THE RIDERS ON THE MOOR.
I would be seeing very little of Bryde for many a day after that, for
there was aye work to be doing at his hill farm, and hard work will be
bringing sound sleep.
But Hugh was become the great gallant, with old Tam rubbing his
stirrups with sand from the sand-brae, that and wet divots, till the
irons shone like silver.
"Hoch-a-soch," he would say, "the young Laird is ta'en wi' the weemen.
I will be at the polishing o' his horse's shoes next, and it iss the
fine smells he will be haffin' on his claes--fine smells for the
leddies, yess."
"Tush, man," said the Laird, "ye smell o' my Lady's bower. Your
forebears had the reek o' peats about them, or a waft o' ships. . . ."
But the road to Scaurdale would be drawing Hugh.
"It is Mistress Helen that will be having the dainty lad, Hugh, my
dear," his sister would be flashing; "your folk would not be hanging so
long at a lassie's coat-tails, if old stories will be true."
But he had an answer for her.
"What tails will Bryde be hanging at, my lass?"
"His plough-tail, my dainty lad," said Margaret, and laughed to be
provoking him.
"Maybe ay, Meg," says he, "and maybe no."
It was not long after that when Margaret would be wheedling me to be on
the hill.
"See, Hamish, my little brown horse is wearying for the air o' the
hills and the spring water," and she would smile with her brows raised
a little and her lips pouting.
When we were on the brow of the black hill--
"I am thinking we will ride to the peat hags," said Margaret, "and
we'll maybe be seeing Bryde," and she laughed in my face, and, indeed,
after that she was always at the laughing.
"What would his father be like, Hamish--Bryde's father?"
"A fine man he was, Margaret, but a little wild."
"Ay," said she, "he would be spoiled with the lasses."
And for a while she was thoughtful. Bryde was at his plough-tail on an
outlying bit, but his horses were standing at the head-rig, and Bryde
was laughing and talking to a lady, and when I saw the serving-man
holding a pair of Scaurdale's horse, I kent the lass.
"I am wondering," said I, "where is Hugh, and Mistress Helen so far
from hame; but ye were in the right of it, Margaret, for Bryde is at
his plough-tail."
"He will have good company even there, it seems," said the lass.
But in a little Helen and she were at the talking.
"And where would you be leaving all your cavaliers, Helen," said
Margaret, for Hugh had been telling us of the young sparks at Scaurdale.
"Cavaliers, Margaret!" with a very dainty moving of the shoulders. "Of
these I am weary this day, and so I inflict myself on the dragoon," and
here she bowed very low and gracefully to the ploughman, and there was
a little devilry in her black eyes.
Bryde was at his furrow again when Hugh joined us with his very braw
clothes, and he was a little dour-looking.
"We're all on the moor these days," says he, "and keeping a man from
his work seemingly."
"But now you have come we will ride to Scaurdale," said Helen, but
Margaret would not be heeding.
"I am to see my cousin's wife," says she, "in the house yonder, with
Hamish here; but here is Hugh on edge to be on the Scaurdale road, and
Bryde eager to be ploughing." So Margaret and I made our way to the
house, and it was hard to be knowing where the shepherd's hut was among
the outbuildings of the steading, and as we turned into the stackyard
and watched Hugh and Mistress Helen ride on, Margaret turned to me.
"Is it not droll," said she, "that a man o' my folk, my own brother,
cannot be putting a ring on the finger of an easy lass like that?"
"Are you thinking she is easy?" said I.
"I am thinking she is a merry lass and wants a bold man--she will be
loving a bold man."
"I think that too."
"Who is it?" said Margaret, like a flash.
"Oh, just Hugh."
"Hamish," said the lass, "ye never lied to me before."
A halflin lad took the horses and we came to the house, and there was
Belle to meet us, smiling to Margaret, and her eyes wandering to where
her son was at the ploughing.
Now it was a droll thing to me to watch these two, for Margaret McBride
had the pride of her mother, and there were many times when she would
be very haughty, and yet in this moorland farmhouse she would be all
softness and the quiet laughter of gladness, and talking very wisely to
Belle about homely things. And I would often be laughing at Margaret
and her talk of milk, and fowls, and calves, and lambs, but she would
be very serious.
"A woman should be knowing these things, Hamish," she would say.
But Belle was the slave of Margaret since the days when Hugh and Bryde
and the little wild lass would be playing in the heather, and climbing
for jackdaw's eggs or young rock-pigeons in Dun Dubh. But that day
Margaret was beside old Betty, and making her comfortable in the chair
by the fire of red peats.
"Will you be very wise, old Betty?" said she, looking down on the old
one.
"Yess, yess, Betty has the wisdom, and Betty kens the secrets o' the
hill folks, but ye will not be needing to ken the secrets, for will you
not be keeping the lads away from ye with a stick. Na, na, ye will not
be needing the love secret."
"My motherless lass!" cried Margaret, with a droll laugh, "and is there
a secret way of it?"
"Yess, yess, a very goot way, mo leanabh; you will chust be scraping a
little from the white of your nail and putting it in his dram, yess,
and he will be yours through all the worlds. . . ."
"But what," said I, "if he'll not be taking a dram?"
"I could always be wheedling him, Hamish," she laughed. At that I
looked at her.
"I am thinking of Hugh," says she, "Hugh and Mistress Helen," but she
had the grace to be shamed a little.
"Indeed," said Belle, "they are a bonny pair, the young Laird and the
young lady. She will be riding here many times, for the Laird of
Scaurdale will have been telling her old tales of the place."
"Will they be making a match of it?" said I.
"I am hoping that, Hamish," said Belle--"and, indeed, she is liking the
hills and the folk, and fond of the horses too, and will be keen to be
seeing Bryde breaking the young beasts, and watching him for long. She
will whiles be putting the old tartan shawl round her."
At that Margaret went out of the house, and in a while I saw her with
Bryde, walking step for step with him on the lea he was breaking, and
her hand would sometimes be beside his on the stilt of the plough.
On the home road that day I would be showing her the road we had
travelled that night of the whin-burning, and where in the hills was
McAllan's Locker, and wondering what had come to the Killer, the dead
white man. And I would be minding a story of a dog that howled in the
night and slunk by in the darkness of Lag 'a bheithe, and I wondered if
the Nameless Man had gone to his love that beckoned in the pool, or if
the ravens had got him at the last of it, and if the pigeons built
still away in the cranny of the Locker, and there was a sadness in me.
She had not been speaking, the lass beside me, and her merriness was
all gone, for she was aye merry with Bryde, and at last--
"Hamish," said she, "there is something will happen."
And on top of my own mood I was startled, and the words did not come to
me.
"Am I not the daft lassie?" said she, and started to the singing of
merry airs; but before we saw the rowan-tree that grows on the face of
the black hill, her songs were sad again.
"He will be lonesome away there, Bryde," said she, looking back.
"He will be looking for a lass one of these nights," said I, a little
angry, "and there are bonny lasses here and there, between here and
Scaurdale."
"I am wishing, Hamish, I could be at the herding and the kelp-burning
with the other lasses," said she, looking at me, and there was a little
smile at her lips, and a kind of eagerness I did not understand.
"Do you think Bryde will be looking at these wenches," said I in great
scorn (for I feared he did).
"No, Hamish, no," she cried amidst her laughter, and I understood then.
"Mistress Margaret," said I, "I am not a match for you in wit, it
seems, but since we are agreed he canna just be suited with these
lassies, there will just be two left by your way of it."
"Between here and Scaurdale, Hamish," said she, "it is your own words I
am giving you."
"Bryde is a fine lad," said I, "but he's like to be spoiled, and," said
I, "your mother will have told you he has not even a name." At that
the dull anger I had been choking down most of that day broke over me.
"Damn the whole affair," said I, and dismounted.
When I lifted her from her horse, she was laughing and blinking tears
from her lashes, and she put her arms very tightly about my neck.
"Oh, Hamish, Hamish," said she, "I will have been doing that this
while."