THE RETURN OF EBIE FARRISH.
Now Ebie Farrish had been over at the Nether Crae seeing the
lassies there in a friendly way after the scene in the byre, for
Galloway ploughmen were the most general of lovers. Ebie
considered it therefore no disloyalty to Jess that he would
display his watch-guard and other accomplishments to the young
maids at the Crae. Nor indeed would Jess herself have so
considered it. It was only Meg who was so particular that she did
not allow such little practice excursions of this kind on the part
of her young men.
When Ebie started to go home, it was just midnight. As he came
over the Grannoch bridge he saw the stars reflected in the water,
and the long stretches of the loch glimmering pearl grey in the
faint starlight and the late twilight. He thought they looked as
if they were running down hill. His thoughts and doings that day
and night had been earthly enough. He had no regrets and few
aspirations. But the coolness of the twilight gave him the sense
of being a better man than he knew himself to be. Ebie went to sit
under the ministrations of the Reverend Erasmus Teends at twelve
by the clock on Sunday. He was a regular attendant. He always was
spruce in his Sunday blacks. He placed himself in the hard pews so
that he could have a view of his flame for the time being. As he
listened to the minister he thought sometimes of her and of his
work, and of the turnip-hoeing on the morrow, but oftenest of
Jess, who went to the Marrow kirk over the hills. He thought of
the rise of ten shillings that he would ask at the next half-
year's term, all as a matter of course--just as Robert Jamieson
the large farmer, thought of the rent day and the market ordinary,
and bringing home the "muckle greybeard "full of excellent
Glenlivat from the Cross Keys on Wednesday. Above them both the
Reverend Erasmus Teends droned and drowsed, as Jess Kissock said
with her faculty for expression, "bummelin' awa like a bubbly-Jock
or a bum-bee in a bottle."
But coming home in the coolness of this night, the ploughman was,
for the time being, purged of the grosser humours which come
naturally to strong, coarse natures, with physical frames ramping
with youth and good feeding. He stood long looking into the lane
water, which glided beneath the bridge and away down to the Dee
without a sound.
He saw where, on the broad bosom of the loch, the stillness lay
grey and smooth like glimmering steel, with little puffs of night
wind purling across it, and disappearing like breath from a new
knife-blade. He saw where the smooth satin plane rippled to the
first water-break, as the stream collected itself, deep and black,
with the force of the water behind it, to flow beneath the bridge.
When Ebie Farrish came to the bridge he was a material Galloway
ploughman, satisfied with his night's conquests and chewing the
cud of their memory.
He looked over. He saw the stars, which were perfectly reflected a
hundred yards away on the smooth expanse, first waver, then
tremble, and lastly break into a myriad delicate shafts of light,
as the water quickened and gathered. He spat in the water, and
thought of trout for breakfast. But the long roar of the rapids of
the Dee came over the hill, and a feeling of stillness with it,
weird and remote. Uncertain lights shot hither and thither under
the bridge, in strange gleams of reflection. The ploughman was
awed. He continued to gaze. The stillness closed in upon him. The
aromatic breath of the pines seemed to cool him and remove him
from himself. He had a sense that it was Sabbath morning, and that
he had just washed his face to go to church. It was the nearest
thing to worship he had ever known. Such moments come to the most
material, and are their theology. Far off a solitary bird whooped
and whinnied. It sounded mysterious and unknown, the cry of a lost
soul. Ebie Farrish wondered where he would go to when he died. He
thought this over for a little, and then he concluded that it were
better not to dwell on this subject. But the crying on the lonely
hills awed him. It was only a Jack snipe from whose belated nest
an owl had stolen two eggs. But it was Ebie Farrish's good angel.
He resolved that he would go seldomer to the village public o'
nights, and that he would no more find cakes and ale sweet to his
palate. It was a foregone conclusion that on Saturday night he
would be there, yet what he heard and saw on Grannoch Bridge
opened his sluggish eyes. Of a truth there was that in the world
which had not been there for him before. It is to Jess Kissock's
credit, that when Ebie was most impressed by the stillness and
most under the spell of the night, he thought of her. He was only
an ignorant, godless, good-natured man, who was no more moral than
he could help; but it is both a testimonial and a compliment when
such a man thinks of a woman in his best and most solemn moments.
At that moment Jess Kissock was putting Winsome Charteris's letter
into her pocket.
There is no doubt that poor, ignorant Ebie, with his highly
developed body and the unrestrained and irregular propensities of
his rudimentary soul, was nearer the Almighty that night than his
keen-witted and scheming sweetheart.
A trout leaped in the calm water, and Ebie stopped thinking of the
eternities to remember where he had set a line. Far off a cock
crew, and the well-known sound warned Ebie that he had better be
drawing near his bed. He raised himself from the copestone of the
parapet, and solemnly tramped his steady way up to the "onstead"
of Craig Ronald, which took shape before him as he advanced like a
low, grey-bastioned castle. As he entered the low square on his
way across to the stable door he was surprised to notice a gleam
of light in the byre. Ebie thought that some tramps were
trespassing on the good nature of the mistress of the house, and
he had the feeling of loyalty to his master's interests which
distinguished the Galloway ploughman of an older time. He was
mortally afraid of bogles, and would not have crossed the kirkyard
after the glimmer of midnight without seeing a dozen corpse-
candles; but tramps were quite another matter, for Ebie was not in
the least afraid of mortal man--except only of Allan Welsh, the
Marrow minister.
So he stole on tiptoe to the byre door, circumnavigating the
"wicket," which poured across the yard its tell-tale plank of
light. Standing within the doorway and looking over the high
wooden stall, tenanted in winter by Jock, the shaggy black bull,
Ebie saw Jess Kissock, lost in her dreams. The lantern was set on
the floor in front of her. The candle had nearly burned down to
the socket. Jess's eyes were large and brilliant. It seemed to
Ebie Farrish that they were shining with light. Her red lips were
pouted, and there was a warm, unwonted flush on her cheeks. In her
dreams she was already mistress of a house, and considering how
she would treat her servants. She would treat them kindly and
well. She had heard her sister, who was servant at Earlston, tell
how the ladies there treated their servants. Jess meant to do just
the same. She meant to be a real lady. Ambition in a woman has a
double chance, for adaptation is inborn along with it. Most men do
not succeed very remarkably in anything, because at heart they do
not believe in themselves. Jess did. It was her heritage from some
Pict, who held back under the covert of his native woods so long
as the Roman tortoise crept along, shelved in iron, but who drave
headlong into a gap with all his men, when, some accident of
formation showed the one chance given in a long day's march.
Ebie thought he had never seen Jess so beautiful. It had never
struck him before that Jess was really handsomer than Meg. He only
knew that there was a stinging wild-fruit fragrance about Jess and
her rare favours he had never experienced in the company of any
other woman. And he had a large experience.
Was it possible that she knew that he was out and was waiting for
him? In this thought, which slowly entered in upon his
astonishment, the natural Ebie forced himself to the front.
"Jess!" he exclaimed impulsively, taking a step within, the door.
Instantly, as though some night-flying bat had flown against it,
the candle went out--a breath wafted by him as lightly and as
silently as a snowy owl flies home in the twilight. A subtle
something, the influence of a presence, remained, which mingled
strangely with the odours of the clover in the neuk, and the sour
night-smell of the byre. Again there was a perfect silence.
Without, a corncrake ground monotonously. A rat scurried along the
rafter. Ebie in the silence and the darkness had almost persuaded
himself that he had been dreaming, when his foot clattered against
something which fell over on the cobble-stones that paved the
byre. He stopped and picked it up. It was the byre lantern. The
wick was still glowing crimson when he opened the little tin door.
As he looked it drew slowly upward into a red star, and winked
itself out. It was no dream. Jess had been in the byre. To meet
whom? he asked himself.
Ebie went thoughtfully up-stairs, climbing the stable ladder as
the first twilight of the dawn was slowly pouring up from beneath
into a lake of light and colour in the east, as water gushes from
a strong well-eye.
"Ye're a nice boy comin' to yer bed at this time o' the mornin',"
said Jock Forrest from his bunk at the other side.
"Nicht-wanderin' bairns needs skelpin'!" remarked Jock Gordon, who
had taken up his abode in a vacant stall beneath.
"Sleep yer ain sleeps, ye pair o' draft-sacks, in yer beds,"
answered Ebie Farrish without heat and simply as a conversational
counter.
He did not know that he was quoting the earliest English classic.
He had never heard of Chaucer.
"What wad Jess say?" continued Jock Forrest, sleepily.
"Ask her," said Ebie sharply.
"At any rate, I'm no gaun to be disturbit in my nicht's rest wi'
the like o' you, Ebie Farrish! Ye'll eyther come hame in time o'
nicht, or ye'll sleep elsewhere--up at the Crae, gin ye like."
"Mind yer ain business," retorted Ebie, who could think of nothing
else to say.
Down below daft Jock Gordon, with some dim appropriateness was
beginning his elricht croon of--
"The devil sat on his ain lum-tap,
Hech how--black and reeky--"
when Jock Forrest, out of all patience, cried out down to him:
"Jock Gordon, gin ye begin yer noise at twa o'clock i' the mornin'
I'll come down an' pit ye i' the mill-dam!"
"Maybes ye'll be cryin' for me to pit you i' the mill-dam some
warm day!" said Jock Gordon grimly, "but I'se do naething o' the
kind. I'll een bank up the fires an' gie ye a turn till ye're weel
brandered. Ye'll girn for mill-dams then, I'm thinkin'!"
So, grumbling and threatening in his well-accustomed manner, Jock
Gordon returned to the wakeful silence which he kept during the
hours usually given to sleep. It was said, however, that he never
really slept. Indeed, Ebie and Jock were ready to take their oath
that they never went up and down that wooden ladder, from which
three of the rounds were missing, without seeing Jock Gordon's
eyes shining like a cat's out of the dark of the manger where,
like an ape, he sat all night cross-legged.
CHAPTEK XXII.
A SCARLET POPPY.
IT was early afternoon at Craig Ronald. Afternoon is quite a
different time from morning at a farm. Afternoon is slack-water in
the duties of the house, at least for the womenfolk--except in hay
and harvest, when it is full flood tide all the time, night and
day. But when we consider that the life of a farm town begins
about four in the morning, it will be readily seen that afternoon
comes far on in the day indeed for such as have tasted the
freshness of the morning.
In the morning, Winsome had seen that every part of her farm
machinery was going upon well-oiled wheels. She had consulted her
honorary factor, who, though a middle-aged man and a bachelor of
long and honourable standing, enrolled himself openly and avowedly
in the army of Winsome's admirers. He used to ask every day what
additions had been made to the list of her conquests, and took
much interest in the details of her costume. This last she mostly
devised for herself with taste which was really a gift natural to
her, but which seemed nothing less than miraculous to the maidens
and wives of a parish which had its dressmaking done according to
the canons of an art which the Misses Crumbcloth, mantua-makers at
the Dullarg village, had learned twenty-five years before, once
for all.
Now it was afternoon, and Winsome was once more at the bake-board.
There were few things that Winsome liked better to do, and she
daily tried the beauty of her complexion before the open
fireplace, though her grandmother ineffectually suggested that Meg
Kissock would do just as well.
While Winsome was rubbing her hands with dry meal, before
beginning, she became conscious that some one was coming up the
drive. So she was not at all astonished when a loud knock in the
stillness of the afternoon echoed through the empty house and far
down the stone passages.
It was Ralph Peden who knocked, as indeed she did not need to tell
herself. She called, however, to Meg Kissock.
"Meg," she said, "there is the young minister come to see my
grandmother. Go and show him into the parlour."
Meg looked at her mistress. Her reply was irrelevant. "I was born
on a Friday," she said.
But notwithstanding she went, and received the young man. She took
him into the parlour, where he was set down among strange voluted
foreign shells with a pink flush within the wide mouth of every
one of them. Here there was a scent of lavender and subtle
essences in the air, and a great stillness. While he sat waiting,
he could hear afar off the sound of rippling water. It struck a
little chill over him that, after the letter he had sent, Winsome
should not have come to greet him herself. From this he argued the
worst. She might be offended, or--still more fatal thought--she
and Meg might be laughing over it together.
A tall, slim girl entered the quiet parlour with a silent, catlike
tread. She was at his side before he knew it. It was the girl whom
he had met on his way to the Manse the first day of his arrival.
Jess's experience as a maid to her ladyship has stood her in good
stead. She had a fineness of build which even the housework of a
farm could not coarsen. Besides, Winsome considered Jess delicate,
and did not allow her to lift anything really heavy. So it
happened that when Ralph Peden came Jess was putting the fresh
flowers in the great bowls of low relief chinaware--roses from
the garden and sprays of white hawthorn, which flowers late in
Galloway, blue hyacinths and harebells massed together--yellow
marigolds and glorious scarlet poppies, of which Jess with her
taste of the savage was passionately fond. She had arranged some
of these against a pale blue background of bunches of forget-me-
nots, with an effect strangely striking in that cool, dusky room.
When Jess came in Ralph had risen instinctively. He shook hands
heartily with her. As she looked up at him, she said:
"Do you remember me?"
Ralph replied with an eager frankness, all the more marked that he
had expected Winsome instead of Jess Kissock: "Indeed, how could I
forget, when you helped me to carry my books that night? I am glad
to find you here. I had no idea that you lived here."
Which was indeed true, for he had not yet been able to grasp the
idea that any but Winsome lived at Craig Ronald.
Jess Kissock, who knew that not many moments were hers before Meg
might come in, replied:
"I am here to help with the house. Meg Kissock is my sister." She
looked to see if there was anything in Ralph's eyes she could
resent; but a son of the Marrow kirk had not been trained to
respect of persons.
"I am sure you will help very much," he said, politely.
"I'm not as strong as my sister, you see, so that I'm generally in
the house," said Jess, who was carrying two dishes of flowers at
once across the room. At Ralph's feet one of them overset, and
poured all its wealth of blue and white and splashed crimson over
the floor.
Jess stooped to lift them, crying shame on her own awkwardness.
Ralph kindly assisted her. As they stooped to gather them
together, Jess put forward all her attractions. Her lithe grace
never showed to more advantage. Yet, for all the impression she
made on Ralph, she might as well have wasted her sweetness on Jock
Gordon--indeed, better so, for Jock recognized in her something
strangely kin to his own wayward spirit.
When the flowers were all gathered and put back:
"Now you shall have one for helping," said Jess, as she had once
seen a lady in England do, and she selected a dark-red, velvety
damask rose from the wealth which she had cut and brought out of
the garden. Standing on tiptoe, she could scarcely reach his
button-hole.
"Bend down," she said. Obediently Ralph bent, good-humouredly
patient, to please this girl who had done him a good turn on that
day which now seemed so far away--the day that had brought Craig
Ronald and Winsome into his life.
But in spite of his stooping, Jess had some difficulty in pinning
in the rose, and in order to steady herself on tiptoe, she reached
up and laid a staying hand on his shoulder. As he bent down, his
face just touched the crisp fringes of her dark hair, which seemed
a strange thing to him.
But a sense of another presence in the room caused him to raise
his eyes, and there in the doorway stood Winsome Charteris,
looking so pale and cold that she seemed to be a thousand miles
away.
"I bid you good-afternoon, Master Peden," said Winsome quietly; "I
am glad you have had time to come and visit my grandmother. She
will be glad to see you."
For some moments Ralph had no words to answer. As for Jess, she
did not even colour; she simply withdrew with the quickness and
feline grace which were characteristic of her, without a flush or
a tremor. It was not on such occasions that her heart stirred.
When she was gone she felt that things had gone well, even beyond
her expectation.
When Ralph at last found his voice, he said somewhat falteringly,
yet with a ring of honesty in his voice which for the time being
was lost upon Winsome:
"You are not angry with me for coming to-day. You knew I would
come, did you not?"
Winsome only said: "My grandmother is waiting for me. You had
better go in at once."
"Winsome," said Ralph, trying to prolong the period of his
converse with her, "you are not angry with me for writing what I
did?"
Winsome thought that he was referring to the poem which had come
to her by way of Manse Bell and Saunders Mowdiewort. She was
indignant that he should try to turn the tables upon her and so
make her feel guilty.
"I received nothing that I had any right to keep," she said.
Ralph was silent. The blow was a complete one. She did not wish
him to write to her any more or to speak to her on the old terms
of friendship. He thought wholly of the letter that he had sent by
Saunders the day before, and her coldness and changed attitude
were set down by him to that cause, and not to the embarrassing
position in which Winsome had surprised him when she came into the
flower-strewn parlour. He did not know that the one thing a woman
never really forgives is a false position, and that even the best
of women in such cases think the most unjust things. Winsome moved
towards the inner door of her grandmother's room.
Ralph put out his hand as if to touch hers, but Winsome withdrew
herself with a swift, fierce movement, and held the door open for
him to pass in. He had no alternative but to obey.