I TURN SCHOOLMASTER.
There were many things to be doing in these days--peats to be cutting
and carted home and built into tidy stacks, just as you can see them
to-day, and the sprits and bog hay to be saving, for we were not good
at growing hay, and then, when the boys grew up, there was the
schooling of them. It was the boys we would aye be calling them, Dan's
boy and the Laird's son, and they were fine boys.
Bryde McBride, that was the name of Dan's son, and Hugh, with a wheen
other names, was the young Laird, who was schooled in Edinburgh and was
not long back to us, and there was a lass Margaret, his sister. They
would be with me everywhere on the long summer days, and me with the
books by me; but mostly in the summer we would hold school at the Wee
Hill, for there was a green place as level as the page of a book, and a
little turf dyke enclosing it nearly, that we called the Wee Hill.
Wae's me, now they have hens scarting about the place, and the
greenness is gone from it.
There was the stone of twenty-two snails close by, for that was the
number we found on it, a thing I have many times thought about; and
great games we had, Bryde with his black hair and swarthy skin and wild
blue eyes, with laughter just ready in them, and the speed and grace of
a wild cat; and Hugh, ruddy like his folks, and dour too and very
loyal; and the lass Margaret, who could turn Bryde with her little
finger, and gloried in the doing of it. Ay, they grew up with me, and
would be swimming with me in the sea, and every path in the hills we
would be riding over, and we were happy together. These were the
happiest hours of all, ochone; the sun shone more brightly and the days
were longer.
And in his mother's eyes there was none like Bryde. The sun rose and
set on him, his every little mannerism was a joy, and I have watched
her gazing at him for long without speech, and suddenly rise and press
his head against her heart, and her happiness was when he looked up
from his task and smiled. I think never was a hand laid on him in
anger.
There was something elemental about the lad. He would stand mother
naked in the dim morning light below the little fall, and his pony
awaiting him, and he kent every horse and dog within twenty miles.
Indeed, there was a time when he would have slept with his horses.
"They might be needing me in the night," said he.
In these days we grew hay in a droll fashion. If there was a field
namely for good grass, we would be getting green divots from it and
putting them in our own parks, and scattering good rich earth round the
divots. And when the grass was blown about by the winds, the seeds
would fall and strike on the loose scattered earth, so that these
divots were the leaven that leavened the whole field. But when he was
sixteen and man grown, a fair scholar and expert with the sword, Bryde
would be laughing at the notion. And he was strong and tough like the
mountain ash.
"Hill land," said he, "will only be growing hill grass," and he set his
folk and he went himself and took the seeds from the hill grasses.
Guid kens how long it took him, but he sowed his hill grasses with his
corn, and the seeds came, as we say, and he cut it and threshed it with
the flails; and after that he had hay-stacks in his yard, and his
beasts were well done by, so that at the fair he got great prices both
for stots and back-calvers. And, indeed, it was at the fair that first
I saw the mettle in the boy, although his eyes had always dancing
devils in them. There was much drink in these days, and the mainland
dealers had not the head for it that the boys from the glens had. The
young boys would be holding saddle beasts from the early morning and
making the easy money. Aweel, on this fair day, Margaret the maid, the
sister of Hugh, had craked and craked to be seeing the beasts and the
ferlies, and her mother, the Lady, and her father, the Laird, were sore
against it.
"I will be with Bryde, my cousin," said she; "and who will meddle me."
(I was clean forgotten.)
"He is not a real cousin, Margaret," said the mother.
"He is a fine lad; you will go, my lass," said the Laird, for blood was
more to him than a stroke left-handed across a shield, and that day she
rode with Hugh and me--Margaret, the Flower of Nourn. Tall she was and
limber like a lance, her eyes like blue forget-me-nots that grow by the
burn mhor, fearless and daring, with long black lashes. Her brown hair
curled at her white neck, and her white chin was strong like a man's,
but very soft and beautiful; her lips red, and her teeth like pearls.
She was silent for the most part on the road that day, though whiles
she would be quizzing her brother about the lassies in the college
town, for he had two years of the College at St Andrews. He was the
great hand with the lassies by all accounts, Hugh, and many's the time
his mother would be havering about them, but that man, my uncle, would
wink as though he would be amused.
But when we passed McKelvie's Inn and saw old McKelvie there, stout and
hearty, but very white about the head, and had a salutation from Ronald
McKinnon thrang with the dealers, and Mirren not far off still
sonsy--when we passed there I saw that Margaret was all trembling; and
when we saw Bryde, tall and swarthy, coming to us, I saw the smiling in
her eyes and her face aglow.
"What was that, my dear lass?" said I, looking at her.
"That would be my heart leaping," said she, with a laugh and a blush.
And Bryde lifted her from her little horse, and her hands were never
tired to be touching him. She was all tremulous with laughter and
eager-eyed, and the red was flaming in her cheeks, and she would be
ordering Bryde like a queen, but pleadingly withal.
"You will stable my little horse," said she, and when Bryde, smiling
down at her, took the bridle, "But--but I will be coming with you," she
cried, "or surely you will be forgetting to halter him, or letting him
run off and leave me," and as those two with the proud little horse
moved to the inn, I saw her look up at the boy with all her heart in
her eyes and her lips smiling a little pitifully.
"Do you think I would be caring, Bryde, if he ran off--if you were left
with me?"
Ah, she was brave in her loving, was the Flower of Nourn.
Mirren McKinnon, that was once Mirren Stuart, was dowie that day, and
her eyes red with greeting, for her son had gone to the sea, as his
father had long ago. "I will be missing his step," she said softly,
"when my man is on the hill," but Ronny would not be listening.
"It will make a man of the lad," said he; "there's something clean and
fine about the sea."
Bryde had sold his beasts well, and it was his pleasure to be showing
Margaret the bonniest foals, rough-haired and tousled as they were, and
Hugh and me would be passing judgment. There was a mob of mares and
foals and yearlings gathered in one place, and the mainland dealers
bargaining with the farmers--always on the point of fighting by their
way of it, and laughing to scorn the offered prices, as you will see to
this day when folks are dealing in horse.
And as we stood a little way off, a great burly red-faced man--a
Lowland dealer, strong as a tree, and a wit in a coarse way--turned his
round drink-reddened eyes on us a time or two, and whispered behind his
hand to his cronies, and I heard the titter of Dol Beag's laughing as
Hugh pointed to a bonny yearling colt, and we stepped away, but not so
far that I heard the dealer's words.
"Ou ay," says he, looking at Bryde, "Dan's is he? I've heard tell o'
him, but whitna queen is't that's lookin' at him like a motherless
foal?"
At that Bryde put Margaret in my hands. His face was like a devil's
and his teeth showed as though his mouth were dry. To Hugh he gave one
word. "Stop!" said he, and the word was a snarl.
Never another word he spoke, but leapt among the bargainers, and slid
through the great flailing arms of the bucolic wit, and his right hand
sank into the man's red throat. I see him still, his left hand behind
the man's back, the shoulders raised, all the lithe length of him as he
stood on his toes, his eyes like blue flame. I saw him shake his enemy
as a dog shakes a rabbit. The great red face took a blae colour--the
tongue protruded from his mouth and the eyes stared wildly. Men would
have dragged Bryde off, but he hissed a "begone" through clenched teeth
(it was a word of his mother), and they fell back as from a
sword-stroke.
"Go down, go down, ye beast, if ye never come up," he girned, and flung
the man from him to the earth, where he lay.
I heard no word, and no look that I saw passed between, but Margaret
left us and ran to Bryde.
"Put your foot on that cur, my lady," says he, cold as an icicle, and
his head bare. Her two white hands trembled at his sleeve and she
turned her face from the groaning man in horror, and then she raised
her great blue eyes in one long look, and then her little foot but
touched the man's shoulder.
A grim smile came over the face of Bryde McBride, like sunlight in a
dark pool. "A brave lass," said he, and I only heard her reply, and
saw her colour rise at his praise.
"Take me home," she whispered, "Bryde--Bryde _dear_."
"Drink," cried the man on the ground, "drink. God, I wis near hand it
that time."
On the road home we pretended to be very merry, for nothing would
please Margaret but Bryde would ride to her father's house. On the
hill road she set spurs to her horse with a challenge to Bryde, and
they left us some way behind, Hugh and me.
"Man," said Hugh, and his face was troubled, "this will not do."
"No," said I, and hated myself, "for the boy's as good as you or me."
"Good!" cries Hugh; "he's like the mountains--he's granite, and what
are we but dressed sandstone--and the lass kens it," says he. "God
help us."