to
religious matters--or, as others said, to heresy and schism. Every
Sunday morning he was in Crossmichael, where he had gathered together,
one by one, a sect of about a dozen persons, who called themselves
"God's Remnant of the True Faithful," or, for short, "God's Remnant." To
the profane they were known as "Gib's Deils." Bailie Sweedie, a noted
humorist in the town, vowed that the proceedings always opened to the
tune of "The Deil Fly Away with the Exciseman," and that the sacrament
was dispensed in the form of hot whisky-toddy; both wicked hits at the
evangelist, who had been suspected of smuggling in his youth, and had
been overtaken (as the phrase went) on the streets of Crossmichael one
Fair day. It was known that every Sunday they prayed for a blessing on
the arms of Buonaparte. For this, "God's Remnant," as they were
"skailing" from the cottage that did duty for a temple, had been
repeatedly stoned by the bairns, and Gib himself hooted by a squadron of
Border volunteers in which his own brother, Dand, rode in a uniform and
with a drawn sword. The "Remnant" were believed, besides, to be
"antinomian in principle," which might otherwise have been a serious
charge, but the way public opinion then blew it was quite swallowed up
and forgotten in the scandal about Buonaparte. For the rest, Gilbert had
set up his loom in an outhouse at Cauldstaneslap, where he laboured
assiduously six days of the week. His brothers, appalled by his
political opinions, and willing to avoid dissension in the household,
spoke but little to him; he less to them, remaining absorbed in the
study of the Bible and almost constant prayer. The gaunt weaver was
dry-nurse at Cauldstaneslap, and the bairns loved him dearly. Except
when he was carrying an infant in his arms, he was rarely seen to
smile--as, indeed, there were few smilers in that family. When his
sister-in-law rallied him, and proposed that he should get a wife and
bairns of his own, since he was so fond of them, "I have no clearness of
mind upon that point," he would reply. If nobody called him in to
dinner, he stayed out. Mrs. Hob, a hard, unsympathetic woman, once tried
the experiment. He went without food all day, but at dusk, as the light
began to fail him, he came into the house of his own accord, looking
puzzled. "I've had a great gale of prayer upon my speerit," said he. "I
canna mind sae muckle's what I had for denner." The creed of God's
Remnant was justified in the life of its founder. "And yet I dinna
ken," said Kirstie. "He's maybe no more stock-fish than his neeghbours!
He rode wi' the rest o' them, and had a good stamach to the work, by a'
that I hear! God's Remnant! The deil's clavers! There wasna muckle
Christianity in the way Hob guided Johnny Dickieson, at the least of it;
but Guid kens! Is he a Christian even? He might be a Mahommedan or a
Deevil or a Fireworshipper, for what I ken."
The third brother had his name on a door-plate, no less, in the city of
Glasgow, "Mr. Clement Elliott," as long as your arm. In this case, that
spirit of innovation which had shown itself timidly in the case of Hob
by the admission of new manures, and which had run to waste with Gilbert
in subversive politics and heretical religions, bore useful fruit in
many ingenious mechanical improvements. In boyhood, from his addiction
to strange devices of sticks and string, he had been counted the most
eccentric of the family. But that was all by now; and he was a partner
of his firm, and looked to die a bailie. He too had married, and was
rearing a plentiful family in the smoke and din of Glasgow; he was
wealthy, and could have bought out his brother, the cock-laird, six
times over, it was whispered; and when he slipped away to Cauldstaneslap
for a well-earned holiday, which he did as often as he was able, he
astonished the neighbours with his broadcloth, his beaver hat, and the
ample plies of his neckcloth. Though an eminently solid man at bottom,
after the pattern of Hob, he had contracted a certain Glasgow briskness
and _aplomb_ which set him off. All the other Elliotts were as lean as a
rake, but Clement was laying on fat, and he panted sorely when he must
get into his boots. Dand said, chuckling: "Ay, Clem has the elements of
a corporation." "A provost and corporation," returned Clem. And his
readiness was much admired.
The fourth brother, Dand, was a shepherd to his trade, and by starts,
when he could bring his mind to it, excelled in the business. Nobody
could train a dog like Dandie; nobody, through the peril of great storms
in the winter time, could do more gallantly. But if his dexterity were
exquisite, his diligence was but fitful; and he served his brother for
bed and board, and a trifle of pocket-money when he asked for it. He
loved money well enough, knew very well how to spend it, and could make
a shrewd bargain when he liked. But he preferred a vague knowledge that
he was well to windward to any counted coins in the pocket; he felt
himself richer so. Hob would expostulate: "I'm an amature herd." Dand
would reply, "I'll keep your sheep to you when I'm so minded, but I'll
keep my liberty too. Thir's no man can coandescend on what I'm worth."
Clem would expound to him the miraculous results of compound interest,
and recommend investments. "Ay, man?" Dand would say; "and do you think,
if I took Hob's siller, that I wouldna drink it or wear it on the
lassies? And, anyway, my kingdom is no of this world. Either I'm a poet
or else I'm nothing." Clem would remind him of old age. "I'll die young,
like Robbie Burns," he would say stoutly. No question but he had a
certain accomplishment in minor verse. His "Hermiston Burn," with its
pretty refrain--
"I love to gang thinking whaur ye gang linking,
Hermiston burn, in the howe";
his "Auld, auld Elliotts, clay-cauld Elliotts, dour, bauld Elliotts of
auld," and his really fascinating piece about the Praying Weaver's
Stone, had gained him in the neighbourhood the reputation, still
possible in Scotland, of a local bard; and, though not printed himself,
he was recognised by others who were and who had become famous. Walter
Scott owed to Dandie the text of the "Raid of Wearie" in the
"Minstrelsy"; and made him welcome at his house, and appreciated his
talents, such as they were, with all his usual generosity. The Ettrick
Shepherd was his sworn crony; they would meet, drink to excess, roar out
their lyrics in each other's faces, and quarrel and make it up again
till bedtime. And besides these recognitions, almost to be called
official, Dandie was made welcome for the sake of his gift through the
farmhouses of several contiguous dales, and was thus exposed to manifold
temptations which he rather sought than fled. He had figured on the
stool of repentance, for once fulfilling to the letter the tradition of
his hero and model. His humorous verses to Mr. Torrance on that
occasion--"Kenspeckle here my lane I stand"--unfortunately too
indelicate for further citation, ran through the country like a fiery
cross; they were recited, quoted, paraphrased, and laughed over as far
away as Dumfries on the one hand and Dunbar on the other.
These four brothers were united by a close bond, the bond of that mutual
admiration--or rather mutual hero-worship--which is so strong among the
members of secluded families who have much ability and little culture.
Even the extremes admired each other. Hob, who had as much poetry as the
tongs, professed to find pleasure in Dand's verses; Clem, who had no
more religion than Claverhouse, nourished a heartfelt, at least an
open-mouthed, admiration of Gib's prayers; and Dandie followed with
relish the rise of Clem's fortunes. Indulgence followed hard on the
heels of admiration. The laird, Clem, and Dand, who were Tories and
patriots of the hottest quality, excused to themselves, with a certain
bashfulness, the radical and revolutionary heresies of Gib. By another
division of the family, the laird, Clem, and Gib, who were men exactly
virtuous, swallowed the dose of Dand's irregularities as a kind of clog
or drawback in the mysterious providence of God affixed to bards, and
distinctly probative of poetical genius. To appreciate the simplicity of
their mutual admiration it was necessary to hear Clem, arrived upon one
of his visits, and dealing in a spirit of continuous irony with the
affairs and personalities of that great city of Glasgow where he lived
and transacted business. The various personages, ministers of the
church, municipal officers, mercantile big-wigs, whom he had occasion
to introduce, were all alike denigrated, all served but as reflectors to
cast back a flattering side-light on the house of Cauldstaneslap. The
Provost, for whom Clem by exception entertained a measure of respect, he
would liken to Hob. "He minds me o' the laird there," he would say. "He
has some of Hob's grand, whunstane sense, and the same way with him of
steiking his mouth when he's no very pleased." And Hob, all unconscious,
would draw down his upper lip and produce, as if for comparison, the
formidable grimace referred to. The unsatisfactory incumbent of St.
Enoch's Kirk was thus briefly dismissed: "If he had but twa fingers o'
Gib's, he would waken them up." And Gib, honest man! would look down and
secretly smile. Clem was a spy whom they had sent out into the world of
men. He had come back with the good news that there was nobody to
compare with the Four Black Brothers, no position that they would not
adorn, no official that it would not be well they should replace, no
interest of mankind, secular or spiritual, which would not immediately
bloom under their supervision. The excuse of their folly is in two
words: scarce the breadth of a hair divided them from the peasantry. The
measure of their sense is this: that these symposia of rustic vanity
were kept entirely within the family, like some secret ancestral
practice. To the world their serious faces were never deformed by the
suspicion of any simper of self-contentment. Yet it was known. "They hae
a guid pride o' themsel's!" was the word in the country-side.
Lastly, in a Border story, there should be added their "two-names." Hob
was The Laird. "Roy ne puis, prince ne daigne"; he was the laird of
Cauldstaneslap--say fifty acres--_ipsissimus_. Clement was Mr. Elliott,
as upon his door-plate, the earlier Dafty having been discarded as no
longer applicable, and indeed only a reminder of misjudgment and the
imbecility of the public; and the youngest, in honour of his perpetual
wanderings, was known by the sobriquet of Randy Dand.
It will be understood that not all this information was communicated by
the aunt, who had too much of the family failing herself to appreciate
it thoroughly in others. But as time went on, Archie began to observe an
omission in the family chronicle.
"Is there not a girl too?" he asked.
"Ay: Kirstie. She was named for me, or my grandmother at least--it's the
same thing," returned the aunt, and went on again about Dand, whom she
secretly preferred by reason of his gallantries.
"But what is your niece like?" said Archie at the next opportunity.
"Her? As black's your hat! But I dinna suppose she would maybe be what
you would ca' _ill-looked_ a'thegither. Na, she's a kind of a handsome
jaud--a kind o' gipsy," said the aunt, who had two sets of scales for
men and women--or perhaps it would be more fair to say that she had
three, and the third and the most loaded was for girls.
"How comes it that I never see her in church?" said Archie.
"'Deed, and I believe she's in Glesgie with Clem and his wife. A heap
good she's like to get of it! I dinna say for men folk, but where weemen
folk are born, there let them bide. Glory to God, I was never far'er
from here than Crossmichael."
In the meanwhile it began to strike Archie as strange, that while she
thus sang the praises of her kinsfolk, and manifestly relished their
virtues and (I may say) their vices like a thing creditable to herself,
there should appear not the least sign of cordiality between the house
of Hermiston and that of Cauldstaneslap. Going to church of a Sunday, as
the lady housekeeper stepped with her skirts kilted, three tucks of her
white petticoat showing below, and her best India shawl upon her back
(if the day were fine) in a pattern of radiant dyes, she would sometimes
overtake her relatives preceding her more leisurely in the same
direction. Gib of course was absent: by skreigh of day he had been gone
to Crossmichael and his fellow-heretics; but the rest of the family
would be seen marching in open order: Hob and Dand, stiff-necked,
straight-backed six-footers, with severe dark faces, and their plaids
about their shoulders; the convoy of children scattering (in a state of
high polish) on the wayside, and every now and again collected by the
shrill summons of the mother; and the mother herself, by a suggestive
circumstance which might have afforded matter of thought to a more
experienced observer than Archie, wrapped in a shawl nearly identical
with Kirstie's, but a thought more gaudy and conspicuously newer. At the
sight, Kirstie grew more tall--Kirstie showed her classical profile,
nose in air and nostril spread, the pure blood came in her cheek evenly
in a delicate living pink.
"A braw day to ye, Mistress Elliott," said she, and hostility and
gentility were nicely mingled in her tones. "A fine day, mem," the
laird's wife would reply with a miraculous curtsey, spreading the while
her plumage--setting off, in other words, and with arts unknown to the
mere man, the pattern of her India shawl. Behind her, the whole
Cauldstaneslap contingent marched in closer order, and with an
indescribable air of being in the presence of the foe; and while Dandie
saluted his aunt with a certain familiarity as of one who was well in
court, Hob marched on in awful immobility. There appeared upon the face
of this attitude in the family the consequences of some dreadful feud.
Presumably the two women had been principals in the original encounter,
and the laird had probably been drawn into the quarrel by the ears, too
late to be included in the present skin-deep reconciliation.
"Kirstie," said Archie one day, "what is this you have against your
family?"
"I dinna complean," said Kirstie, with a flush. "I say naething."
"I see you do not--not even good-day to your own nephew," said he.
"I hae naething to be ashamed of," said she. "I can say the Lord's
Prayer with a good grace. If Hob was ill, or in preeson or poverty, I
would see to him blithely. But for curtchying and complimenting and
colloguing, thank ye kindly!"
Archie had a bit of a smile: he leaned back in his chair. "I think you
and Mrs. Robert are not very good friends," says he slily, "when you
have your India shawls on?"
She looked upon him in silence, with a sparkling eye but an
indecipherable expression; and that was all that Archie was ever
destined to learn of the battle of the India shawls.
"Do none of them ever come here to see you?" he inquired.
"Mr. Archie," said she, "I hope that I ken my place better. It would be
a queer thing, I think, if I was to clamjamfry up your faither's
house--that I should say it!--wi' a dirty, black-a-vised clan, no ane o'
them it was worth while to mar soap upon but just mysel'! Na, they're
all damnifeed wi' the black Ellwalds. I have nae patience wi' black
folk." Then, with a sudden consciousness of the case of Archie, "No that
it maitters for men sae muckle," she made haste to add, "but there's
naebody can deny that it's unwomanly. Long hair is the ornament o' woman
ony way; we've good warrandise for that--it's in the Bible--and wha can
doubt that the Apostle had some gowden-haired lassie in his
mind--Apostle and all, for what was he but just a man like yersel'?"