Rain was beating on the open leaf of plane and beech, and rapping at the
black doors of the ash-bud, and the scent of the gean-tree flourish hung
round the road by the river, vague, sweet, haunting, like a recollection
of the magic and forgotten gardens of youth. Over the high and numerous
hills, mountains of deer and antique forest, went the mist, a slattern,
trailing a ragged gown. The river sucked below the banks and clamoured
on the cascades, drawn unwillingly to the sea, the old gluttonous sea
that must ever be robbing the glens of their gathered waters. And the
birds were at their loving, or the building of their homes, flying among
the bushes, trolling upon the bough. One with an eye, as the saying
goes, could scarcely pass among this travail of the new year without
some pleasure in the spectacle, though the rain might drench him to
the skin. He could not but joy in the thrusting crook of the fern and
bracken; what sort of heart was his if it did not lift and swell to see
the new fresh green blown upon the grey parks, to see the hedges burst,
the young firs of the Blaranbui prick up among the slower elder pines
and oaks?
Some of the soul and rapture of the day fell with the rain upon the
boy. He hurried with bare feet along the river-side from the glen to the
town, a bearer of news, old news of its kind, yet great news too, but
now and then he would linger in the odour of the bloom that sprayed the
gean-tree like a fall of snow, or he would cast an eye admiring upon the
turgid river, washing from bank to bank, and feel the strange uneasiness
of wonder and surmise, the same that comes from mists that swirl in
gorges of the hills or haunt old ancient woods. The sigh of the wind
seemed to be for his peculiar ear. The nod of the saugh leaf on the
banks was a salutation. There is, in a flutter of the tree’s young
plumage, some hint of communication whose secret we lose as we age, and
the boy, among it, felt the warmth of companionship. But the sights were
for the errant moments of his mind; his thoughts, most of the way, were
on his message.
He was a boy with a timid and wondering eye, a type to be seen often in
those parts, and his hair blew from under his bonnet, a toss of white
and gold, as it blew below the helms of the old sea-rovers. He was from
Ladyfield, hastening as I say with great news though common news enough
of its kind--the news that the goodwife of Ladyfield was dead.
If this were a tale of the imagination, and my task was not a work of
history but to pleasure common people about a hearth, who ever love the
familiar emotions in their heroes, I would credit my hero with grief.
For here was his last friend gone, here was he orphaned for ever. The
door of Ladyfield, where he was born and where he had slept without an
absent night since first his cry rose there, a coronach in the ears of
his dying mother, would be shut against him; the stranger would bar the
gates at evening, the sheep upon the hills would have another keel-mark
than the old one on their fleecy sides. Surely the sobs that sometimes
rose up in his throat were the utter surrender of sorrow; were the tears
that mingled with the rain-drops on his cheek not griefs most bitter
essence? For indeed he had loved the old shrunk woman, wrinkled and
brown like a nut, with a love that our race makes no parade of, but
feels to the very core.
But in truth, as he went sobbing in his loneliness down the river-side,
a regard for the manner of his message busied him more than the matter
of it. It was not every Friday a boy had a task so momentous had the
chance to come upon households with intelligence so unsettling. They
would be sitting about the table, perhaps, or spinning by the fire, the
good-wife of Ladyfield still for them a living, breathing body, home
among her herds, and he would come in among them and in a word bring her
to their notice in all death’s great monopoly. It was a duty to be done
with care if he would avail himself of the whole value of so rare a
chance. A mere clod would be for entering with a weeping face, to
blurt his secret in shaking sentences, or would let it slip out in an
indifferent tone, as one might speak of some common occurrence.
But Gilian, as he went, busied himself on how he should convey most
tellingly the story he brought down the glen. Should he lead up to his
news by gradual steps or give it forth like an alarum? It would be a
fine and rare experience to watch them for a little, as they looked and
spoke with common cheerfulness, never guessing why he was there, then
shock them with the intelligence, but he dare not let them think he
felt so little the weightiness of his message that his mind was ready
to dwell on trivialities. Should it be in Gaelic or in English he should
tell them? Their first salutations would be in the speech of the glens;
it would be, “Oh Gilian, little hero! fair fellow! there you are! sit
down and have town bread, and sugar on its butter,” and if he followed
the usual custom he would answer in the same tongue. But between “_Tha
bean Lecknamban air falbh_” and “The wife of Ladyfield is gone,” there
must be some careful choice. The Gaelic of it was closer on the feelings
of the event; the words some way seemed to make plain the emptiness of
the farmhouse. When he said them, the people would think all at once
of the little brown wrinkled dame, no more to be bustling about
the kitchen, of her wheel silent, of her foot no more upon the blue
flagstones of the milk-house, of her voice no more in the chamber where
they had so often known her hospitality. The English, indeed, when he
thought of it with its phrase a mere borrowing from the Gaelic, seemed
an affectation. No, it must be in the natural tongue his tidings should
be told. He would rap at the door hurriedly, lift the sneck before any
response came, go in with his bonnet in his hand, and say “_Tha bean
Lecknamban air falbh_” with a great simplicity.
And thus as he debated and determined in his mind, he was hastening
through a country that in another mood would be demanding his
attention almost at every step of the way. Ladyfield is at the barren
end of the glen--barren of trees, but rich in heather, and myrtle, and
grass--surrounded by full and swelling hills. The river, but for the
gluttonous sea that must be sucking it down, would choose, if it might,
to linger in the valley here for ever, and in summer it loiters on many
pretences, twining out and in, hiding behind Baracaldine and the bushes
of Tom-an-Dearc, and pretending to doze in the long broad levels of
Kincreggan, so that it may not too soon lose its freedom in so magic
a place. But the glen opens out anon, woods and parks cluster, and the
Duke’s gardens and multitudes of roads come into view. The deer stamp
and flee among the grasses, flowers grow in more profusion than up the
glen where no woods shelter. There are trim houses by the wayside, with
men about the doors talking with loud cheerfulness, and laughing in the
way of inn-frequenters. A gateway from solitude, an entrance to a region
where the most startling and varied things were ever happening, to a boy
from the glen this town end of the valley is a sample of Paradise for
beauty and interest. Gilian went through it with his blue eyes blurred
to-day, but for wont he found it full of charms and fancies. To go under
its white-harled archways on a market day was to come upon a new
world, and yet not all a new world, for its spectacles of life and
movement--the busy street, the clanging pavement, the noisy closes, the
quay ever sounding with the high calls of mariners and fishers--seemed
sometimes to strike a chord of memory. At the first experience of this
busy community, the innumerable children playing before the school,
and the women with wide flowing clothes, and flowered bonnets on
their heads, though so different from the children of the glen and its
familiar dames with piped caps, or maids with snooded locks--all was
pleasant to his wondering view. He seemed to know and understand them
at the first glance, deeper even than he knew or understood the common
surroundings of his life in Ladyfield; he felt at times more comfort in
the air of those lanes and closes though unpleasantly they might smell
(if it was the curing season and the gut-pots reeked at the quay) than
in the winds of the place he came from, the winds of the wilds, so
indifferent to mankind, the winds of the woods, sacred to the ghosts,
among whom a boy in a kilt was an intruder, the winds of the hills, that
come blowing from round the universe and on the most peaceful days are
but momentary visitors, stopping but to tap with a branch at the window,
or whistle mockingly in a vent.
In spite of their mockery of him, Gilian always loved the children of
the town. At first when they used to see him come through the arches
walking hurriedly, feeling his feet in unaccustomed shoes awkward and
unmanageable, and the polish of his face a thing unbearable, they would
come up in wonder on his heels and guess at his identity, then taunt him
for the rustic nature of his clothing.
“Crotal-coat, crotal-coat, there are peats in your brogues!” they would
cry; or “Hielan’-man, hielan’-man, go home for your _fuarag_ and brose!”
They were strange new creatures to him, foreigners quite, and cruel,
speaking freely a tongue he knew not but in broken parts, yet deep in
his innermost there was a strange feeling that he was of their kind. He
wished he could join them in their English play, or better far, that he
might take them to the eagle’s nest in Stob Bhan, or the badgers’ hamlet
in Blaranbui, or show them his skill to fetch the deer at a call, in the
rutting time, from the mud-wallows above Carnus. But even yet, he was
only a stranger to the boys of the town, and as he went down the street
in the drenching rain that filled the syvers to overflowing and rose
in a smoke from the calm waters of the bay, they cried “Crotal-coat,
crotal-coat,” after him.
“Ah,” said he to himself, inly pleased at their ignorance, “if I cared,
could I not make them ashamed, by telling them they were mocking a boy
without a home?”
Kept by the rain closer than usual to the shelter of the closes, the
scamps to-day went further than ever in their efforts to annoy the
stranger; they rolled stones along the causey so that they caught him
on the heels, and they ran out at the back ends of their closes as he
passed, and into others still before him, so that his progress down the
town was to run a gauntlet of jeers. But he paid no heed; he was of
that gifted nature that at times can treat the most bitter insults with
indifference, and his mind was taken up with the manner of his message.
When he came to the Cross-houses he cast about for the right close in a
place where they were so numerous that they had always confused him, and
a middle-aged woman with bare thick arms came out to help him.
“You’ll be looking for some one?” said she in Gaelic, knowing him no
town boy.
He was standing as she spoke to him in a close that had seemed the one
he sought, and he turned to tell her where he was going.
“Oh yes,” said the woman, “I know her well. And you’ll be from the glen,
and what’s your errand in the town to-day? You are from Drimfern? No,
Ladyfield! It is a fine place Ladyfield; and how is the goodwife there?”
“She is dead,” said Gilian hurriedly.
“God, and that is a pity too!” said the woman, content now that the
news was hers. “You are in the very close you are looking for,” and she
turned and hurried up the street to spread the news as fast as could be.
The boy turned away, angry with himself to have blurted out his news to
the first stranger with the curiosity to question him, and halfway up
the stairs he had to pause a little to get in the right mood for his
errand. Then he went up the remaining steps and rapped at the door.
“Come in,” cried a frank and hearty woman’s voice. He put down the sneck
with his thumb and pushed in the door and followed.
A little window facing the sea gave light to the interior, that would
have been dull and mean but for the brilliant delf upon the dresser rack
and the cleanliness of all things and the smiling faces of Jean Clerk
and her sister. The hum of Jean’s wheel had filled the chamber as he
entered; now it was stilled and the spinner sat with the wool pinched in
her fingers, as she welcomed her little relative. Her sister--Aliset Dhu
they called her, and if black she was, it had been long ago, for now her
hair was like the drifted snow--stood behind her, looking up from her
girdle where oaten bannocks toasted.
He stood with his bonnet in his hand. Against his will the grief of his
loss swept over him more masterfully than it had yet done, for those two
sisters had never been seen by him before except in the company of their
relative the little old woman with a face like a nut, and the sobs
that shook him were checked by no reflection of the play-actor. He was
incapable of utterance.
“O my boy, my boy!” cried Jean Clerk. “Do I not know your story?
I dreamt last night I saw a white horse galloping over Tombreck to
Ladyfield and the rider of him had his face in his plaid. Peace with
her, and her share of Paradise!”
And thus my hero, who thought so much upon the way of his message, had
no need to convey it any way at all.