A WEDDING ON THE DOORSTEP.
It was at the drakes' dridd that Dan roused me, and we left McAllan's
Locker behind us with its gruesome keepers, and came down the hillside
to the burn. I mind that there was a raven above us in the morning
air, and his vindictive croak-croak was the only living sound that came
to us as we marched.
At the burn I saw the track of the garron where he had crossed in the
night, and at the burnside Dan stopped.
"Many a time have I wearied for the sight o' a burn, Hamish, cold and
sweet and clean, when we would be drinking water that was stinking,"
and he made preparations to splash his face; and it was droll to see
the bronze of his face stop at the throat, and the skin below like a
leek for whiteness.
There were many things to be telling the wanderer--that he had got some
notion of from McNeilage of the _Seagull_, but for the most part it was
hard to talk to a man walking fast.
We came up over the last of the three lonely hills, with bare moorlands
and peat hags fornent us, and away below the sea, and I held on for the
house on the moor that once was McCurdy's hut. The first beast we saw
was a raddy, a droll sheep with four daft-like horns, and there came a
great crying of curlews; and then, when we came near to the house
without yet seeing it, there was a look of wonder in Dan's face.
"There was nae grass here when I left hame," says he; "this will be
your work, Hamish. Ye were aye a great hand for grass."
As he spoke, it seemed to me that the voice was the same voice that I
kent when I was a boy, but I was at the walking now and hurried him on.
"Grass," said I; "look at yon," and I pointed to the parks and the
steading, with the smoke rising straight from the lums into the frosty
morning air.
"That was the young lad's work," said I.
"He will be a farmer at all events . . ." and there was on Dan's face
as he spoke a look of pride and pity all mixed.
"Belle will not be knowing you are here."
"Ay, but she will that, Hamish--ye don't ken Belle; look, man, look,
she's at the doorstep now." And if ever a man had it in his bones to
run it was Dan, and at the door they met--the very door where the woman
had kissed her man and smote him on the cheek, when I lay in the
heather, and the Laird of Scaurdale rode with the wean in the crook of
his arm--the same Helen that had brought them there then, had brought
also this happy meeting. It was a picture I would be aye wishing I
could be painting--Belle, her dark face flushed, her eyes suffused, the
pride, the love, the longing of her, and her hands twisting and
clasping, and her lips trembling, without words coming to them. The
heaving breast and the little flutter at the delicate nostril, what man
can be telling of these things; and Dan, his brows pulled down, and the
scar red on his cheek, and his arms half outstretched--Dan took his
woman into his arms as a man lifts a wean, and I saw his head bend to
her face, and the wild clasp of her arms round him, and her lips
parting as she raised them to his.
I did a daftlike thing then, for I put the saddle on the great
horse--and he was a mettle beast, with many outlandish capers--and I
rode through the hill to the kirk, and left word that the minister
would be doing well to ceilidh at the house on the moor.
And indeed it was well on in the afternoon when that grave man
dismounted a little stiffly from his pony, and I made bold to search
for Dan and Belle, and tell my errand. It would maybe be a chancy
business, but these two were like bairns then--and on the doorstep they
were married. And when the minister's little pony was on its road
home, and the sun still red to the west, and we three still standing at
the door, Belle with with her two hands on Dan's arm, said he--
"I had clean forgot, my dear, but Hamish would always be remembering
the due observances o' the sacraments."
A wedding, it seems to me, will be waking the devil of speech in all
women, and old Betty would be havering like all that.
"What would I be telling ye?" she would say. "Has he not had the wale
of all the weemen, and never the wan could be keeping him but you. And
you a young thing yet--there will be time for a scroosch of weans; it
is Betty that kens, and Bryde the lad will be daidlin' his brother on
his knee.
"Ye could have been waiting," says she, "till the lad would be home,
and standing under his mother's shawl before the minister, but ye would
be that daft to be at the marrying--hoot, toot."
* * * * * *
Dan came back to his farming as a boy returns to his play, and it was
droll whiles at the head-rig to see him straighten his back from the
plough stilts, with also a quick far-seeing look to right and left of
him, and an upward tilt to his chin that brought back the soldier in a
moment; and then ye would hear the canny coaxing to get the horses into
the furrow again, and the lost years were all forgotten.
My uncle took the news of the wedding finely.
"I'll not be denying Belle is a clever woman," says he, "a managing
two-handed lass--imphm. There might have been more of a splore," says
he, "and no harm done--a wheen hens and a keg would not have been out
of place."
But my aunt was not in his way of thinking.
"There would surely be no occasion," said she (when Margaret was not
there), "the woman was well enough done by already."
"You would not have him live there in open scandal?" said I.
"An old song now," says she; "we always kind of put a face on things,
but if Dan would be making a decent woman of Belle, there is nothing to
be said."
I rode with Hugh and Margaret to be seeing Dan for the first time, and
he had his soldier garb on him when we sat down to meat; and Margaret
kept close to him at the table, and their talk was of the Low Countries
and a soldier's life, and yet for all that he would be telling her how
the lassies would be dressing themselves, or the manner of the braiding
of their hair, and for Hugh and me he would be giving a great insight
into the working of soils and manures, and the different kinds of
cattle beasts and horse; and very little talk of war we got from him,
unless, maybe, it would be a story he would be telling that would give
us an inkling of the business. He would aye be harping on the waste of
land, and indeed if there was nothing else to be doing, he would be
having good red earth carted from useless places and scattered on his
own fields, which I think the old monks would be doing round their
monasteries long ago, a practice maybe learned from Rome in the early
days, but I have no sure knowledge of it.
It was that day that Helen came to the moor house, and among us, with
word from John of Scaurdale for Dan to be coming to see him, and I saw
that the very sight of her made a difference; for the face of Hugh
flushed as he stood to greet her, and Margaret took to the talking in a
vivacious manner that was not like her.
And Dan had many words for his visitor. "For," says he, in a grand
fashion, "were it not for you, madam, I might be finding myself lying
in harness, with the half o' Europe between me and this bonny place;"
and again, after a quizzing look, "I will not be the one to think you
will be overly religious either"; but I am thinking I was the only one
that would be getting the meaning of that saying.
"But why did you not return--many years?" said Helen.
"Just precisely that I would never be the one to see one o' my name
dangling at the end o' a cart tether," said Dan, "or jingling at a
cross-roads on a wuddy. Many a night I would be at this place," says
he, with a smile to his wife, "but there was no word for me, and the
years came and went, and there would be fighting to be going on
with--och, it was a weary waiting when there was no little war
somewhere, but it's by wi' now, the great thing is that it's by
with. . . ."
Hugh and Mistress Helen went their own road, and we watched them from
the doorstep, and Dan himself put the saddle gear on Margaret's little
horse, and walked a bit of the way with us on the home road.
"I am liking that man too," said Margaret, when we were alone, "but I
am thinking there was a liking for the wandering, and the fighting in
him, or else he had been back long syne."
"He would have his happy days these twenty years," said she, "in new
towns and among new folk, and Belle kind of chained to the moor
here--it is that silent woman I will be liking the best of all, Hamish."
"My dear," said I, "you are not understanding the pride of your ain
folk. Yon was the God's truth and nothing else he told Mistress Helen;
the hangman's rope is no decent to be coiled about a man's folk. It's
just the cleverness of Helen Stockdale I will be made up with--the
simple sending of a screed of news; what beats me is why she did it."
"And that's easy to me," says Margaret. "It would just be a gift to
Belle, Hamish."
"To Belle," says I.
"There are maybe more ways o' killing a cat than choking it with
butter," said the lass, "but that will be a very effective way, and
even the cat might like it, I am thinking. Ye'll mind, Hamish, that
Belle is the mother o' Bryde McBride, and what could not but be
pleasing to the mother, would be like enough to please the lad, that
doted on her a' his days."
"I think I am seeing it," said I.
"Ay, but Helen never would be seeing it like that, Hamish. She saw it
like a flash, and sent the letter that brought back Dan, and I am not
sure but Bryde would be here yet, if the mail had but come to hand
sooner."
"Margaret," said I, "are there none among the young sparks coming about
the place that you could be tholing about ye?"
"No," says she, with a smile; "there is a word among the kitchen
wenches that whiles comes into my mind, Hamish."
"The kitchen wenches' conversation will be doing finely for me," says
I, a little put out.
"It is none such a bad saying either, Hamish. This is it," said she,
"and there's no great occasion to be in a black mood with a lass--
"A clean want, Hamish, is better than a dirty breakfast. That's what
the lassies say, whiles, in the kitchen."