boundaries of the HOLM. The farm-steading covers a goodly portion of the
peninsula shaped by the burn, that here looks almost like a river. With
its outhouses it forms three sides of a square, and the fourth is
composed of a set of jolly stacks, that will keep the thrashing-machine
at work during all the winter. The interior of the square rejoices in a
glorious dunghill (O, breathe not the name!) that will cover every field
with luxuriant harvests--twelve bolls of oats to the acre. There the
cattle--oxen yet "lean, and lank, and brown as is the ribbed sea-sand,"
will, in a few months, eat themselves up, on straw and turnip, into
obesity. There turkeys walk demure--there geese waddle, and there the
feathery-legged king of Bantam struts among his seraglio, keeping pertly
aloof from double-combed Chanticleer, that squire of dames, crowing to
his partlets. There a cloud of pigeons often descends among the corny
chaff, and then whirrs off to the uplands. No chained mastiff looking
grimly from the kennel's mouth, but a set of cheerful and sagacious
collies are seen sitting on their hurdies, or "worrying ither in
diversion." A shaggy colt or two, and a brood mare, with a spice of
blood, and a foal at her heels, know their shed, and evidently are
favourites with the family. Out comes the master, a rosy-cheeked carle,
upwards of six feet high, broad-shouldered, with a blue bonnet and
velveteen breeches--a man not to be jostled on the crown o' the causey,
and a match for any horse-couper from Bewcastle, or gypsy from Yetholm.
But let us into the kitchen. There's the wife--a bit tidy body--and
pretty withal--more authoritative in her quiet demeanour than the most
tyrannical mere housekeeper that ever thumped a servant lass with the
beetle. These three are her daughters. First, Girzie, the eldest,
seemingly older than her mother--for she is somewhat hard-favoured, and
strong red hair dangling over a squint eye is apt to give an expression
of advanced years, even to a youthful virgin. Vaccination was not known
in Girzie's babyhood, but she is, nevertheless, a clean-skinned
creature, and her full bosom is white as snow. She is what is delicately
called a strapper, rosy-armed as the morning, and not a little of an
Aurora about the ankles. She makes her way, in all household affairs,
through every impediment, and will obviously prove, whenever the
experiment is made, a most excellent wife. Mysie, the second daughter,
is more composed, more genteel, and sits sewing--with her a favourite
occupation, for she has very neat hands; and is, in fact, the milliner
and mantua-maker for all the house. She could no more lift that enormous
pan of boiling water off the fire than she could fly, which in the grasp
of Girzie is safely landed on the hearth. Mysie has somewhat of a
pensive look, as if in love--and we have heard that she is betrothed to
young Mr Rentoul, the divinity student, who lately made a speech before
the Anti-patronage Society, and therefore may reasonably expect very
soon to get a kirk. But look--there comes dancing in from the ewe-bughts
the bright-eyed Bessy, the flower of the flock, the most beautiful girl
in Almondale, and fit to be bosom-burd of the Gentle Shepherd himself! O
that we were a poet, to sing the innocence of her budding breast!
But--heaven preserve us!--what is the angelic creature about? Making
rumbledethumps! Now she pounds the potatoes and cabbages as with pestle
and mortar! Ever and anon licking the butter off her fingers, and then
dashing in the salt! Methinks her laugh is out of all bounds loud--and,
unless my eyes deceived me, that stout lout whispered in her delicate
ear some coarse jest, that made the eloquent blood mount up into her not
undelighted countenance. Heavens and earth!--perhaps an assignation in
the barn, or byre, or bush aboon Traquair. But the long dresser is set
out with dinner--the gudeman's bonnet is reverently laid aside--and if
any stomach assembled there be now empty, it is not likely, judging from
appearances, that it will be in that state again before next
Sabbath--and it is now but the middle of the week. Was it not my Lord
Byron who liked not to see women eat? Poo--poo--nonsense! We like to see
them not only eat--but devour. Not a set of teeth round that
kitchen-dresser that is not white as the driven snow. Breath too, in
spite of syboes, sweet as dawn-dew--the whole female frame full of
health, freshness, spirit, and animation! Away all delicate wooers,
thrice-high-fantastical! The diet is wholesome--and the sleep will be
sound; therefore eat away, Bessy--nor fear to laugh, although your
pretty mouth be full--for we are no poet to madden into misanthropy at
your mastication; and, in spite of the heartiest meal ever virgin ate,
to us these lips are roses still; "thy eyes are lode-stars, and thy
breath sweet air." Would for thy sake we had been born a shepherd-groom!
No--no--no! For some few joyous years mayest thou wear thy silken snood
unharmed, and silence with thy songs the linnet among the broom, at the
sweet hour of prime. And then mayest thou plight thy troth--in all the
warmth of innocence--to some ardent yet thoughtful youth, who will carry
his bride exultingly to his own low-roofed home--toil for her and the
children at her knees, through summer's heat and winter's cold--and sit
with her in the kirk, when long years have gone by, a comely matron,
attended by daughters acknowledged to be fair--but neither so fair, nor
so good, nor so pious, as their mother.
What a contrast to the jocund Holm is the ROWAN-TREE-HUT--so still, and
seemingly so desolate! It is close upon the public road, and yet so low,
that you might pass it without observing its turf-roof. There live old
Aggy Robinson, the carrier, and her consumptive daughter. Old Aggy has
borne that epithet for twenty years, and her daughter is not much under
sixty. That poor creature is bed-ridden and helpless, and has to be fed
almost like a child. Old Aggy has for many years had the same white
pony--well named Samson--that she drives three times a-week, all the
year round, to and from the nearest market-town, carrying all sorts of
articles to nearly twenty different families, living miles apart. Every
other day in the week--for there is but one Sabbath either to herself or
Samson--she drives coals, or peat, or wood, or lime, or stones for the
roads. She is clothed in a man's coat, an old rusty beaver, and a red
petticoat. Aggy never was a beauty, and now she is almost frightful,
with a formidable beard, and a rough voice--and violent gestures,
encouraging the overladen enemy of the Philistines. But as soon as she
enters her hut, she is silent, patient, and affectionate, at her
daughter's bedside. They sleep on the same chaff-mattress, and she
hears, during the dead of the night, her daughter's slightest moan. Her
voice is not rough at all when the poor old creature is saying her
prayers; nor, we may be well assured, is its lowest whisper unheard in
heaven.
Your eyes are wandering away to the eastern side of the vale, and they
have fixed themselves on the Cottage of the SEVEN OAKS. The grove is a
noble one; and, indeed, those are the only timber-trees in the valley.
There is a tradition belonging to the grove, but we shall tell it some
other time; now, we have to do with that mean-looking Cottage, all
unworthy of such magnificent shelter. With its ragged thatch it has a
cold cheerless look--almost a look of indigence. The walls are sordid in
the streaked ochre-wash--a wisp of straw supplies the place of a broken
pane--the door seems as if it were inhospitable--and every object about
is in untended disorder. The green pool in front, with its floating
straws and feathers, and miry edge, is at once unhealthy and needless;
the hedgerows are full of gaps, and open at the roots; the few garments
spread upon them seem to have stiffened in the weather, forgotten by the
persons who placed them there; and half-starved young cattle are
straying about in what once was a garden. Wretched sight it is; for that
dwelling, although never beautiful, was once the tidiest and best-kept
in all the district. But what has misery to do with the comfort of its
habitation?
The owner of that house was once a man well to do in the world; but he
minded this world's goods more than it was fitting to do, and made
Mammon his god. Abilities he possessed far beyond the common run of men,
and he applied them all, with all the energy of a strong mind, to the
accumulation of wealth. Every rule of his life had that for its ultimate
end; and he despised a bargain unless he outwitted his neighbour.
Without any acts of downright knavery, he was not an honest man--hard to
the poor--and a tyrannical master. He sought to wring from the very soil
more than it could produce; his servants, among whom were his wife and
daughter, he kept at work, like slaves, from twilight to twilight; and
was a forestaller and a regrater--a character which, when Political
Economy was unknown, was of all the most odious in the judgment of
simple husbandmen. His spirits rose with the price of meal, and every
handful dealt out to the beggar was paid like a tax. What could the
Bible teach to such a man? What good could he derive from the calm air
of the house of worship? He sent his only son to the city, with
injunctions instilled into him to make the most of all transactions, at
every hazard but that of his money; and the consequence was, in a few
years, shame, ruin, and expatriation. His only daughter, imprisoned,
dispirited, enthralled, fell a prey to a vulgar seducer; and being
driven from her father's house, abandoned herself, in hopeless misery,
to a life of prostitution. His wife, heartbroken by cruelty and
affliction, was never afterwards altogether in her right mind, and now
sits weeping by the hearth, or wanders off to distant places, lone
houses and villages, almost in the condition of an idiot--wild-eyed,
loose-haired, and dressed like a very beggar. Speculation after
speculation failed--with farmyard crowded with old stacks, he had to
curse three successive plentiful harvests--and his mailing was now
destitute. The unhappy man grew sour, stern, fierce, in his calamity;
and, when his brain was inflamed with liquor, a dangerous madman. He is
now a sort of cattle-dealer--buys and sells miserable horses--and at
fairs associates with knaves and reprobates, knowing that no honest man
will deal with him except in pity or derision. He has more than once
attempted to commit suicide; but palsy has stricken him--and in a few
weeks he will totter into the grave.
There is a Cottage in that hollow, and you see the smoke--even the
chimney-top, but you could not see the Cottage itself, unless you were
within fifty yards of it, so surrounded is it with knolls and small
green eminences, in a den of its own, a shoot or scion from the main
stem of the valley. It is called THE BROOM, and there is something
singular, and not uninteresting, in the history of its owner. He married
very early in life, indeed when quite a boy, which is not, by the way,
very unusual among the peasantry of Scotland, prudent and calculating as
is their general character. David Drysdale, before he was thirty years
of age, had a family of seven children, and a pretty family they were as
might be seen in all the parish. His life was in theirs, and his mind
never wandered far from his fireside. His wife was of a consumptive
family, and that insidious and fatal disease never showed in her a
single symptom during ten years of marriage; but one cold evening awoke
it at her very heart, and in less than two months it hurried her into
the grave. Poor creature, such a spectre! When her husband used to carry
her, for the sake of a little temporary relief, from chair to couch, and
from her couch back again to her bed, twenty times in a day, he hardly
could help weeping, with all his consideration, to feel her frame as
light as a bundle of leaves. The medical man said, that in all his
practice he never had known soul and body keep together in such utter
attenuation. But her soul was as clear as ever while racking pain was in
her fleshless bones. Even he, her loving husband, was relieved from woe
when she expired; for no sadness, no sorrow, could be equal to the
misery of groans from one so patient and so resigned. Perhaps
consumption is infectious--so, at least, it seemed here; for first one
child began to droop, and then another--the elder ones first; and,
within the two following years, there were almost as many funerals from
this one house as from all the others in the parish. Yes--they all
died--of the whole family not one was spared. Two, indeed, were thought
to have pined away in a sort of fearful foreboding--and a fever took off
a third--but four certainly died of the same hereditary complaint with
the mother; and now not a voice was heard in the house. He did not
desert the Broom; and the farm-work was still carried on, nobody could
tell how. The servants, to be sure, knew their duty, and often performed
it without orders. Sometimes the master put his hand to the plough, but
oftener he led the life of a shepherd, and was by himself among the
hills. He never smiled--and at every meal he still sat like a man about
to be led out to die. But what will not retire away--recede--disappear
from the vision of the souls of us mortals! Tenacious as we are of our
griefs, even more than of our joys, both elude our grasp. We gaze after
them with longing or self-upbraiding aspirations for their return; but
they are shadows, and like shadows vanish. Then human duties, lowly
though they may be, have their sanative and salutary influence on our
whole frame of being. Without their performance conscience cannot be
still; with it, conscience brings peace in extremity of evil. Then
occupation kills grief, and industry abates passion. No balm for sorrow
like the sweat of the brow poured into the furrows of the earth, in the
open air, and beneath the sunshine of heaven. These truths were felt by
the childless widower, long before they were understood by him; and when
two years had gone drearily, ay dismally, almost despairingly, by--he
began at times to feel something like happiness again when sitting among
his friends in the kirk, or at their firesides, or in the labours of the
field, or even on the market-day, among this world's concerns. Thus,
they who knew him and his sufferings were pleased to recognise what
might be called resignation and its grave tranquillity; while strangers
discerned in him nothing more than a staid and solemn demeanour, which
might be natural to many a man never severely tried, and offering no
interruption to the cheerfulness that pervaded their ordinary life.
He had a cousin a few years younger than himself, who had also married
when a girl, and when little more than a girl had been left a widow. Her
parents were both dead, and she had lived for a good many years as an
upper servant, or rather companion and friend, in the house of a
relation. As cousins, they had all their lives been familiar and
affectionate, and Alice Gray had frequently lived for months at a time
at the Broom, taking care of the children, and in all respects one of
the family. Their conditions were now almost equally desolate, and a
deep sympathy made them now more firmly attached than they ever could
have been in better days. Still, nothing at all resembling love was in
either of their hearts, nor did the thought of marriage ever pass across
their imaginations. They found, however, increasing satisfaction in each
other's company; and looks and words of sad and sober endearment
gradually bound them together in affection stronger far than either
could have believed. Their friends saw and spoke of the attachment, and
of its probable result, long before they were aware of its full nature;
and nobody was surprised, but, on the contrary, all were well pleased,
when it was understood that they were to be man and wife. There was
something almost mournful in their marriage--no rejoicing--no
merry-making--but yet visible symptoms of gratitude, contentment, and
peace. An air of cheerfulness was not long of investing the melancholy
Broom--the very swallows twittered more gladly from the window-corners,
and there was joy in the cooing of the pigeons on the sunny roof. The
farm awoke through all its fields, and the farm-servants once more sang
and whistled at their work. The wandering beggar, who remembered the
charity of other years, looked with no cold expression on her who now
dealt out his dole; and as his old eyes were dimmed for the sake of
those who were gone, gave a fervent blessing on the new mistress of the
house, and prayed that she might long be spared. The neighbours, even
they who had best loved the dead, came in with cheerful countenances,
and acknowledged in their hearts, that since change is the law of life,
there was no one, far or near, whom they could have borne to see sitting
in that chair but Alice Gray. The husband knew their feelings from their
looks, and his fireside blazed once more with a cheerful lustre.
O, gentle reader, young perhaps, and inexperienced of this world, wonder
not at this so great change! The heart is full, perhaps, of a pure and
holy affection, nor can it die, even for an hour of sleep. May it never
die but in the grave! Yet die it may, and leave thee blameless. The time
may come when that bosom, now thy Elysium, will awaken not, with all its
heaving beauty, one single passionate or adoring sigh. Those eyes, that
now stream agitation and bliss into thy throbbing heart, may, on some
not very distant day, be cold to thy imagination as the distant and
unheeded stars. That voice, now thrilling through every nerve, may fall
on thy ear a disregarded sound. Other hopes, other fears, other
troubles, may possess thee wholly--and that more than angel of Heaven
seem to fade away into a shape of earth's most common clay. But here
there was no change--no forgetfulness--no oblivion--no faithlessness to
a holy trust. The melancholy man often saw his Hannah, and all his seven
sweet children--now fair in life--now pale in death. Sometimes, perhaps,
the sight, the sound--their smiles and their voices--disturbed him, till
his heart quaked within him, and he wished that he too was dead. But God
it was who had removed them from our earth--and was it possible to
doubt that they were all in blessedness? Shed your tears over change
from virtue to vice, happiness to misery; but weep not for those still,
sad, mysterious processes by which gracious Nature alleviates the
afflictions of our mortal lot, and enables us to endure the life which
the Lord our God hath given us. Ere long husband and wife could bear to
speak of those who were now no more seen; when the phantoms rose before
them in the silence of the night, they all wore pleasant and approving
countenances, and the beautiful family often came from Heaven to visit
their father in his dreams. He did not wish, much less hope, in this
life, for such happiness as had once been his--nor did Alice Gray, even
for one hour, imagine that such happiness it was in her power to bestow.
They knew each other's hearts--what they had suffered and survived; and,
since the meridian of life and joy was gone, they were contented with
the pensive twilight.
Look, there is a pretty Cottage--by name LEASIDE--one that might almost
do for a painter--just sufficiently shaded by trees, and showing a new
aspect every step you take, and each new aspect beautiful. There is, it
is true, neither moss, nor lichens, nor weather-stains on the roof--but
all is smooth, neat, trim, deep thatch, from rigging to eaves, with a
picturesque elevated window covered with the same material, and all the
walls white as snow. The whole building is at all times as fresh as if
just washed by a vernal shower. Competence breathes from every lattice,
and that porch has been reared more for ornament than defence, although,
no doubt, it is useful both in March and November winds. Every field
about it is like a garden, and yet the garden is brightly conspicuous
amidst all the surrounding cultivation. The hedgerows are all clipped,
for they have grown there for many and many a year; and the shears were
necessary to keep them down from shutting out the vista of the lovely
vale. That is the dwelling of Adam Airlie the Elder. Happy old man! This
life has gone uniformly well with him and his; yet, had it been
otherwise, there is a power in his spirit that would have sustained the
severest inflictions of Providence. His gratitude to God is something
solemn and awful, and ever accompanied with a profound sense of his
utter unworthiness of all the long-continued mercies vouchsafed to his
family. His own happiness, prolonged to a great age, has not closed
within his heart one source of pity or affection for his brethren of
mankind. In his own guiltless conscience, guiltless before man, he yet
feels incessantly the frailties of his nature, and is meek, humble, and
penitent as the greatest sinner. He, his wife, an old faithful
female-servant, and an occasional granddaughter, now form the whole
household. His three sons have all prospered in the world. The eldest
went abroad when a mere boy, and many fears went with him--a bold,
adventurous, and somewhat reckless creature. But consideration came to
him in a foreign climate, and tamed down his ardent mind to a
thoughtful, not a selfish prudence. Twenty years he lived in India--and
what a blessed day was the day of his return! Yet in the prime of life,
by disease unbroken, and with a heart full to overflowing with all its
old sacred affections, he came back to his father's lowly cottage, and
wept as he crossed the threshold. His parents needed not any of his
wealth; but they were blamelessly proud, nevertheless, of his honest
acquisitions--proud when he became a landholder in his native parish,
and employed the sons of his old companions, and some of his old
companions themselves, in the building of his unostentatious mansion, or
in cultivating the wild but not unlovely moor, which was dear to him for
the sake of the countless remembrances that clothed the bare banks of
its lochs, and murmured in the little stream that ran among the pastoral
braes. The new mansion is a couple of miles from his parental Cottage;
but not a week, indeed seldom half that time, elapses, without a visit
to that dear dwelling. They likewise not unfrequently visit him--for his
wife is dear to them as a daughter of their own; and the ancient couple
delight in the noise and laughter of his pretty flock. Yet the son
understands perfectly well that the aged people love best their own
roof--and that its familiar quiet is every day dearer to their
habituated affections. Therefore he makes no parade of filial
tenderness--forces nothing new upon them--is glad to see the
uninterrupted tenor of their humble happiness; and if they are proud of
him, which all the parish knows, so is there not a child within its
bounds that does not know that Mr Airlie, the rich gentleman from India,
loves his poor father and mother as tenderly as if he had never left
their roof; and is prouder of them, too, than if they were clothed in
fine raiment, and fared sumptuously every day. Mr Airlie of the Mount
has his own seat in the gallery of the Kirk--his father, as an Elder,
sits below the pulpit--but occasionally the pious and proud son joins
his mother in the pew, where he and his brothers sat long ago; and every
Sabbath one or other of his children takes its place beside the
venerated matron. The old man generally leaves the churchyard leaning on
his Gilbert's arm--and although the sight has long been so common as to
draw no attention, yet no doubt there is always an under and unconscious
pleasure in many a mind witnessing the sacredness of the bond of blood.
Now and then the old matron is prevailed upon, when the weather is bad
and roads miry, to take a seat home in the carriage--but the Elder
always prefers walking thither with his son, and he is stout and hale,
although upwards of threescore and ten years.
Walter, the second son, is now a captain in the navy, having served for
years before the mast. His mind is in his profession, and he is
perpetually complaining of being unemployed--a ship--a ship, is still
the burden of his song. But when at home--which he often is for weeks
together--he attaches himself to all the ongoings of rural life, as
devotedly as if a plougher of the soil instead of the sea. His mother
wonders, with tears in her eyes, why, having a competency, he should
still wish to provoke the dangers of the deep; and beseeches him
sometimes to become a farmer in his native vale. And perhaps more
improbable things have happened; for the captain, it is said, has fallen
desperately in love with the daughter of the clergyman of a neighbouring
parish, and the doctor will not give his consent to the marriage, unless
he promise to live, if allowed, on shore. The political state of Europe
certainly seems at present favourable to the consummation of the wishes
of all parties.