MOTHER AND SON.
The sun was shining bright, and the laird was out in his fields. His
oats were nearly ready for the scythe, and he was judging where he
had best begin to cut them.
His fields lay chiefly along the banks of the stream, occupying the
whole breadth of the valley on the east side of the ridge where the
cottage stood. On the west side of the ridge, nearly parallel to,
and not many yards from it, a small brook ran to join the stream:
this was a march betwixt the chief's land and Mr. Peregrine
Palmer's. Their respective limit was not everywhere so well defined.
The air was clear and clean, and full of life. The wind was asleep.
A consciousness of work approaching completion filled earth and
air--a mood of calm expectation, as of a man who sees his end
drawing nigh, and awaits the saving judgment of the father of
spirits. There was no song of birds--only a crow from the yard, or
the cry of a blackcock from the hill; the two streams were left to
do all the singing, and they did their best, though their water was
low. The day was of the evening of the year; in the full sunshine
was present the twilight and the coming night, but there was a sense
of readiness on all sides. The fruits of the earth must be housed;
that alone remained to be done.
When the laird had made up his mind, he turned towards the house--a
lowly cottage, more extensive than many farmhouses, but looking no
better. It was well built, with an outside wall of rough stone and
lime, and another wall of turf within, lined in parts with wood,
making it as warm a nest as any house of the size could be. The
door, picturesque with abundant repair, opened by a latch into the
kitchen.
For long years the floor of the kitchen had been an earthen one,
with the fire on a hearth in the middle of it, as in all the
cottages; and the smoke rose into the roof, keeping it very dry and
warm, if also very sooty, and thence into the air through a hole in
the middle. But some ten years before this time, Alister and Ian,
mere lads, had built a chimney outside, and opening the wall,
removed the hearth to it--with the smoke also, which now had its own
private way to liberty. They then paved the floor with such stones
as they could find, in the fields and on the hill, sufficiently flat
and smooth on one side, and by sinking them according to their
thickness, managed to get a tolerably even surface. Many other
improvements followed; and although it was a poor place still, it
would at the time of Dr. Johnson's visit to the highlands have been
counted a good house, not to be despised by unambitious knight or
poor baronet. Nor was the time yet over, when ladies and gentlemen,
of all courtesy and good breeding, might be found in such houses.
In the kitchen a deal-dresser, scoured white, stood under one of the
tiny windows, giving light enough for a clean-souled cook--and what
window-light would ever be enough for one of a different sort? There
were only four panes in it, but it opened and closed with a button,
and so was superior to many windows. There was a larger on the
opposite side, which at times in the winter nights when the cold was
great, they filled bodily with a barricade of turf. Here, in the
kitchen, the chief takes his meals with his lady-mother. She and Ian
have just finished their breakfast, and gone to the other end of the
house. The laird broke his fast long ago.
A fire is burning on the hearth--small, for the mid-day-meal is not
yet on its way. Everything is tidy; the hearth is swept up, and the
dishes are washed: the barefooted girl is reaching the last of them
to its place on the rack behind the dresser. She is a red-haired,
blue-eyed Celt, with a pretty face, and a refinement of motion and
speech rarer in some other peasantries.
The chief enters, and takes from the wall an old-fashioned gun. He
wants a bird or two, for Ian's home-coming is a great event.
"I saw a big stag last night down by the burn, sir," said the girl,
"feeding as if he had been the red cow."
"I don't want him to-day, Nancy," returned her master. "Had he big
horns?"
"Great horns, sir; but it was too dark to count the tines."
"When was it? Why did you not tell me?"
"I thought it was morning, sir, and when I got up it was the middle
of the night. The moon was so shiny that I went to the door and
looked out. Just at the narrow leap, I saw him plain."
"If you should see him again, Nancy, scare him. I don't want the
Sasunnachs at the New House to see him."
"Hadn't you better take him yourself, Macruadh? He would make fine
hams for the winter!"
"Mind your own business, Nancy, and hold your tongue," said the
chief, with a smile that took all the harshness from the words.
"Don't you tell any one you saw him. For what you know he may be the
big stag!"
"Sure no one would kill HIM, sir!" answered the girl aghast.
"I hope not. But get the stoving-pot ready, Nancy; I'm going to find
a bird or two. Lest I should not succeed, have a couple of chickens
at hand."
"Sir, the mistress has commanded them already."
"That is well; but do not kill them except I am not back in time."
"I understand, sir."
Macruadh knew the stag as well as the horse he rode, and that his
habit had for some time been to come down at night and feed on the
small border of rich grass on the south side of the burn, between it
and the abrupt heathery rise of the hill. For there the burn ran so
near the hill, and the ground was so covered with huge masses of
grey rock, that there was hardly room for cultivation, and the bank
was left in grass.
The stalking of the stag was the passion of the highlander in that
part of the country. He cared little for shooting the grouse, black
or red, and almost despised those whose ambition was a full bag of
such game; he dreamed day and night of killing deer. The chief,
however, was in this matter more of a man without being less of a
highlander. He loved the deer so much, saw them so much a part of
the glory of mountain and sky, sunshine and storm, that he liked to
see them living, not dead, and only now and then shot one, when the
family had need of it. He felt himself indeed almost the father of
the deer as well as of his clan, and mourned greatly that he could
do so little now, from the limited range of his property, to protect
them. His love for live creatures was not quite equal to that of St.
Francis, for he had not conceived the thought of turning wolf or fox
from the error of his ways; but even the creatures that preyed upon
others he killed only from a sense of duty, and with no pleasure in
their death. The heartlessness of the common type of sportsman was
loathsome to him. When there was not much doing on the farm, he
would sometimes be out all night with his gun, it is true, but he
would seldom fire it, and then only at some beast of prey; on the
hill-side or in the valley he would lie watching the ways and doings
of the many creatures that roam the night--each with its object,
each with its reasons, each with its fitting of means to ends. One
of the grounds of his dislike to the new possessors of the old land
was the raid he feared upon the wild animals.
The laird gone, I will take my reader into the PARLOUR, as they
called in English their one sitting-room. Shall I first tell him
what the room was like, or first describe the two persons in it? Led
up to a picture, I certainly should not look first at the frame; but
a description is a process of painting rather than a picture; and
when you cannot see the thing in one, but must take each part by
itself, and in your mind get it into relation with the rest, there
is an advantage, I think, in having a notion of the frame first. For
one thing, you cannot see the persons without imagining their
surroundings, and if those should be unfittingly imagined, they
interfere with the truth of the persons, and you may not be able to
get them right after.
The room, then, was about fifteen feet by twelve, and the ceiling
was low. On the white walls hung a few frames, of which two or three
contained water-colours--not very good, but not displeasing; several
held miniature portraits--mostly in red coats, and one or two a
silhouette. Opposite the door hung a target of hide, round, and
bossed with brass. Alister had come upon it in the house, covering a
meal-barrel, to which service it had probably been put in aid of its
eluding a search for arms after the battle of Culloden. Never more
to cover man's food from mice, or his person from an enemy, it was
raised to the WALHALLA of the parlour. Under it rested, horizontally
upon two nails, the sword of the chief--a long and broad ANDREW
FERRARA, with a plated basket-hilt; beside it hung a dirk--longer
than usual, and fine in form, with a carved hilt in the shape of an
eagle's head and neck, and its sheath, whose leather was dry and
flaky with age, heavily mounted in silver. Below these was a
card-table of marquetry with spindle-legs, and on it a work-box of
ivory, inlaid with silver and ebony. In the corner stood a harp, an
Erard, golden and gracious, not a string of it broken. In the middle
of the room was a small square table, covered with a green cloth. An
old-fashioned easy chair stood by the chimney; and one sat in it
whom to see was to forget her surroundings.
In middle age she is still beautiful, with the rare beauty that
shines from the root of the being. Her hair is of the darkest brown,
almost black; her eyes are very dark, and her skin is very fair,
though the soft bloom, as of reflected sunset, is gone from her
cheek, and her hair shows lines of keen silver. Her features are
fine, clear, and regular--the chin a little strong perhaps, not for
the size, but the fineness of the rest; her form is that of a
younger woman; her hand and foot are long and delicate. A more
refined and courteous presence could not have been found in the
island. The dignity of her carriage nowise marred its grace, or
betrayed the least consciousness; she looked dignified because she
was dignified. That form of falsehood which consists in assuming the
look of what one fain would be, was, as much as any other,
impossible to Isobel Macruadh. She wore no cap; her hair was
gathered in a large knot near the top of her head. Her gown was of a
dark print; she had no ornament except a ring with a single ruby.
She was working a bit of net into lace.
She could speak Gaelic as well as any in the glen--perhaps better;
but to her sons she always spoke English. To them indeed English was
their mother-tongue, in the sense that English only came addressed
to themselves from her lips. There were, she said, plenty to teach
them Gaelic; she must see to their English.
The one window of the parlour, though not large, was of tolerable
size; but little light entered, so shaded was it with a rose-tree in
a pot on the sill. By the wall opposite was a couch, and on the
couch lay Ian with a book in his hand--a book in a strange language.
His mother and he would sometimes be a whole morning together and
exchange no more than a word or two, though many a look and smile.
It seemed enough for each to be in the other's company. There was a
quite peculiar hond between the two. Like so many of the young men
of that country, Ian had been intended for the army; but there was
in him this much of the spirit of the eagle he resembled, that he
passionately loved freedom, and had almost a gypsy's delight in
wandering. When he left college, he became tutor in a Russian family
of distinction, and after that accepted a commission in the
household troops of the Czar. But wherever he went, he seemed, as he
said once to his mother, almost physically aware of a line
stretching between him and her, which seemed to vibrate when he grew
anxious about her. The bond between him and his brother was equally
strong, but in feeling different. Between him and Alister it was a
cable; between him and his mother a harpstring; in the one case it
was a muscle, in the other a nerve. The one retained, the other drew
him. Given to roaming as he was, again and again he returned, from
pure love-longing, to what he always felt as the PROTECTION of his
mother. It was protection indeed he often had sought--protection
from his own glooms, which nothing but her love seemed able to
tenuate.
He was tall--if an inch above six feet be tall, but not of his
brother's fine proportion. He was thin, with long slender fingers
and feet like his mother's. His small, strong bones were covered
with little more than hard muscle, but every motion of limb or body
was grace. At times, when lost in thought and unconscious of
movement, an observer might have imagined him in conversation with
some one unseen, towards whom he was carrying himself with courtesy:
plain it was that courtesy with him was not a graft upon the finest
stock, but an essential element. His forehead was rather low,
freckled, and crowned with hair of a foxy red; his eyes were of the
glass-gray or green loved of our elder poets; his nose was a very
eagle in itself--large and fine. He more resembled the mask of the
dead Shakspere than any other I have met, only in him the
proportions were a little exaggerated; his nose was a little too
large, and his mouth a little too small for the mask; but the
mingled sweetness and strength in the curves of the latter prevented
the impression of weakness generally given by the association of
such a nose and such a mouth. On his short upper lip was a small
light moustache, and on his face not a hair more. In rest his
countenance wore a great calmness, but a calmness that might seem
rooted in sadness.
While the mother might, more than once in a day, differ to
fault-finding from her elder-born--whom she admired, notwithstanding,
as well as loved, from the bottom of her heart--she was never KNOWN
to say a word in opposition to the younger. It was even whispered
that she was afraid of him. It was not so; but her reverence for Ian
was such that, even when she felt bound not to agree with him, she
seldom had the confidence that, differing from HIM, she was in the
right. Sometimes in the middle of the night she would slip like a
ghost into the room where he lay, and sit by his bed till the black
cock, the gray cock, the red cock crew. The son might be awake all
the time, and the mother suspect him awake, yet no word pass between
them. She would rise and go as she came. Her feeling for her younger
son was like that of Hannah for her eldest--intensest love mixed
with strangest reverence. But there were vast alternations and
inexplicable minglings in her thoughts of him. At one moment she
would regard him as gifted beyond his fellows for some great work,
at another be filled with a horrible fear that he was in rebellion
against the God of his life. Doubtless mothers are far too ready to
think THEIR sons above the ordinary breed of sons: self, unpossessed
of God, will worship itself in its offspring; yet the sons whom HOLY
mothers have regarded as born to great things and who have passed away
without sign, may have gone on toward their great things. Whether this
mother thought too much of her son or not, there were questions moving
in his mind which she could not have understood--even then when he would
creep to her bed in the morning to forget in her arms the terrible
dreams of the night, or when at evening he would draw his little stool
to her knee, unable or unwilling to enjoy his book anywhere but by her
side.
What gave him his unconscious power over his mother, was, first, the
things he said, and next, the things he did not say; for he seemed
to her to dwell always in a rich silence. Yet throughout was she
aware of a something between them, across which they could not meet;
and it was in part her distress at the seeming impossibility of
effecting a spiritual union with her son, that made her so desirous
of personal proximity to him. Such union is by most thinking people
presumed impossible without consent of opinion, and this mistake
rendered her unable to FEEL near him, to be at home with him. If she
had believed that they understood each other, that they were of like
OPINION, she would not have been half so unhappy when he went away,
would not have longed half so grievously for his return. Ian on his
part understood his mother, but knew she did not understand him, and
was therefore troubled. Hence it resulted that always after a time
came the hour--which never came to her--when he could endure
proximity without oneness no longer, and would suddenly announce his
departure. And after a day or two of his absence, the mother would
be doubly wretched to find a sort of relief in it, and would spend
wakeful nights trying to oust it as the merest fancy, persuading
herself that she was miserable, and nothing but miserable, in the
loss of her darling.
Naturally then she would turn more to Alister, and his love was a
strengthening tonic to her sick motherhood. He was never jealous of
either. Their love for each other was to him a love. He too would
mourn deeply over his brother's departure, but it became at once his
business to comfort his mother. And while she had no suspicion of
the degree to which he suffered, it drew her with fresh love to her
elder born, and gave her renewal of the quiet satisfaction in him
that was never absent, when she saw how he too missed Ian. Their
mutual affection was indeed as true and strong as a mother could
desire it. "If such love," she said to herself, "had appeared in the
middle of its history instead of now at its close, the transmitted
affection would have been enough to bind the clan together for
centuries more!"
It was with a prelusive smile that shone on the mother's heart like
the opening of heaven, that Ian lowered his book to answer her
question. She had said--
"Did you not feel the cold very much at St. Petersburg last winter,
Ian?"
"Yes, mother, at times," he answered. "But everybody wears fur; the
peasant his sheep-skin, the noble his silver fox. They have to fight
the cold! Nose and toes are in constant danger. Did I never tell you
what happened to me once in that way? I don't think I ever did!"
"You never tell me anything, Ian!" said his mother, looking at him
with a loving sadness.
"I was suddenly stopped in the street by what I took for an
unheard-of insult: I actually thought my great proboscis was being
pulled! If I had been as fiery as Alister, the man would have found
his back, and I should have lost my nose. Without the least warning
a handful of snow was thrust in my face, and my nose had not even a
chance of snorting with indignation, it found itself so twisted in
every direction at once! But I have a way, in any sudden occurrence,
of feeling perplexed enough to want to be sure before doing
anything, and if it has sometimes hindered me from what was
expedient, it has oftener saved me from what would have been wrong:
in another instant I was able to do justice to the promptitude of a
fellow Christian for the preservation of my nose, already whitening
in frosty death: he was rubbing it hard with snow, the orthodox
remedy! My whole face presently sharpened into one burning spot, and
taking off my hat, I thanked the man for his most kind attention. He
pointed out to me that time spent in explaining the condition of my
nose, would have been pure loss: the danger was pressing, and he
attacked it at once! I was indeed entirely unconscious of the state
of my beak--the worst symptom of any!"
"I trust, Ian, you will not go back to Russia!" said his mother,
after a little more talk about frost-biting. "Surely there is work
for you at home!"
"What can I do at home, mother? You have no money to buy me a
commission, and I am not much good at farm-work. Alister says I am
not worth a horseman's wages!"
"You could find teaching at home; or you could go into the church.
We might manage that, for you would only have to attend the divinity
classes."
"Mother! would you put me into one of the priests' offices that I
may eat a piece of bread? As for teaching, there are too many hungry
students for that: I could not take the bread out of their mouths!
And in truth, mother, I could not endure it--except it were required
of me. I can live on as little as any, but it must be with some
liberty. I have surely inherited the spirit of some old sea-rover,
it is so difficult for me to rest! I am a very thistle-down for
wandering! I must know how my fellow-creatures live! I should like
to BE one man after another--each for an hour or two!"
"Your father used to say there was much Norse blood in the family."
"There it is, mother! I cannot help it!"
"I don't like your holding the Czar's commission, Ian--somehow I
don't like it! He is a tyrant!"
"I am going to throw it up, mother."
"I am glad of that! How did you ever get it?"
"Oddly enough, through the man that pulled my nose. I had a chance
afterwards of doing him a good turn, which he was most generous in
acknowledging; and as he belonged to the court, I had the offer of a
lieutenant's commission. The Scotch are in favour."
A deep cloud had settled on the face of the young man. The lady
looked at him for a moment with keenest mother-eyes, suppressed a
deep sigh, and betook herself again to her work.
Ere she thought how he might take it, another question broke from
her lips.
"What sort of church had you to go to in St. Petersburg, Ian?" she
said.
Ian was silent a moment, thinking how to be true, and not hurt her
more than could not be helped.
"There are a thousand places of worship there, mother," he returned,
with a curious smile.
"Any presbyterian place?" she asked.
"I believe so," he replied.
"Ian, you haven't given up praying?"
"If ever I prayed, mother, I certainly have not given it up."
"Ever prayed, Ian! When a mere child you prayed like an aged
Christian!"
"Ah, mother, that was a sad pity! I asked for things of which I felt
no need! I was a hypocrite! I ought to have prayed like a little
child!"
The mother was silent: she it was who had taught him to pray
thus--making him pray aloud in her hearing! and this was the result!
The premature blossom had withered! she said to herself. But it was
no blossom, only a muslin flower!
"Then you didn't go to church!" she said at length.
"Not often, mother dear," he answered. "When I do go, I like to go
to the church of the country I happen to be in. Going to church and
praying to God are not the same thing."
"Then you do say your prayers? Oh, do not tell me you never bow down
before your maker!"
"Shall I tell you where I think I did once pray to God, mother?" he
said, after a little pause, anxious to soothe her suffering. "At
least I did think then that I prayed!" he added.
"It was not this morning, then, before you left your chamber?"
"No, mother," answered Ian; "I did not pray this morning, and I
never say prayers."
The mother gave a gasp, but answered nothing. Ian went on again.
"I should like to tell you, mother, about that time when I am almost
sure I prayed!"
"I should like to hear about it," she answered, with strangest
minglings of emotion. At one and the same instant she felt parted
from her son by a gulf into which she must cast herself to find him,
and that he stood on a height of sacred experience which she never
could hope to climb. "Oh for his father to talk to him!" she said to
herself. He was a power on her soul which she almost feared. If he
were to put forth his power, might he not drag her down into
unbelief?
It was the first time they had come so close in their talk. The
moment his mother spoke out, Ian had responded. He was anxious to be
open with her so far as he could, and forced his natural
taciturnity, the prime cause of which was his thoughtfulness: it was
hard to talk where was so much thinking to be done, so little time
to do it in, and so little progress made by it! But wherever he
could keep his mother company, there he would not leave her! Just as
he opened his mouth, however, to begin his narration, the door of
the room also opened, flung wide by the small red hand of Nancy, and
two young ladies entered.