First, Alexis seized Otto by the waistband of his trousers and swung
him round and round in the air. I could see Otto’s face as he went
round: the same mute courage was written on it as when he turned to
run. Alexis swung Otto round and round until his waistband broke, and
he was thrown into the grass.
That was the first part of the fight.
Then Alexis stood beside Otto and kicked him from behind as he lay in
the grass, and they fought like that for some time. That was the second
part of the fight. Then came the third and last part. Alexis picked up
the easel and smashed the picture over Otto’s head. It fastened itself
like a collar about his neck. Then Alexis picked Otto up with the
picture round his neck and threw him into the stream.
He floated!
My paladin!
He floated!
I could see his upturned face as he floated onwards down the stream,
through the meadow! It was full of deep resignation.
Then Alexis Alexovitch came to me and gathered me up in his arms and
carried me thus across the meadow—he is so tall and strong— and
whispered that he loved me, and that to-morrow he would shield me from
the world. He carried me thus to the house in his arms among the grass
and flowers; and there was my father, Ivan Ivanovitch, and my mother,
Katoosha Katooshavitch. And to-morrow I am to marry Alexis. He had
brought back from the inn my jewels and my money, and he gave me again
the diamond clasp that Otto had taken from my waist.
How can I bear it? Alexis is to take me to Petersburg, and he has
bought a beautiful house in the Prospekt, and I am to live in it with
him, and we are to be rich, and I am to be presented at the Court of
Nicholas Romanoff and his wife. Ah! Is it not dreadful?
And I can only think of Otto floating down the stream with the easel
about his neck. From the little river he will float into the Dnieper,
and from the Dnieper into the Bug, and from the Bug he will float down
the Volga, and from the Volga into the Caspian Sea. And from the
Caspian Sea there is no outlet, and Otto will float round and round it
for ever.
Is it not dreadful?
VII.
Hannah of the Highlands:
or, The Laird of Loch Aucherlocherty
“Sair maun ye greet, but hoot awa!
There’s muckle yet, love isna’ a’—
Nae more ye’ll see, howe’er ye whine
The bonnie breeks of Auld Lang Syne!”
The simple words rang out fresh and sweet upon the morning air.
It was Hannah of the Highlands. She was gathering lobsters in the burn
that ran through the glen.
The scene about her was typically Highland. Wild hills rose on both
sides of the burn to a height of seventy-five feet, covered with a
dense Highland forest that stretched a hundred yards in either
direction. At the foot of the burn a beautiful Scotch loch lay in the
hollow of the hills. Beyond it again, through the gap of the hills, was
the sea. Through the Glen, and close beside the burn where Hannah
stood, wound the road that rose again to follow the cliffs along the
shore.
The tourists in the Highlands will find no more beautiful spot than the
Glen of Aucherlocherty.
Nor is there any spot which can more justly claim to be historic
ground.
It was here in the glen that Bonnie Prince Charlie had lain and hidden
after the defeat of Culloden. Almost in the same spot the great boulder
still stands behind which the Bruce had laid hidden after Bannockburn;
while behind a number of lesser stones the Covenanters had concealed
themselves during the height of the Stuart persecution.
Through the Glen Montrose had passed on his fateful ride to
Killiecrankie; while at the lower end of it the rock was still pointed
out behind which William Wallace had paused to change his breeches
while flying from the wrath of Rob Roy.
Grim memories such as these gave character to the spot.
Indeed, most of the great events of Scotch history had taken place in
the Glen, while the little loch had been the scene of some of the most
stirring naval combats in the history of the Grampian Hills.
But there was little in the scene which lay so peaceful on this April
morning to recall the sanguinary history of the Glen. Its sides at
present were covered with a thick growth of gorse, elderberry,
egg-plants, and ghillie flower, while the woods about it were loud with
the voice of the throstle, the linnet, the magpie, the jackdaw, and
other song-birds of the Highlands.
It was a gloriously beautiful Scotch morning. The rain fell softly and
quietly, bringing dampness and moisture, and almost a sense of wetness
to the soft moss underfoot. Grey mists flew hither and thither,
carrying with them an invigorating rawness that had almost a feeling of
dampness.
It is the memory of such a morning that draws a tear from the eye of
Scotchmen after years of exile. The Scotch heart, reader, can be moved
to its depths by the sight of a raindrop or the sound of a wet rag.
And meantime Hannah, the beautiful Highland girl, was singing. The
fresh young voice rose high above the rain. Even the birds seemed to
pause to listen, and as they listened to the simple words of the Gaelic
folk-song, fell off the bough with a thud on the grass.
The Highland girl made a beautiful picture as she stood.
Her bare feet were in the burn, the rippling water of which laved her
ankles. The lobsters played about her feet, or clung affectionately to
her toes, as if loath to leave the water and be gathered in the folds
of her blue apron.
It was a scene to charm the heart of a Burne-Jones, or an Alma Tadema,
or of anybody fond of lobsters.
The girl’s golden hair flowed widely behind her, gathered in a single
braid with a piece of stovepipe wire.
“Will you sell me one of your lobsters?”
Hannah looked up. There, standing in the burn a few yards above her,
was the vision of a young man.
The beautiful Highland girl gazed at him fascinated.
He seemed a higher order of being.
He carried a fishing-rod and basket in his hand. He was dressed in a
salmon-fishing costume of an English gentleman. Salmon-fishing boots
reached to his thighs, while above them he wore a fishing-jacket
fastened loosely with a fishing-belt about his waist. He wore a small
fishing-cap on his head.
There were no fish in his basket.
He drew near to the Highland girl.
Hannah knew as she looked at him that it must be Ian McWhinus, the new
laird.
At sight she loved him.
“Ye’re sair welcome,” she said, as she handed to the young man the
finest of her lobsters.
He put it in his basket.
Then he felt in the pocket of his jacket and brought out a
sixpenny-piece.
“You must let me pay for it,” he said.
Hannah took the sixpence and held it a moment, flushing with true
Highland pride.
“I’ll no be selling the fush for money,” she said.
Something in the girl’s speech went straight to the young man’s heart.
He handed her half a crown. Whistling lightly, he strode off up the
side of the burn. Hannah stood gazing after him spell-bound. She was
aroused from her reverie by an angry voice calling her name.
“Hannah, Hannah,” cried the voice, “come away ben; are ye daft, lass,
that ye stand there keeking at a McWhinus?”
Then Hannah realised what she had done.
She had spoken with a McWhinus, a thing that no McShamus had done for a
hundred and fifty years. For nearly two centuries the McShamuses and
the McWhinuses, albeit both dwellers in the Glen, had been torn asunder
by one of those painful divisions by which the life of the Scotch
people is broken into fragments.
It had arisen out of a point of spiritual belief.
It had been six generations agone at a Highland banquet, in the days
when the unrestrained temper of the time gave way to wild orgies,
during which theological discussions raged with unrestrained fury.
Shamus McShamus, an embittered Calvinist, half crazed perhaps with
liquor, had maintained that damnation could be achieved only by faith.
Whimper McWhinus had held that damnation could be achieved also by good
works. Inflamed with drink, McShamus had struck McWhinus across the
temple with an oatcake and killed him. McShamus had been brought to
trial. Although defended by some of the most skilled lawyers of
Aucherlocherty, he had been acquitted. On the very night of his
acquittal, Whangus McWhinus, the son of the murdered man, had lain in
wait for Shamus McShamus, in the hollow of the Glen road where it rises
to the cliff, and had shot him through the bagpipes. Since then the
feud had raged with unquenched bitterness for a century and a half.
With each generation the difference between the two families became
more acute. They differed on every possible point. They wore different
tartans, sat under different ministers, drank different brands of
whisky, and upheld different doctrines in regard to eternal punishment.
To add to the feud the McWhinuses had grown rich, while the McShamuses
had become poor.
At least once in every generation a McWhinus or a McShamus had been
shot, and always at the turn of the Glen road where it rose to the edge
of the cliff. Finally, two generations gone, the McWhinuses had been
raised to sudden wealth by the discovery of a coal mine on their land.
To show their contempt for the McShamuses they had left the Glen to
live in America. The McShamuses, to show their contempt for the
McWhinuses, had remained in the Glen. The feud was kept alive in their
memory.
And now the descendant of the McWhinuses had come back, and bought out
the property of the Laird of Aucherlocherty beside the Glen. Ian
McWhinus knew nothing of the feud. Reared in another atmosphere, the
traditions of Scotland had no meaning for him. He had entirely
degenerated. To him the tartan had become only a piece of coloured
cloth. He wore a kilt as a masquerade costume for a Hallowe’en dance,
and when it rained he put on a raincoat. He was no longer Scotch. More
than that, he had married a beautiful American wife, a talcum-powder
blonde with a dough face and the exquisite rotundity of the
packing-house district of the Middle-West. Ian McWhinus was her slave.
For her sake he had bought the lobster from Hannah. For her sake, too,
he had scrutinised closely the beautiful Highland girl, for his wife
was anxious to bring back a Scotch housemaid with her to Chicago.
And meantime Hannah, with the rapture of a new love in her heart,
followed her father, Oyster McOyster McShamus, to the cottage. Oyster
McOyster, even in advancing age, was a fine specimen of Scotch manhood.
Ninety-seven years of age, he was approaching the time when many of his
countrymen begin to show the ravages of time. But he bore himself
straight as a lath, while his tall stature and his native Highland
costume accentuated the fine outline of his form. This costume
consisted of a black velvet beetle-shell jacket, which extended from
the shoulder half-way down the back, and was continued in a short kilt
of the tartan of the McShamuses, which extended from the waist half-way
to the thigh. The costume reappeared again after an interval in the
form of rolled golf stockings, which extended half-way up to the knee,
while on his feet a pair of half shoes were buckled half-way up with a
Highland clasp. On his head half-way between the ear and the upper
superficies of the skull he wore half a Scotch cap, from which a tall
rhinoceros feather extended half-way into the air.
A pair of bagpipes were beneath his arm, from which, as he walked, he
blew those deep and plaintive sounds which have done much to imprint
upon the characters of those who hear them a melancholy and resigned
despair.
At the door of the cottage he turned and faced his daughter.
“What said Ian McWhinus to you i’ the burnside?” he said fiercely.
“’Twas nae muckle,” said Hannah, and she added, for the truth was ever
more to her than her father’s wrath, “he gi’ed me saxpence for a fush.”
“Siller!” shrieked the Highlander. “Siller from a McWhinus!”
Hannah handed him the sixpence. Oyster McOyster dashed it fiercely on
the ground, then picking it up he dashed it with full force against the
wall of the cottage. Then, seizing it again he dashed it angrily into
the pocket of his kilt.
They entered the cottage.
Hannah had never seen her father’s face so dour as it looked that
night.
Their home seemed changed.
Hannah and her mother and father sat down that night in silence to
their simple meal of oatmeal porridge and Scotch whisky. In the evening
the mother sat to her spinning. Busily she plied her work, for it was a
task of love. Her eldest born, Jamie, was away at college at Edinburgh,
preparing for the ministry. His graduation day was approaching, and
Jamie’s mother was spinning him a pair of breeches against the day. The
breeches were to be a surprise. Already they were shaping that way.
Oyster McShamus sat reading the Old Testament in silence, while Hannah
looked into the peat fire and thought of the beautiful young Laird.
Only once the Highlander spoke.
“The McWhinus is back,” he said, and his glance turned towards the old
flint-lock musket on the wall. That night Hannah dreamed of the feud,
of the Glen and the burn, of love, of lobsters, and of the Laird of
Loch Aucherlocherty. And when she rose in the morning there was a
wistful look in her eyes, and there came no song from her throat.
The days passed.
Each day the beautiful Highland girl saw the young Laird, though her
father knew it not.
In the mornings she would see him as he came fishing to the burn. At
times he wore his fishing-suit, at other times he had on a
knickerbocker suit of shepherd’s plaid with a domino pattern _négligé_
shirt. For his sake the beautiful Highland girl made herself more
beautiful still. Each morning she would twine a Scotch thistle in her
hair, and pin a spray of burdock at her heart.
And at times he spoke to her. How Hannah treasured his words. Once,
catching sight of her father in the distance, he had asked her who was
the old sardine in the petticoats, and the girl had answered gladly
that it was her father, for, as a fisherman’s daughter, she was proud
to have her father mistaken for a sardine.
At another time he had asked her if she was handy about the work of the
house. How Hannah’s heart had beat at the question. She made up her
mind to spin him a pair of breeches like the ones now finishing for her
brother Jamie.
And every evening as the sun set Hannah would watch in secret from the
window of the cottage waiting for the young Laird to come past in his
motor-car, down the Glen road to the sea. Always he would slacken the
car at the sharp turn at the top of the cliff. For six generations no
McWhinus had passed that spot after nightfall with his life. But Ian
McWhinus knew nothing of the feud.
At times Oyster McOyster would see him pass, and standing at the
roadside would call down Gaelic curses on his head.
Once, when her father was from home, Hannah had stood on the roadside,
and Ian had stopped the machine and had taken her with him in the car
for a ride. Hannah, her heart beating with delight, had listened to him
as he explained how the car was worked. Had her father know that she
had sat thus beside a McWhinus, he would have slain her where she sat.
The tragedy of Hannah’s love ran swiftly to its close.
Each day she met the young Laird at the burn.
Each day she gave him the finest of her lobsters. She wore a new
thistle every day.
And every night, in secret as her mother slept, she span a new
concentric section of his breeches.
And the young Laird, when he went home, said to the talcum blonde, that
the Highland fisher-girl was not half such a damn fool as she seemed.
Then came the fateful afternoon.
He stood beside her at the burn.
“Hannah,” he said, as he bent towards her, “I want to take you to
America.”
Hannah had fallen fainting in his arms.
Ian propped her against a tree, and went home.
An hour later, when Hannah entered her home, her father was standing
behind the fireplace. He was staring fixedly into the fire, with the
flint-lock musket in his hands. There was the old dour look of the feud
upon his face, and there were muttered curses on his lips. His wife
Ellen clung to his arm and vainly sought to quiet him.
“Curse him,” he muttered, “I’ll e’en kill him the night as he passes in
his deil machine.”
Then Hannah knew that Oyster McShamus had seen her with Ian beside the
burn. She turned and fled from the house. Straight up the road she ran
across towards the manor-house of Aucherlocherty to warn Ian. To save
him from her father’s wrath, that was her one thought. Night gathered
about the Highland girl as she ran. The rain clouds and the gathering
storm hung low with fitful lightning overhead. She still ran on. About
her was the rolling of the thunder and the angry roaring of the swollen
burn. Then the storm broke upon the darkness with all the fury of the
Highland gale. The sky was rent with the fierce play of the elements.
Yet on Hannah ran. Again and again the lightning hit her, but she ran
on still. She fell over the stones, tripped and stumbled in the ruts,
butted into the hedges, cannoned off against the stone walls. But she
never stopped. She went quicker and quicker. The storm was awful.
Lightning, fire, flame, and thunder were all about her. Trees were
falling, hurdles were flying, birds were being struck by lightning.
Dogs, sheep and even cattle were hurled through the air.
She reached the manor-house, and stood a moment at the door. The storm
had lulled, the rain ceased, and for a brief moment there was quiet.
The light was streaming from the windows of the house. Hannah paused.
Suddenly her heart misgave her. Her quick ear had caught the sound of a
woman’s voice within. She approached the window and looked in. Then, as
if rooted to the spot, the Highland girl gazed and listened at the
pane.
Ian lay upon a sofa. The _négligé_ dressing-gown that he wore enhanced
the pallid beauty of his face. Beside him sat the talcum-powder blonde.
She was feeding him with chocolates. Hannah understood. Ian had trifled
with her love. He had bought her lobsters to win her heart, only to
cast it aside.
Illustration: “Hannah Understood”
Hannah turned from the window. She plucked the thistle from her throat
and flung it on the ground. Then, as she turned her eye, she caught
sight of the motor standing in the shed.
“The deil machine!” she muttered, while the wild light of Highland
frenzy gathered in her eye; then, as she rushed to it and tore the
tarpaulin from off it, “Ye’ll no be wanting of a mark the night, Oyster
McShamus,” she cried.
A moment later, the motor, with Hannah at the wheel, was thundering
down the road to the Glen. The power was on to the full, and the
demented girl clung tight to the steering-gear as the machine rocked
and thundered down the descent. The storm was raging again, and the
thunder mingled with the roar of the machine as it coursed madly
towards the sea. The great eye of the motor blazed in front. The lurid
light of it flashed a second on the trees and the burn as it passed,
and flashed blinding on the eyes of Oyster as he stood erect on the
cliff-side below, musket in hand, and faced the blazing apparition that
charged upon him with the old Highland blood surging in his veins.
It was all over in a moment—a blinding flash of lightning, the report
of a musket, a great peal of thunder, and the motor bearing the devoted
girl hurled headlong over the cliff.
They found her there in the morning. She lay on her side motionless,
half buried in the sand, upturned towards the blue Highland sky, serene
now after the passing of the storm. Quiet and still she lay. The
sea-birds seemed to pause in their flight to look down on her. The
little group of Scotch people that had gathered stood and gazed at her
with reverential awe. They made no attempt to put her together. It
would have been useless. Her gasoline tubes were twisted and bent, her
tank burst, her sprockets broken from their sides, and her
steering-gear an utter wreck. The motor would never run again.
After a time they roused themselves from their grief and looked about
for Hannah. They found her. She lay among the sand and seaweed, her
fair hair soaked in gasoline. Then they looked about for Oyster
McShamus. Him, too, they found, lying half buried in the grass and
soaked in whisky. Then they looked about for Ellen. They found her
lying across the door of the cottage half buried in Jamie’s breeches.
Then they gathered them up. Life was not extinct. They chafed their
hands. They rubbed their feet. They put hot bricks upon their stomachs.
They poured hot whisky down their throats. That brought them to.
Of course.
It always does.
They all lived.
But the feud was done for. That was the end of it. Hannah had put it to
the bad.
VIII.
Soaked in Seaweed:
or, Upset in the Ocean
(_An Old-fashioned Sea Story._)
It was in August in 1867 that I stepped on board the deck of the _Saucy
Sally_, lying in dock at Gravesend, to fill the berth of second mate.
Let me first say a word about myself.
I was a tall, handsome young fellow, squarely and powerfully built,
bronzed by the sun and the moon (and even copper-coloured in spots from
the effect of the stars), and with a face in which honesty,
intelligence, and exceptional brain power were combined with
Christianity, simplicity, and modesty.
As I stepped on the deck I could not help a slight feeling of triumph,
as I caught sight of my sailor-like features reflected in a tar-barrel
that stood beside the mast, while a little later I could scarcely
repress a sense of gratification as I noticed them reflected again in a
bucket of bilge water.
“Welcome on board, Mr. Blowhard,” called out Captain Bilge, stepping
out of the binnacle and shaking hands across the taffrail.
Illustration: “Welcome on board, Mr. Blowhard”
I saw before me a fine sailor-like man of from thirty to sixty,
clean-shaven, except for an enormous pair of whiskers, a heavy beard,
and a thick moustache, powerful in build, and carrying his beam well
aft, in a pair of broad duck trousers across the back of which there
would have been room to write a history of the British Navy.
Beside him were the first and third mates, both of them being quiet men
of poor stature, who looked at Captain Bilge with what seemed to me an
apprehensive expression in their eyes.
The vessel was on the eve of departure. Her deck presented that scene
of bustle and alacrity dear to the sailor’s heart. Men were busy
nailing up the masts, hanging the bowsprit over the side, varnishing
the lee-scuppers and pouring hot tar down the companion-way.
Captain Bilge, with a megaphone to his lips, kept calling out to the
men in his rough sailor fashion:
“Now, then, don’t over-exert yourselves, gentlemen. Remember, please,
that we have plenty of time. Keep out of the sun as much as you can.
Step carefully in the rigging there, Jones; I fear it’s just a little
high for you. Tut, tut, Williams, don’t get yourself so dirty with that
tar, you won’t look fit to be seen.”
I stood leaning over the gaff of the mainsail and thinking—yes,
thinking, dear reader, of my mother. I hope that you will think none
the less of me for that. Whenever things look dark, I lean up against
something and think of mother. If they get positively black, I stand on
one leg and think of father. After that I can face anything.
Did I think, too, of another, younger than mother and fairer than
father? Yes, I did. “Bear up, darling,” I had whispered as she nestled
her head beneath my oilskins and kicked out backward with one heel in
the agony of her girlish grief, “in five years the voyage will be over,
and after three more like it, I shall come back with money enough to
buy a second-hand fishing-net and settle down on shore.”
Meantime the ship’s preparations were complete. The masts were all in
position, the sails nailed up, and men with axes were busily chopping
away the gangway.
“All ready?” called the Captain.
“Aye, aye, sir.”
“Then hoist the anchor in board and send a man down with the key to
open the bar.”
Opening the bar! the last sad rite of departure. How often in my
voyages have I seen it; the little group of men soon to be exiled from
their home, standing about with saddened faces, waiting to see the man
with the key open the bar—held there by some strange fascination.
Next morning with a fair wind astern we had buzzed around the corner of
England and were running down the Channel.
I know no finer sight, for those who have never seen it, than the
English Channel. It is the highway of the world. Ships of all nations
are passing up and down, Dutch, Scotch, Venezuelan, and even American.
Chinese junks rush to and fro. Warships, motor yachts, icebergs, and
lumber rafts are everywhere. If I add to this fact that so thick a fog
hangs over it that it is entirely hidden from sight, my readers can
form some idea of the majesty of the scene.
We had now been three days at sea. My first sea-sickness was wearing
off, and I thought less of father.
On the third morning Captain Bilge descended to my cabin.
“Mr. Blowhard,” he said, “I must ask you to stand double watches.”
“What is the matter?” I inquired.
“The two other mates have fallen overboard,” he said uneasily, and
avoiding my eye.
I contented myself with saying “Very good, sir,” but I could not help
thinking it a trifle odd that both the mates should have fallen
overboard in the same night.
Surely there was some mystery in this.
Two mornings later the Captain appeared at the breakfast-table with the
same shifting and uneasy look in his eye.
“Anything wrong, sir?” I asked.
“Yes,” he answered, trying to appear at ease and twisting a fried egg
to and fro between his fingers with such nervous force as almost to
break it in two—“I regret to say that we have lost the bosun.”
“The bosun!” I cried.
“Yes,” said Captain Bilge more quietly, “he is overboard. I blame
myself for it, partly. It was early this morning. I was holding him up
in my arms to look at an iceberg and, quite accidentally I assure you—I
dropped him overboard.”
“Captain Bilge,” I asked, “have you taken any steps to recover him?”
“Not as yet,” he replied uneasily.