CONCERNING JOHN BAIRDIESON.
"Guid e'en to ye, Maister Ralph," said the gay old lady within, as
soon as she caught sight of Ralph. "Keep up yer heid, man, an'
walk like a Gilchrist. Ye look as dowie as a yow [ewe] that has
lost her lammie."
Walter Skirving from his arm-chair gave this time no look of
recognition. He yielded his hand to Ralph, who raised it clay-
chill and heavy even in the act to shake. When he let it drop, the
old man held up his palm and looked at it.
"Hae ye gotten aneuch guid Gallawa' lear to learn ye no to rin awa
frae a bonny lass yet, Maister Ralph?" said the old lady briskly.
She had not many jokes save with Winsome and Meg, and she rode one
hard when she came by it.
But no reply was needed.
"Aye, aye, weelna," meditated the old lady, leaning back and
folding her hands like a mediaeval saint of worldly tendencies,
"tell me aboot your faither." "He is very robust and strong in
health of body," said Kalph.
"Ye leeve in Edinbra'?" said the old lady, with a rising
inflection of inquiry.
"Yes," said Ralph, "we live in James's Court. My father likes to
be among his people."
"Faith na, a hantle o' braw folk hae leeved in James's Court in
their time. I mind o' the Leddy Partan an' Mistress Girnigo, the
king's jeweller's wife haein' a fair even-doon fecht a' aboot wha
was to hae the pick o' the hooses on the stair.--Winifred, ma
lassie, come here an' sit doon! Dinna gang flichterin' in an' oot,
but bide still an' listen to what Maister Peden has to tell us
aboot his farther."
Winsome came somewhat slowly and reluctantly towards the side of
her grandmother's chair. There she sat holding her hand, and
looking across the room towards the window where, motionless and
abstracted, Walter Skirving, who was once so bold and strong,
dreamed his life away.
"I hardly know what to tell you first," said Ralph, hesitatingly.
"Hoot, tell me gin your faither and you bide thegither withoot ony
woman body, did I no hear that yince; is that the case na?"
demanded the lady of Craig Ronald with astonishing directness.
"It is true enough," said Ralph, smiling, "but then we have with
us my father's old Minister's Man, John Bairdieson. John has us
both in hands and keeps us under fine. He was once a sailor, and
cook on a vessel in his wild days; but when he was converted by
falling from the top of a main yard into a dock (as he tells
himself), he took the faith in a somewhat extreme form. But that
does not affect his cooking. He is as good as a woman in a house."
"An' that's a lee," said the old lady. "The best man's no as guid
as the warst woman in a hoose!"
Winsome did not appear to be listening. Of what interest could
such things be to her?
Her grandmother was by no means satisfied with Ralph's report.
"But that's nae Christian way for folk to leeve, withoot a woman
o' ony kind i' the hoose--it's hardly human!"
"But I can assure you, Mistress Skirving, that, in spite of what
you say, John Bairdieson does very well for us. He is, however,
terribly jealous of women coming about. He does not allow one of
them within the doors. He regards them fixedly through the keyhole
before opening, and when he does open, his usual greeting to them
is, 'Noo get yer message dune an' be gaun!'"
The lady of Craig Ronald laughed a hearty laugh.
"Gin I cam' to veesit ye I wad learn him mainners! But what does
he do," she continued, "when some of the dames of good standing in
the congregation call on your faither? Does he treat them in this
cavalier way?"
"In that case," said Ralph, "John listens at my father's door to
hear if he is stirring. If there be no sign, John says, 'The
minister's no in, mem, an' I could not say for certain when he
wull be!' Once my father came out and caught him in the act, and
when he charged John with telling a deliberate lie to a lady, John
replied, 'A'weel, it'll tak' a lang while afore we mak' up for the
aipple!'"
It is believed that John Bairdieson here refers to Eve's fatal
gift to Adam.
"John Bairdieson is an ungallant man. It'll be from him that ye
learned to rin awa'," retorted the old lady.
"Grandmother," interrupted Winsome, who had suffered quite enough
from this, "Master Peden has come to see you, and to ask how you
find yourself to-day."
"Aye, aye, belike, belike--but Maister Ralph Peden has the power
o' his tongue, an' gin that be his errand he can say as muckle for
himsel'. Young fowk are whiles rale offcecious!" she said, turning
to Ralph with the air of an appeal to an equal from the
unaccountabilities of a child.
Winsome lifted some stray flowers that Jess Kissock had dropped
when she sped out of the room, and threw them out of the window
with an air of disdain. This to some extent relieved her, and she
felt better. It surprised Ralph, however, who, being wholly
innocent and unembarrassed by the recent occurrence, wondered
vaguely why she did it.
"Noo tell me mair aboot your faither," continued Mistress
Skirving. "I canna mak' oot whaur the Marrow pairt o' ye comes in
--I suppose when ye tak' to rinnin' awa'."
"Grandmammy, your pillows are not comfortable; let me sort them
for you."
Winsome rose and touched the old lady's surroundings in a manner
that to Ralph was suggestive of angels turning over the white-
bosomed clouds. Then Ralph looked at his pleasant querist to find
out if he were expected to go on. The old lady nodded to him with
an affectionate look.
"Well," said Ralph, "my father is like nobody else. I have missed
my mother, of course, but my father has been like a mother for
tenderness to me."
"Yer grandfaither, auld Ralph Gilchrist, was sore missed. There
was thanksgiving in the parish for three days after he died!" said
the old lady by way of an anticlimax.
Winsome looked very much as if she wished to say something, which
brought down her grandmother's wrath upon her.
"Noo, lassie, is't you or me that's haein' a veesit frae this
young man? Ye telled me juist the noo that he had come to see me.
Then juist let us caa' oor cracks, an' say oor says in peace."
Thus admonished, Winsome was silent. But for the first time she
looked at Ralph with a smile that had half an understanding in it,
which made that yonng man's heart leap. He answered quite at
random for the next few moments.
"About my father--yes, he always takes up the Bibles when John
Bairdieson preaches."
"What!" said the old lady.
"I mean, John Bairdieson takes up the Bibles for him when he
preaches, and as he shuts the door, John says over the railing in
a whisper,'Noo, dinna be losin' the Psalms, as ye did this day
three weeks'; or perhaps,'Be canny on this side o' the poopit; the
hinge is juist pitten on wi' potty [putty];' whiles John will walk
half-way down the kirk, and then turn to see if my father has sat
quietly down according to instructions. This John has always done
since the day when some inward communing overcame my father before
he began his sermon, and he stood up in the pulpit without saying
a word till the people thought that he was in direct communion
with the Almighty."
"There was nane o' thae fine abstractions aboot your grandfaither,
Ralph Gilchrist--na, whiles he was taen sae that he couldna speak
he was that mad, an' aye he gat redder an' redder i' the face,
till yince he gat vent, and then the ill words ran frae him like
the Skyreburn [Footnote: A Galloway mountain stream noted for
sudden floods.] in spate."
"What else did John Bairdieson say to yer faither?" asked Winsome,
for the first time that day speaking humanly to Ralph.
That young man looked gratefully at her, as if she had suddenly
dowered him with a fortune. Then he paused to try (because he was
very young and foolish) to account for the unaccountability of
womankind.
He endeavoured to recollect what it was that he had said and what
John Bairdieson had said, but with indifferent success. He could
not remember what he was talking about.
"John Bairdieson said--John Bairdieson said--It has clean gone out
of my mind what John Bairdieson said," replied Ralph with much
shamefacedness.
The old lady looked at him approvingly. "Ye're no a Whig. There's
guid bluid in ye," she said, irrelevantly.
"Yes, I do remember now," broke in Ralph eagerly. "I remember what
John Bairdieson said. 'Sit doon, minister,' he said, 'gin yer
ready to flee up to the blue bauks'" [rafters--said of hens going
to rest at nights]; "'there's a heap o' folk in this congregation
that's no juist sae ready yet.'"
Ralph saw that Winsome and her grandmother were both genuinely
interested in his father.
"Ye maun mind that I yince kenned yer faither as weel as e'er I
kenned a son o' mine, though it's mony an' mony a year sin' he was
i' this hoose." Winsome looked curiously at her grandmother. "Aye,
lassie," she said, "ye may look an' look, but the faither o' him
there cam as near to bein' your ain faither--"
Walter Skirving, swathed in his chair, turned his solemn and awful
face from the window, as though called back to life by his wife's
words. "Silence, woman!" he thundered.
But Mistress Skirving did not look in the least put out; only she
was discreetly silent for a minute or two after her husband had
spoken, as was her wont, and then she proceeded:
"Aye, brawly I kenned Gilbert Peden, when he used to come in at
that door, wi' his black curls ower his broo as crisp an' bonny as
his son's the day."
Winsome looked at the door with an air of interest. "Did he come
to see you, grandmammy?" she asked.
"Aye, aye, what else?--juist as muckle as this young man here
comes to see me. I had the word o' baith o' them for't. Ralph
Peden says that he comes to see me, an' sae did the faither o'
him--"
Again Mistress Skirving paused, for she was aware that her husband
had turned on her one of his silent looks.
"Drive on aboot yer faither an' John Rorrison," she said; "it's
verra entertainin'."
"Bairdieson," said Winsome, correctingly.
Ralph, now reassured that he was interesting Winsome as well, went
on more briskly. Winsome had slipped down beside her grandmother,
and had laid her arm across her grandmother's knees till the full
curve of her breast touched the spare outlines of the elder woman.
Ralph wondered if Winsome would ever in the years to come be like
her grandmother. He thought that he could love her a thousand
times more then.
"My father," said Ralph, "is a man much beloved by his
congregation, for he is a very father to them in all their
troubles; but they give him a kind of adoration in return that
would not be good for any other kind of man except my father. They
think him no less than infallible. 'Dinna mak' a god o' yer
minister,' he tells them, but they do it all the same."
Winsome looked as if she did not wonder.
"When I kenned yer faither," said the old dame, "he wad hae been
nocht the waur o' a pickle mair o' the auld Adam in him. It's a
rale usefu' commodity in this life--"
"Why, grandmother--" began Winsome.
"Noo, lassie, wull ye haud yer tongue? I'm sair deeved wi' the din
o' ye! Is there ony yae thing that a body may say withoot bern'
interruptit? Gin it's no you wi' yer 'Grandmither!' like a
cheepin' mavis, it's him ower by lookin' as if ye had dung doon
the Bible an' selled yersel' to Sawtan. I never was in sic a
hoose. A body canna get their tongue rinnin' easy an' comfortable
like, but it's 'Woman, silence!' in a yoice as graund an' awfu' as
'The Lord said unto Moses'--or else you wi' yer Englishy peepin'
tongue, 'Gran'mither!' as terrible shockit like as if a body were
gaun intil the kirk on Sabbath wi' their stockin's doon aboot
their ankles!"
The little outburst seemed mightily to relieve the old lady.
Neither of the guilty persons made any signs, save that Winsome
extended her elbow across her grandmother's knee, and poised a
dimpled chin on her hand, smiling as placidly and contentedly as
if her relative's words had been an outburst of admiration. The
old woman looked sternly at her for a moment. Then she relented,
and her hand stole among the girl's clustering curls. The little
burst of temper gave way to a semi-humorous look of feigned
sternness.
"Ye're a thankless madam," she said, shaking her white-capped
head; "maybe ye think that the fifth commandment says nocht aboot
grandmithers; but ye'll be tamed some day, my woman. Mony's the
gamesome an' hellicat [madcap] lassie that I hae seen brocht to
hersel', an' her wings clippit like a sea-gull's i' the yaird,
tethered by the fit wi' a family o' ten or a dizzen--"
Winsome rose and marched out of the room with all the dignity of
offended youth at the suggestion. The old lady laughed a hearty
laugh, in which, however, Ralph did not join.
"Sae fine an' Englishy the ways o' folk noo," she went on; "ye
mauna say this, ye mauna mention that; dear sirse me, I canna mind
them a'. I'm ower auld a Pussy Bawdrous to learn new tricks o'
sayin' 'miauw' to the kittlins. But for a' that an' a' that, I
haena noticed that the young folk are mair particular aboot what
they do nor they waur fifty years since. Na, but they're that nice
they manna say this and they canna hear that."
The old lady had got so far when by the sound of retreating
footsteps she judged that Winsome was out of hearing. Instantly
she changed her tone.
"But, young man," she said, shaking her finger at him as if she
expected a contradiction, "mind you, there's no a lass i' twunty
parishes like this lassie o' mine. An' dinna think that me an' my
guidman dinna ken brawly what's bringin' ye to Craig Ronald. Noo,
it's richt an' better nor richt--for ye're yer faither's son, an'
we baith wuss ye weel. But mind you that there's sorrow comin' to
us a'. Him an' me here has had oor sorrows i' the past, deep
buried for mair nor twenty year."
"I thank you with all my heart," said Ralph, earnestly. "I need
not tell you, after what I have said, that I would lay my life
down as a very little thing to pleasure Winsome Charteris. I love
her as I never thought that woman could be loved, and I am not the
kind to change."
"The faither o' ye didna change, though his faither garred him
mairry a Gilchrist-an' a guid bit lass she was. But for a' that he
didna change. Na, weel do I ken that he didna change."
"But," continued Ralph, "I have no reason in the world to imagine
that Winsome thinks a thought about me. On the contrary, I have
some reason to fear that she dislikes my person; and I would not
be troublesome to her--"
"Hoot toot! laddie, dinna let the Whig bluid mak' a pulin' bairn
o' ye. Surely ye dinna expect a lass o' speerit to jump at the
thocht o' ye, or drap intil yer moo' like a black-ripe cherry aff
a tree i' the orchard. Gae wa' wi' ye, man! what does a blithe
young man o' mettle want wi' encouragement--encouragement, fie!"
"Perhaps you can tell me--" faltered Ralph. "I thought--"
"Na, na, I can tell ye naething; ye maun juist find oot for
yersel', as a young man should. Only this I wull say, it's only a
cauldrife Whigamore that wad tak' 'No' for an answer. Mind ye that
gin the forbears o' the daddy o' ye was on the wrang side o'
Bothwell Brig that day--an' guid Westland bluid they spilt, nae
doot, Whigs though they waur--there's that in ye that rode doon
the West Port wi' Clavers, an' cried:
'Up wi' the bonnets o' bonny Dundee!'"
"I know," said Ralph with some of the stiff sententiousness which
he had not yet got rid of, "that I am not worthy of your
granddaughter in any respect--"
"My certes, no," said the sharp-witted dame, "for ye're a man, an'
it's a guid blessin' that you men dinna get your deserts, or it
wad be a puir lookoot for the next generation, young man. Gae wa'
wi' ye, man; mind ye, I'll no' say a word in yer favour, but
raither the ither way--whilk," smiled Mistress Skirving in the
deep still way that she sometimes had in the midst of her
liveliness, "whilk will maybe do ye mair guid. But I'm speakin'
for my guid-man when I say that ye hae oor best guid-wull. We
think that ye are a true man, as yer faither was, though sorely he
was used by this hoose. It wad maybes be some amends," she added,
as if to herself.
Then the dear old lady touched her eyes with a fine handkerchief
which she took out of a little black reticule basket on the table
by her side.
As Ralph rose reverently and kissed her hand before retiring,
Walter Skirving motioned him near his chair. Then he drew him
downward till Ralph was bending on one knee. He laid a nerveless
heavy hand on the young man's head, and looked for a minute--which
seemed years to Ralph--very fixedly on his eyes. Then dropping his
hand and turning to the window, he drew a long, heavy breath.
Ralph Peden rose and went out.