AT THE FOOT OF THE HORN
The region was like a waste place in the troubled land of dreams--a
spot so waste that the dreamer struggles to rouse himself from his
dream, finding it too dreary to dream on. I have heard it likened to
‘the ill place, wi’ the fire oot;’ but it did not so impress me when
first, after long desire, I saw it. There was nothing to suggest the
silence of once roaring flame, no half-molten rocks, no huge,
honey-combed scoriæ, no depths within depths glooming mystery and
ancient horror. It was the more desolate that it moved no active sense
of dismay. What I saw was a wide stretch of damp-looking level, mostly
of undetermined or of low-toned colour, with here and there a black
spot, or, on the margin, the brighter green of a patch of some growing
crop. Flat and wide, the eye found it difficult to rest upon it and not
sweep hurriedly from border to border for lack of self-asserted object
on which to alight. It looked low, but indeed lay high; the bases of
the hills surrounding it were far above the sea. These hills, at this
season a ring of dull-brown high-heaved hummocks, appeared to make of
it a huge circular basin, miles in diameter, over the rim of which
peered the tops and peaks of mountains more distant. Up the side of the
Horn, which was the loftiest in the ring, ran a stone wall, in the
language of the country a dry-stane-dyke, of considerable size,
climbing to the very top--an ugly thing which the eye could not avoid.
There was nothing but the grouse to have rendered it worth the
proprietor’s while to erect such a boundary to his neighbour’s
property, plentiful as were the stones ready for that poorest use of
stones--division.
The farms that border the hollow, running each a little way up the side
of the basin, are, some of them at least, as well cultivated as any in
Scotland, but Winter claims there the paramountcy, and yields to Summer
so few of his rights that the place must look forbidding, if not
repulsive, to such as do not live in it. To love it, I think one must
have been born there. In the summer, it is true, it has the character
of _bracing_, but can be such, I imagine, only to those who are pretty
well braced already; the delicate of certain sorts, I think it must
soon brace with the bands of death.
The region is in constant danger of famine. If the snow come but a
little earlier than usual, the crops lie green under it, and no store
of meal can be laid up in the cottages. Then, if the snow lie deep, the
difficulty in conveying supplies of the poor fare which their hardihood
counts sufficient, will cause the dwellers there no little suffering.
Of course they are but few. A white cottage may be seen here and there
on the southerly slopes of the basin, but hardly one in its bottom.
It was now summer, and in a month or two the landscape would look more
cheerful; the heather that covered the hills would no longer be dry and
brown and in places black with fire, but a blaze of red purple, a rich
mantle of bloom. Even now, early in July, the sun had a little power. I
cannot say it would have been warm had there been the least motion in
the air, for seldom indeed could one there from the south grant that
the wind had no keen edge to it; but on this morning there was absolute
stillness, and although it was not easy for Kirsty to imagine any
summer air other than warm, yet the wind’s absence had not a little to
do with the sense of luxurious life that now filled her heart. She sat
on her favourite grassy slope near the foot of the cone-shaped Horn,
looking over the level miles before her, and knitting away at a ribbed
stocking of dark blue whose toe she had nearly finished, glad in the
thought, not of rest from her labour, but of beginning the yet more
important fellow-stocking. She had no need to look close at her work to
keep the loops right; but she was so careful and precise that, if she
lived to be old and blind, she would knit better then than now. It was
to her the perfect glory of a summer day; and I imagine her delight in
the divine luxury greater than that of many a poet dwelling in softer
climes.
The spot where she sat was close by the turf-hut which I have already
described. At every shifting of a needle she would send a new glance
all over her world, a glance to remind one somehow of the sweep of a
broad ray of sunlight across earth and sea, when, on a morning of upper
wind, the broken clouds take endless liberties with shadow and shine.
What she saw I cannot tell; I know she saw far more than a stranger
would have seen, for she knew her home. His eyes would, I believe, have
been drawn chiefly to those intense spots of live white, opaque yet
brilliant, the heads of the cotton-grass here and there in thin patches
on the dark ground. For nearly the whole of the level was a peat-moss.
Miles and miles of peat, differing in quality and varying in depth, lay
between those hills, the only fuel almost of the region. In some spots
it was very wet, water lying beneath and all through its substance; in
others, dark spots, the sides of holes whence it had been dug, showed
where it was drier. His eyes would rest for a moment also on those
black spaces on the hills where the old heather had been burned that
its roots might shoot afresh, and feed the grouse with soft young
sprouts, their chief support: they looked now like neglected spots
where men cast stones and shards, but by and by would be covered with a
tenderer green than the rest of the hill-side. He would not see the
moorland birds that Kirsty saw; he would only hear their cries, with
now and then perhaps the bark of a sheep-dog.
My reader will probably conclude the prospect altogether uninteresting,
even ugly; but certainly Christina Barclay did not think it such. The
girl was more than well satisfied with the world-shell in which she
found herself; she was at the moment basking, both bodily and
spiritually, in a full sense of the world’s bliss. Her soul was bathed
in its own content, calling none of its feelings to account. The sun,
the air, the wide expanse; the hill-tops’ nearness to the heavens
which yet they could not invade; the little breaths which every now and
then awoke to assert their existence by immediately ceasing; doubtless
also the knowledge that her stocking was nearly done, that her father
and mother were but a mile or so away, that she knew where Steenie was,
and that a cry would bring him to her feet;--all these things bore each
a part in making Kirsty quiet with satisfaction. That there was, all
the time, a deeper cause of her peace, Kirsty knew well--the same that
is the root of life itself; and if it was not, at this moment or at
that, filled with conscious gratitude, her heart was yet like a bird
ever on the point of springing up to soar, and often soaring high
indeed. Whether it came of something special in her constitution that
happiness always made her quiet, as nothing but sorrow will make some,
I do not presume to say. I only know that, had her bliss changed
suddenly to sadness, Kirsty would have been quiet still. Whatever came
to Kirsty seemed right, for there it was!
She was now a girl of sixteen. The only sign she showed of interest in
her person, appeared in her hair and the covering of her neck. Of one
of the many middle shades of brown, with a rippling tendency to curl in
it, her hair was parted with nicety, and drawn back from her face into
a net of its own colour, while her neckerchief was of blue silk,
covering a very little white skin, but leaving bare a brown throat. She
wore a blue print wrapper, nowise differing from that of a peasant
woman, and a blue winsey petticoat, beyond which appeared her bare
feet, lovely in shape, and brown of hue. Her dress was nowise trim, and
suggested neither tidiness nor disorder. The hem of the petticoat was
in truth a little rent, but not more than might seem admissible where
the rough wear was considered to which the garment was necessarily
exposed: when a little worse it would receive the proper attention, and
be brought back to respectability! Kirsty grudged the time spent on her
garments. She looked down on them as the moon might on the clouds
around her. She made or mended them to wear them, not think about them.
Her forehead was wide and rather low, with straight eyebrows. Her eyes
were of a gentle hazel, not the hazel that looks black at night. Her
nose was strong, a little irregular, with plenty of substance, and
sensitive nostrils. A decided and well-shaped chin dominated a neck by
no means slender, and seemed to assert the superiority of the face over
the whole beautiful body. Its chief expression was of a strong repose,
a sweet, powerful peace, requiring but occasion to pass into
determination. The sensitiveness of the nostrils with the firmness in
the meeting of the closed lips, suggested a faculty of indignation
unsparing toward injustice; while the clearness of the heaven of the
forehead gave confidence that such indignation would never show itself
save for another.
I wish, presumptuous wish! that I could see the mind of a woman grow as
she sits spinning or weaving: it would reveal the process next highest
to creation. But the only hope of ever understanding such things lies
in growing oneself. There is the still growth of the moonlit night of
reverie; cloudy, with wind, and a little rain, comes the morning of
thought, when the mind grows faster and the heart more slowly; then
wakes the storm in the forest of human relation, tempest and lightning
abroad, the soul enlarging by great bursts of vision and leaps of
understanding and resolve; then floats up the mystic twilight
eagerness, not unmingled with the dismay of compelled progress, when,
bidding farewell to that which is behind, the soul is driven toward
that which is before, grasping at it with all the hunger of the new
birth. The story of God’s universe lies in the growth of the individual
soul. Kirsty’s growth had been as yet quiet and steady.
Once more as she shifted her needle, her glance went flitting over the
waste before her. This time there was more life in sight. Far away
Kirsty descried something of the nature of man upon horse: to say how
far would have been as difficult for one unused to the flat moor as for
a landsman to reckon distances at sea. Of the people of the place,
hardly another, even under the direction of Kirsty, could have
contrived to see it. At length, after she had looked many times, she
could clearly distinguish a youth on a strong, handsome hill-pony, and
remained no longer in the slightest doubt as to who he might be.
They came steadily over the dark surface of the moor, and it was clear
that the pony must know the nature of the ground well; for now he
glided along as fast as he could gallop, now made a succession of short
jumps, now half-halted, examined the ground, and began slowly picking
his way.
Kirsty watched his approach with gentle interest, while every movement
of the youth indicated eagerness. Gordon had seen her on the hillside,
probably long before she saw him, had been coming to her in as straight
a line as the ground would permit, and at length was out of the boggy
level, and ascending the slope of the hill-foot to where she sat. When
he was within about twenty yards of her she gave him a little nod, and
then fixed her eyes on her knitting. He held on till within a few feet
of her, then pulled up and threw himself from his pony’s back. The
creature, covered with foam, stood a minute panting, then fell to work
on the short grass.
Francis had grown considerably, and looked almost a young man. He was a
little older than Kirsty, but did not appear so, his expression being
considerably younger than hers. Whether self-indulgence or aspiration
was to come out of his evident joy in life, seemed yet undetermined.
His countenance indicated nothing bad. He might well have represented
one at the point before having to choose whether to go up or down hill.
He was dressed a little showily in a short coat of dark tartan, and a
highland bonnet with a brooch and feather, and carried a lady’s
riding-whip--his mother’s, no doubt--its top set with stones--so that
his appearance was altogether a contrast to that of the girl. She was a
peasant, he a gentleman! Her bare head and yet more her bare feet
emphasized the contrast. But which was by nature and in fact the
superior, no one with the least insight could have doubted.
He stood and looked at her, but neither spoke. She cast at length a
glance upward, and said,
‘Weel?’
Francis did not open his mouth. He seemed irresolute. Nothing in
Kirsty’s look or carriage or in the tone of her one word gave sign of
consciousness that she was treating him, or he her, strangely. With
complete self-possession she left the initiative to the one who had
sought the interview: let him say why he had come!
In his face began to appear indication of growing displeasure. Two or
three times he turned half away with a movement instantly checked which
seemed to say that in a moment more, if there came no change, he would
mount and ride: was this all his welcome?
At last she appeared to think she must take mercy on him: he used to
say thirty words to her one!
‘That’s a bonny powny ye hae,’ she remarked, with a look at the
creature as he fed.
‘He’s a’ that,’ he answered dryly.
‘Whaur did ye get him?’ she asked.
‘My mither coft (_bought_) him agen my hame-comin,’ he replied.
He prided himself on being able to speak the broadest of the dialect.
‘She maun hae a straucht e’e for a guid beast!’ returned Kirsty, with a
second glance at the pony.
‘He’s a bonny cratur and a willin,’ answered the youth. ‘He’ll gang
skelp throuw onything--watter onygait;--I’m no sae sure aboot fire.’
A long silence followed, broken this time by the youth.
‘Winna ye gie me luik nor word, and me ridden like mad to hae a sicht
o’ ye?’ he said.
She glanced up at him.
‘Weel ye hae that!’ she answered, with a smile that showed her lovely
white teeth: ‘Ye’re a’ dubs (_all bemired_)! What for sud ye be in sic
a hurry? Ye saw me no three days gane!’
‘Ay, I saw ye, it’s true; but I didna get a word o’ ye!’
‘Ye was free to say what ye likit. There was nane by but my mither!’
‘Wud ye hae me say a’thing afore yer mither jist as I wud til ye yer
lane (_alone_)?’ he asked.
‘Ay wud I,’ she returned. ‘Syne she wad ken, ’ithoot my haein to tell
her sic a guse as ye was!’
Had he not seen the sunny smile that accompanied her words he might
well have taken offence.
‘I wuss ye war anither sic-like!’ he answered simply.
‘Syne there wud be twa o’ ’s!’ she returned, leaving him to interpret.
Silence again fell.
‘Weel, what wud ye hae, Francie?’ said Kirsty at length.
‘I wud hae ye promise to merry me, Kirsty, come the time,’ he answered;
‘and that ye ken as weel as I du mysel!’
‘That’s straucht oot ony gait!’ rejoined Kirsty. ‘But ye see, Francie,’
she went on, ‘yer father, whan he left ye a kin’ o’ a legacy, as ye may
ca’ ’t, to mine, hed no intention that _I_ was to be left oot; neither
had _my_ father whan he acceppit o’ ’t!’
‘I dinna unerstan ye ae styme (_one atom_)!’ interrupted Gordon.
‘Haud yer tongue and hearken,’ returned Kirsty. ‘What I’m meanin ’s
this: what lies to my father’s han’ lies to mine as weel; and I’ll
never hae ’t kenned or said that, whan my father pu’t (_pulled_) ae
gait, I pu’t anither!’
‘Sakes, lassie! what _are_ ye haverin at? Wud it be pu’in agen yer
father to merry _me_?’
‘It wud be that.’
‘I dinna see hoo ye can mak it oot! I dinna see hoo, bein sic a freen’
o’ my father’s, he sud objeck to my father’s son!’
‘Eh, but laddies _ir_ gowks!’ cried Kirsty. ‘My father was your
father’s freen’ for _his_ sake, no for his ain! He thinks o’ what wud
be guid for you, no for himsel!’
‘Weel, but,’ persisted Gordon, ‘it wud be mair for my guid nor onything
ither he cud wuss for, to hae you for my wife!’
Kirsty’s nostrils began to quiver, and her lip rose in a curve of
scorn.
‘A bonnie wife ye wud hae, Francie Gordon, wha, kennin her father duin
ilk mortal thing for the love o’ his auld maister and comrade, tuik the
fine chance to mak her ain o’ ’t, and haud her grip o’ the callan til
hersel!--Think ye aither o’ the auld men ever mintit at sic a thing as
fatherin baith? That my father had a lass-bairn o’ ’s ain shawed mair
nor onything the trust your father pat in ’im! Francie, the verra grave
wud cast me oot for shame ’at I sud ance hae thoucht o’ sic a thing!
Man, it wud maist drive yer leddy-mither dementit!’
‘It’s my business, Kirsty, wha I merry!’
‘And I houp yer grace ’ll alloo it’s pairt _my_ business wha ye sall
_not_ merry--and that’s me, Francie!’
Gordon sprang to his feet with such a look of wrath and despair as for
a moment frightened Kirsty who was not easily frightened. She thought
of the terrible bog-holes on the way her lover had come, sprang also to
her feet, and caught him by the arm where, his foot already in the
stirrup, he stood in the act of mounting.
‘Francie! Francie!’ she cried, ‘hearken to rizzon! There’s no a body,
man or wuman, I like better nor yersel to du ye ony guid or turn o’
guid--’cep’ my father, of coorse, and my mither, and my ain Steenie!’
‘And hoo mony mair, gien I had the wull to hear the lang bible-chapter
o’ them, and see mysel comin in at the tail o’ them a’, like the
hin’most sheep, takin his bite as he cam? Na, na! it’s time I was hame,
and had my slip (_pinafore_) on, and was astride o’ a stick! Gien ye
had a score o’ idiot-brithers, ye wud care mair for ilk ane o’ them nor
for me! I canna bide to think o’ ’t.’
‘It’s true a’ the same, whether ye can bide to think o’ ’t or no,
Francie!’ returned the girl, her face, which had been very pale, now
rosy with indignation. ‘My Steenie’s mair to me nor a’ the Gordons
thegither, Bow-o’-meal or Jock-and-Tam as ye like!’
She drew back, sat down again to the stocking she was knitting for
Steenie, and left her lover to mount and ride, which he did without
another word.
‘There’s mair nor ae kin’ o’ idiot,’ she said to herself, ‘and
Steenie’s no the kin’ that oucht to be ca’d ane. There’s mair in
Steenie nor in sax Francie Gordons!’
If ever Kirsty came to love a man, it would be just nothing to her to
die for him; but then it never would have been anything to her to die
for her father or her mother or Steenie!
Gordon galloped off at a wild pace, as if he would drive his pony
straight athwart the terrible moss, taking hag and well-eye as it came.
But glancing behind and seeing that Kirsty was not looking after him,
he turned the creature’s head in a safer direction, and left the moss
at his back.