"Why, man," I cried, "you'll get me struck off the register, not to
speak of yourself. You don't mean to say that you went to the house
touting for custom?"
"Now don't get excited," he said, smoking calmly, "and I'll tell you all
about it."
I became at once violently calm. Nevertheless, in spite of this, it
took some time to get him under way.
"Well," he said at last, "Bulliston has got a daughter."
"Oh," said I, "so you were called in to attend on Mrs. Bulliston."
"When I say he has a daughter, I mean a grown-up daughter, not an
infant!"
Peterson seemed quite unaccountably ruffled by my innocent remark. I
thought of pointing out to him the advantages of habitual clearness of
speech, but, on the whole, decided to let him tell his story, for I was
really very anxious about Bulliston.
"Well," I said soothingly, "did Miss Bulliston call you in?"
"It might be looked at that way," he said.
"What was the case?"
"A nest of peregrine's eggs near the top of Carslaw Craig."
"Peterson!" I exclaimed, somewhat sternly, "don't forget that I am
talking to you seriously!"
But he continued smoking.
"I am perfectly serious," he said, and stopped. After he had thought a
while he continued: "It happened at the end of the first week you were
away. I had left John at home. I had old Black Bess with me--you know
she will stand anywhere. I took the long round, and was coming home a
little tired. As I drove past the end of Carslaw Hill, happening to
look up I saw something sticking to the sheer face of the cliff like a
fly on a wall. At first I could not believe my eyes, for when I came
nearer I saw it was a girl. She seemed to be calling for help. So of
course I jumped down and tied old Bess to a post by the roadside. Then
I began to climb up towards her, but I soon saw that I could not help
the girl that way--to do her any good, that is. So I shouted to her to
hold on and I would get at her over the top.
"I ran up an easier place, where the hill slopes away to the left, and
came down opposite where the girl was. She had got to within ten feet
of the top, but could not get a bit higher to save her life. It looked
almost impossible, but luckily, right on top there was a hazel-bush, and
I caught hold of the lower boughs--three or four of them--and lowered my
legs down over the edge.
"'Catch hold of my ankles,' I shouted, 'and I'll pull you up.'
"'Can't; they're too thick!' the girl cried; and from that I judged she
must be a pretty cool one.
"'Then catch hold of one of them in both hands!' I shouted.
"'Right!' she said, and gripped.
"And it was as well that she did not take my first offer, for, as it
turned out, I had all I could do to get her up, jamming the toe of my
other boot in the crevices and barking my knee against the hazel roots.
Still, I managed it finally."
"Whereupon she promptly fainted away in your arms," I interjected, "and
you recovered her with some smelling-salts and sal volatile you happened
to have brought in your tail-coat pockets in view of such emergencies."
"Not at all," said Peterson, quite unabashed; "she didn't faint--never
thought of such a thing. Instead, she got behind the hazel-bush I had
been hanging on to.
"'Stop where you are a moment,' she spluttered; 'till I get rid of these
horrid eggs. Then I'll talk to you.'"
"Tears of beauty!" I cried; "emotion hidden behind a hazel-bush.
'Alfred, you have saved my life--accept my hand.' That was what she
really said to you--you know it was, Peterson."
"Not much," said Peterson. "She was back again in a trice, and, if
you'll believe me, started in to give it me hot and strong for smashing
her blissful birds' eggs.
"'Here I've been watching this peregrine for weeks, and I'd got two
beauties, and just because I got stuck a bit on the cliff you must come
along and jolt me so that I have broken both of them--one was in my
mouth, and the other I had tied up in a handkerchief.
"But I told the girl that I knew where I could get her another pair and
also a rough-legged buzzard's nest, and that did a lot to comfort her.
She was a pretty girl, though I don't believe she had ever given it a
thought; and she was dead on to getting enough birds' eggs to beat her
brother, who had said that a girl could never get as good a collection
as a boy, because of her petticoats!"
"And where are you going to get those eggs?" I said to Paterson. "If
you think that hunting falcons' eggs for roving schoolgirls comes within
your duties as my assistant--well, I shall have to explicate your
responsibilities to you, that's all, young man!"
Peterson laid his finger lightly on his cheek, not far from the bridge
of his nose.
"You know old Davie Slimmon, the keeper up at the lodge? You remember I
doctored his foot when he got it bitten with an adder. Well, anyway, he
would do anything for me. I've had Davie on the egg-hunt ever since."
"And the girl thinks you are getting them all yourself," I said, with
some severity. "Peterson, this is both unbecoming and unscientific.
More than that, you are a blackguard."
"Oh," said Peterson, lightly, "it's all right. I go regularly to see
the old boy. He is a patient properly on the books, and when all is
over, you can charge him a swingeing fee. Well, to begin at the
beginning, each time I saw the girl I took her all the eggs I could pick
up in the interval. I got them properly blown and labelled--particulars,
habitat, how many in the clutch, whether the nest was oriented due east
and west, whether made of sticks or weeds or curl-papers, the size of
the shell in fractions of a millimetre----"
"Peterson," I said, sternly, "I don't believe you have the remotest idea
what a millimetre is!"
"No more I have," answered Peterson, stoutly, not in the least put out;
"but then, no more has she. And it looks well--thundering well!" he
added, after a ruminant consideration of the visionary labelled egg.
"You've no idea what a finish these tickets give to the collection."
"So this was Miss Bulliston," I said, to bring him back to the point in
which I was most immediately interested. "That's all very well, but
what was the matter with old Bliss, her father?"
Peterson looked as if he would have winked if he had dared, but the
sternness in my eye checked him.
"Something nervous," he said, gazing at me blankly. "Truda kept
stirring him up till the poor old boy nearly fretted himself into a
fever, and so had me sent for. Oh, I was properly enough called in.
You needn't look like that, McQuhirr. You've no gratitude for my getting
you a good paying patient. I tell you the old man was so frightened
that Truda----"
"It had got to 'Truda,' had it?" I interjected, bitterly. But Peterson
took no notice, going composedly on with his story.
"... Truda ran all the way to the lodge gates, where I was waiting with
two kestrels' and a marsh-harrier, unblown, but all done up in cotton
wool."
"What!" I cried, "the birds?"
"No, the eggs, of course," said Peterson; "and she said: 'What have you
got there?' So I told her two kestrels' and a marsh-harrier. Then she
said: 'Is that all? I thought you would have got that kite's you
promised me by this time. But come along and cure my father of the
cholera, and the measles, and the distemper, and the spavin! He's got
them all this morning, besides several other things I've forgot the
names of. Come quick! Cousin Jem from London is with him. He'll
frighten him worse than anybody. I'll take you up through the
shrubbery. Give me your hand!'
"So she took my hand, and we ran up together to the house."
"Peterson," I said, "you and I have a monthly engagement. On this day
month I shall have no further occasion for your services. Suppose
anyone had seen you! What would they have thought of Dr. McQuhirr's
assistant?"
"I never gave it a thought," he said, waving the interruption away; "and
anyway, if all tales are true, you did a good deal of light skirmishing
up about Nether Neuk in your own day!"
Now this was a most uncalled-for remark, and I answered: "That may be
true or not, as the case may be. But, at all events, I was no one's
_locum tenens_ at that time."
"Oh," he said, "it's no use making a fuss now, McQuhirr. Nobody saw us,
and as soon as we got to the open part near the house, Truda said: 'Now
I'm going to get these eggs fixed into their cases. So you trot round
and physic up the old man. And mind and ask to see his collection of
dog-whips. It is the finest in the world. We all collect something
here. Pa is crazy about dog-whips. And if you can't find anything else
wrong with him, tell him that his corns want cutting. They always do!'
"'But I haven't a knife with me,' I objected.
"'I'll lend you a ripper.' (Truda had an answer ready every time.) 'I
keep it edged like a razor. It is a cobbler's leather knife. It will
make the shavings fly off dad's old corns, I tell you!'
"'But I never pared a corn in my life,' I said.
"'Then you've jolly well got to now, my friend,' she said, 'for I've
yarned it to him that his life may depend on it, and that only a trained
surgeon can operate on his sort. So don't you give me away, or he may
let you have the contents of a shot-gun as you go out through the front
window. And what will happen to me, I don't know. Now go on!'
"And with that she vanished in the direction of the stables."
"A most lively young lady!" I cried, with enthusiasm.
"Um-m," grunted Peterson (I have often had cause to remark Peterson's
gruffness). "Lively, you think? Well, she nearly got me into a pretty
mess with her liveliness. The butler put me into a waiting-room out of
the hall. It was all sparred round with fishing-rods, and had crossed
trophies of dog-whips festooned about the walls. I waited here for a
quarter of an hour, listening to the rumbling bark of an angry voice in
the distance, and wondering what the mischief Truda had let me in for.
"Presently the girl came round to the open window, and as the sill was a
bit high she gave a sort of sidelong jump and sat perched on the ledge
outside.
"'You are a great donkey,' she said, looking in at me; 'both the
kestrels' are set as hard as a rock--here, take them!'
"And with that she threw the eggs in at me one after another through the
open sash of the window. One took me right on the pin of my tie and
dripped on to my waistcoat. Smell? Well, rather! Just then the old
butler came in, looking like a field-marshal and archbishop rolled in
one, and there was I rubbing the abominable yolk from my waistcoat.
Truda had dropped off the window-sill like a bird, and the old fellow
looked round the room very suspiciously. I think he thought I must have
been pocketing the spoons or something.
"'Mr. Bliss Bulliston waits!' he said, as if he were taking me into the
presence-chamber of royalty. And so he was, by George! I was shown
into a large library-looking room where two men were sitting. One was a
little Skye-terrier of a man, with bristly grey hair that stood out
everyway about his head. He was lying in a long chair, half reclining,
a rug over his knees though the day was warm. The other man sat apart
in the window, a quiet fellow to all appearance, bald-headed, and rather
tired-looking.
"'You are the doctor from Cairn Edward my daughter has been pestering me
to see,' snapped the elder man. 'My case is a very difficult and
complicated one, and quite beyond the reach of an average local
practitioner, but I understand from my daughter that you have very
special qualifications.' Whereupon I bowed, and said that I was your
assistant."
"Good heavens!" I cried. "Peterson, had you no sense? Why on earth did
you bring my name into the affair? I shall never get over it!"
"Oh," he answered, lightly; "wait a bit. I cleared you sufficiently in
the end. Just listen.
"I was in a tight place, you will admit, but I thought it was best to
put on my most impressive manner, and after a look or two at the old
fellow, I resolved to treat him for nervous exhaustion. It was a dead
fluke, but I had been reading Webb-Playfair's article on Neurasthenia
just before I went out, and though men don't often have it, I thought it
would do as well for old Bulliston as anything else.
"So I yarned away to him about his condition and symptoms, emaciated
physical state, and so forth. Well, when I was getting pretty well
warmed up I saw the young man with the hair thin-sown on top rise and go
quietly over to another window. I put this down to modesty on his part.
He wished to leave me alone with my patient. So I became more and more
confidential to old Bulliston."
("Peterson," I moaned, "all is over between us from this moment!")
"But the old ruffian would not allow Mr. Baldhead to remove himself
quietly," said Peterson, continuing his tale calmly.
"'James,' he cried, sharply, 'stop where you are. All this should be
very interesting to you.'
"'So it is,' said the young man, smiling in the rummest way, 'very
interesting indeed!'
"So, somewhat elated, I went on prescribing rest, massage, the
double-feeding dodge, and, above all, no intercourse with his own
family. When I got through my rigmarole, the old fellow cocked his head
to the side like a blessed dicky-bird, and remarked: 'It shows what
wonderful similarity there is between the minds of you men of science.
Talk of the transference of ideas! Why, that is just what my nephew was
saying before you came in--almost in the same words. Let me introduce
you to my nephew, Dr. Webb-Playfair, of Harley Street.'
"You could have knocked me down with a straw. I could hardly return the
fellow's very chilly nod. I heartily confounded that little
bird-nesting minx who had got me into such a scrape. But I had an idea.
"'Perhaps, sir,' I said, 'if you would allow me to consult Dr.
Webb-Playfair we might be able to assist one another.'
"'Certainly,' cried the little old man, speaking as sharply as a
Skye-terrier yelps; 'be off into the library. Jem, you know the way!'
"I tell you what, McQuhirr, I did not feel particularly chirpy as I
followed that fellow's shiny crown into the next room. He sat down on a
table, swinging one leg and looking at me without speaking. For a
moment I could not find words to begin, but his eyes were on me with a
kind of twinkle in them.
"'Well?' he said, as if he had a right to demand an explanation. That
decided me. I would make a clean breast of it.
"So I told him the whole story--how I had first met Truda, of our
bird-nesting, and how Truda wanted me to be able to come often to the
house--because of the eggs.
"The bald young man began to laugh as I went on with my narrative,
though it was no laughing matter to me, I can tell you. And especially
when I confessed that I did not think there was anything the matter with
his uncle, and that Neurasthenia was the first thing that came into my
head, because I had been reading his own article in the _Lancet_ before
I came out. He thought that was the cream of the joke. He was all of a
good fellow, and no mistake.
"'So,' he said, 'to speak plainly, you are in love with my cousin, and
you plotted to keep the father in bed in order that you might make love
to the daughter! That is the most remarkable recent application of
medical science I have heard of!'
"'Oh no,' I cried, 'I assure you it was Truda who----!
"'Ah,' he said, quietly, 'it was Truda, was it? I can well believe
that.'
"Then he thought a long while, and at last he said, 'Well, it will do
the old man a great deal of good to stay in bed and not worry his own
family and the whole neighbourhood with his whimsies. Moreover, milk
diet is a very soothing thing. We will let it go at that. You can
settle your own affairs with my cousin Gertrude, Dr. Peterson; I have
nothing to do with that. Indeed, I would not meddle with that volcanic
young person's private concerns for all the wealth of the Indies! Let us
go back to my uncle.'
"So," concluded Peterson, knocking the ashes out of his pipe on the bars
of the grate, "the old fellow has been in bed ever since and has drunk
his own weight in good cow's milk several times over. He is putting on
flesh every day, and his temper is distinctly improving. He can be
trusted with a candlestick beside him on the stand now, without the
certainty of his throwing it at his nurse."
"And Truda?" I suggested, "what did she say?"
"Well, of course I told her how her cousin had said that I had ordered
the father to bed, in order that I might make love to the daughter. She
and I were in the waterside glade beyond the pond at the time. You know
the place. We were looking for dippers' nests. She stopped and said:
"'Jem Playfair said that, did he?'
"'Yes, these were his very words,' I said, with a due sense of their
heinousness.
"'He said you sent my father to bed that you might make love to me?'
"'Yes.'
"She looked all about the glade, and then up at me.
"'_Well, did you?_' she said."
* * * * *
This is Peterson's story exactly as he told it to me on my return. That
is some time ago now, but there is little to add. Mr. Bliss Bulliston
is now much better both in health and in temper, and there is every
reason to believe that I shall lose my assistant some of these days.
The young couple are talking of going out to British Columbia. No
complete collection of the eggs of that Colony has ever been made, and
Peterson says that the climate is so healthy there, that for some years
there will be nothing for him to do but to help Truda with her
collecting.
This is all very well now, in the first months of an engagement, but as
a family man myself, I have my doubts as to the permanence of such an
arrangement.
*TWO HUMOURISTS*
Our gentle humourist is Nathan Monypenny. No man ever heard him laugh
aloud, yet as few had ever seen him without a gleam of something akin to
kindly humour in his eye. Even now, when the bitterness of life and its
ultimate loneliness are upon him, it is a pleasure to be next Nathan,
even at a funeral. During that dreadful ten minutes when the
black-coated, crinkle-trousered company waits outside for the "service"
to be over, his company is universally considered "as good as a penny
bap and a warm drink." In former days, within the memory of my father,
he had a friend and fellow-humourist in the village, one "Doog" (that
is, Douglas) Carnochan.
The contrast between the two companions was remarkable. They both lived
in the same street of our little country hamlet. Indeed, necessarily
so, for Whinnyliggate has but one street, strictly so called. The few
cottages along the "Well-road," and the more pretentious cluster of
upstarts which keeps the Free Kirk in countenance on the braeface, have
never arrogated to themselves the name of a street.
So at one end of the Piccadilly-cum-Regent-street of Whinnyliggate--the
upper end--lived Nathan Monypenny, and at the other end dwelt his rival,
Doog, also, though less worthily, denominated "humourist." They were
thus separated by something considerably less than a quarter of a mile
of honest unpavemented king's highway. But, though they were personally
friends, green oceans and trackless continents lay between their several
characters and dispositions.
Nathan, at the upper end, was a bachelor, hale, fresh, and hearty as
when he had finished his 'prenticeship. Doog at forty possessed several
children, all that remained of a poor, over-worked, downtrodden wife,
and a countenance so marled and purpled with drink, that he looked an
old man before his time. Nathan's shop was his own, and he was
understood to have already a "weel-filled stocking-fit up the lum," or,
in the modern interpretation, a comfortable balance down at Cairn Edward
Bank, and a quiet old age assured to him by a life of industrious
self-denial.
Doog never had a penny to bless himself with, later in the week than
Tuesday; and, indeed, often enough very few to bless his wife withal
even on Saturday nights, when, as was his custom, he staggered homewards
with the poor remnants of his week's wage in his pocket.
Nathan's wit was of the kind which goes best with the sedate tapping of
a snuffmull, or the tinkling of brass weights into
counter-scales--Doog's rang loudest to the jingling of toddy tumblers.
Nathan loved to gossip doucely at the door of even-tide with the other
tradesmen of the village, with Bob Carter the joiner, his apron twisted
about his scarred hands, with bluff prosperous Joe Mitchell the mason,
and with Peter Miles the tailor, as he sat on the low seat outside his
door picking the last basting threads out of a new waistcoat.
Doog's witticisms, on the other hand, were chiefly launched in the
"Golden Lion," amid the uproarious laughter of Jake McMinn, the "cattle
dealer frae Stranraer," Leein' Tam, the local horse-doctor (without
diploma), and "Chuckie" Orchison, the village ne'er-do-weel and licensed
sponger for drinks upon the neighbourhood.
Yet there existed a curious and inexplicable liking between the two men.
There was never a day that Nathan, the douce and respectable, did not
leave his quiet white cottage at the head of the brae, where he dwelt
all alone with his groceries, and step sedately down, stopping every
twenty yards to gossip, or drop a word, flavoured with one of his kindly
smiles, with every passer-by. He never seemed to be going anywhere in
particular, yet he always visited Doog Carnochan's house before he
returned. And many a night did Nathan, finding the husband not at home,
pursue and recapture the truant, and bring him back to the tumble-down
shanty, where the five ill-fed children and the one weary-faced woman
furnished a tragic comment upon the far-renowned convivial humours of
the husband and father.
The tale of Nathan and Doog is one which wants not examples in all ages
of the earth's history. It is the story of a woman's mistake. Once
Dahlia Ogilvy had been a bright frolicsome girl, winding the young
fellows of the parish round her fingers with arch mischief, granting a
favour here and denying one there, with that pleasant and innocent abuse
of power which comes so suddenly to a girl who, in any rank of life,
awakes to find herself beautiful.
There was nothing of the wilful beauty now about Dahlia Carnochan. A
stronger woman might have mastered her fate, a weaker would have fled
from it; but she only accepted the inevitable, and, like one who knows
beforehand that her task is hopeless, she did what she could with silent
resignation, waiting clear-eyed for that death which alone would bring
her to the end of her pain.
Yet at the time it had seemed natural enough that Dahlia should prefer
the handsome debonair Douglas Carnochan, to quiet Nathan Monypenny, who
had so little to say for himself, and so seldom said it. Besides,
Dahlia had always known that she could with a word send Nathan to the
ends of the earth, whilst there were certain wild ways about the other
even then, which had, for a foolish ignorant maid, all the attraction of
the unknown. She was a little afraid of Doog Carnochan, and there is no
better subsoil whereon to grow love in a girl's heart, than just the
desire of conquest mixed with a little fear.
So it came to pass that, though Nathan had carried little Dahlia's
school-bag and fought her battles ever since she could toddle across
from one cottage to the other, it was not he who, in the fulness of
time, when the blossom came to its brightest and most beautiful,
gathered it and set it on his bosom. It ought to have been, but it was
not.
As a young man Doog Carnochan was bright and clever. Most people in the
village prophesied a brilliant future for him--that is, those who knew
not the "unstable as water" which was written like a legend across his
character. He was the son of a small crofter in the neighbourhood, but
he companied habitually with those above him in rank, with the sons of
large farmers and rich stock-breeders. Some of these, his cronies and
boon companions, would be sure to assist him, so every one said. They
would set him up as a "dealer"--they would put him in charge of a "led"
farm or two. Doog's fortune was as good as made.
So, at least, injudicious flatterers assured him. So he himself
believed. So he told the innocent, lily-like Dahlia Ogilvy at the time
of year when the Sweet William gave forth his evening perfume, when the
dew was on the latest wall-flowers, and the scarlet lightning spangled
the dusky places beneath the hedgerows where the lovers were wont to
sit. But the blue cowled bells of the poisonous monkshood in the
cottage flower-beds they did not see, though with some premonition of
fate, Dahlia shivered and nestled to her betrothed as the breeze swept
over them chill and bitter from the east.
And Nathan Monypenny, leaning on the gate-post that he might sigh out
his soul towards the cottage of his beloved, by chance heard their
words; and, therewith being stricken well-nigh to the death, softly
withdrew, and left them alone.
After that night Nathan sought the company of Doog Carnochan more than
ever.
Friends warned him that Doog was no fit companion for such as he. They
insisted that he was neglecting his business. They said all those
useful and convincing things which friends keep in stock for such
occasions. Yet Nathan did not desist, till he had arranged the marriage
of Dahlia Ogilvy and Douglas Carnochan beyond all possibility of
retractation.
He it was who accompanied the swain to put up the banns. He it was who
paid the five-shilling fee that the pair should be thrice cried on one
Sabbath day, and the wedding hastened by a whole fortnight.
Perhaps he wished to shorten his own pain. Perhaps, he told himself,
when once Dahlia was Douglas Carnochan's wife, he would think no more of
her. At any rate, something strong and moving wrought in the reticent
heart of the young tradesman. He approved the house which Doog took for
his bride. He also guaranteed the rent. He lent the money for the
furniture, and looked after Doog on the day of the marriage, that he
might be brought soberly and worthily to the altar.
It was a plain-song altar indeed, for, of course, the pair were married
in the little white cottage next to Nathan's, where Dahlia had lived all
her life. When he saw her in bridal white, Nathan remembered with a
sudden gulp a certain little toddling thing in white pinafores, whom he
used to lift over the hedge that he might feed her with the earliest
ripe gooseberries.
Every one said that they made a handsome pair as they stood up before
the minister, who, with his back to the fire, did not know that he was
singeing his Geneva gown. For, being yet young to these occasions, he
wore that encumbrance because it gave him an opportunity of displaying
the hood of his college degree.
The young women smiled covertly at the contrast afforded by the
bridegroom and his "best-man," as they stood up together. They did not
wonder at Dahlia's preference. Any of them would have done the same
thing, if she had had the chance.
"What a fine grey suit!--how well it fits!"
"Yes, and that pale blue tie, how it matches the flower in his coat!"
Thus they gossiped, all unaware that it was the hard-earned money of the
plain-favoured and shy "best-man" which had bought all that wedding
raiment, paid for that sky-blue tie, and that even the flower in the
bridegroom's button-hole had grown in Nathan Monypenny's garden, and had
been plucked and affixed by his hands.
Thus it was that the story began, and this was the reason why Nathan
sought carefully day by day, if by any means he might yet withdraw his
friend's erring feet out of fearful pit and miry clay.
Never a morning dawned for Nathan, waking, as he had done all his life,
with the hum of the ranged bee-hives under his window in his ear, or
else listening to the pattering of the winter storms on his lattice,
that he did not bethink himself: "It is I who am responsible. I must
help him." Then he would add with a sigh: "And her."
And so help he did, for the most part in ways hidden and secret. For he
dared not give money to Doog. He knew all too well where that would
have gone. Neither for very pride's sake, and in reverence for the
secret of his heart, could he bring himself to give money to Dahlia.
Nevertheless, as by some unseen hand, the tired heartsick woman found
her burden in many directions marvellously eased.
Sticks were stacked in the little wood-shed which Doog had set up in the
first virtuous glow of husbandhood--and never been inside since. No
hens laid like Dahlia's--and the strange thing was that they invariably
laid in the night, sometimes a dozen at a time, all in one nest. Her
children, playing in the hot dusk of her little garden, had more than
once turned up a sovereign or a crownpiece wrapped in paper and run with
it to their mother.
From Nathan's shop, also, there came flitches of bacon which were never
ordered by Dahlia Carnochan--flour and meal, too, in times of stress.
And it nearly always was a time of stress with Doog.
Twice a year Nathan, with much circumlocution, would extract a reluctant
shilling or two from Doog on a flush pay-night, taking care that some of
his cronies should hear the colloquy. Then in the morning he would send
round the six months' account duly and completely receipted.
But more often than not the crony would put it all round the village
that Nathan Monypenny had been dunning poor Doog Carnochan the night
before; and so, among the unthinking, Nathan got the reputation of being
a hard man.
"He doesna do onything for nocht! Na, sune or syne, Nathan likes to see
the colour o' his siller," was said of him behind his back. And Doog's
generous kindness of heart was dwelt upon as a foil to his friend's
niggardliness.
"He micht hae letten puir Doog owe him the bit shillin' or twa and never
missed it!" represented the general sense of the community.
But Doog himself, be his faults what they might, allowed none to speak
ill of Nathan Monypenny.
Did he not half choke the life out of Davie Hoatson for some hinted
comment (it was never clearly understood what), till they had to be
separated by kindly violence, Doog being yet unappeased? Furthermore,
did he not seek the jester for three whole days, all the time breathing
fire and fury, with intent to choke the other half of a worthless life
out of him?
This was the state of the case when Nathan Monypenny's life temptation
came upon him. It was a grim and notable January night--the fourth day
of the great thaw. The rain had gusted and blown and threshed and
pelted upon those window-panes of Whinnyliggate which looked towards the
west, till there was not a speck of dirt upon them anywhere, except on
the inside. The snow had melted fast under the pitiless downpour, and
the patient sheep stood about behind dyke-backs, or with the courage of
despair pushed through holes in bedraggled hedges, to take a furtive
nibble at the brown stubble of last year's cornfields.
It was half-past nine when Nathan went to his door to look out. Nathan
Monypenny had built himself a lobby, and so was thought to be
"upsetting." At that time for a man to wear a white collar on weekdays,
or to walk with his hands out of his pockets, for a woman to be
"dressed" in the forenoon, or to wear gloves except when actually
entering the kirk door, for a householder to whitewash his premises
oftener than once in five years, or to erect a porch to his dwelling,
was held to be "upsetting"--that is, he (or she) was evidently setting
up to be better than their neighbours--an iniquity as unpopular in
Whinnyliggate as elsewhere in the world.
From this "upsetting" porch, then, Nathan looked out. A dash of rain,
solid as if the little house had shipped a sea in a perilous ocean
passage, took Nathan about the ankles and rebuked him in a very
practical fashion for coming to the door, as is Galloway custom, in his
"stocking-feet." It had blown in from a broken "roan" pipe, which
Nathan had been intending to mend as soon as the snow went off the root.
Nathan shut the door and went within. He had seen little through the
blackness save the bright lights of the "Golden Lion," and heard nothing
above the long-drawn _whoo_ of the storm save the noisy chorus of the
drinking song which Doog Carnochan was singing. Nathan knew it was
Doog's voice. About this he could make no mistake. Had he not listened
to it long ago, when Doog sang in the village choir, knowing all the
while, full well, that he was singing his Dahlia's heart out of her
bosom? Nathan Monypenny sighed and thought of that desolate house down
at the other end of the street where that same Dahlia would even then be
putting her children to bed. He knew just the faintly wearied look
there would be on the face from which the youthful roses had long since
faded. He would have given all he possessed in the world to sit and
watch her thus, to comfort her in her loneliness; but, resolutely
putting the temptation aside, he drew the great Bible that had been his
father's off its shelf and laid it on the table.
Then he brought a new candle from the shop and lighted it. But, so
great was the storm without that even in that comfortable inner room the
draught blew the flame about and the words seemed to dance on the
printed page.
Again and again during his reading Nathan lifted his head and listened.
The "wag-at-the-wa'" clock struck ten with enormous birr and clatter,
beginning with a buzz of anticipation five minutes too soon, and
continuing to emit applausive "curmurrings" of internal satisfaction for
full five minutes after the actual stroke of the hour had died on the
ear.
Nathan paused in his reading to listen for the sound of the roysterers'
feet going homeward from the "Golden Lion." Doog would be one of those,
most likely the drunkest and the noisiest. He must be half-way down the
street by now, stumbling along with trippings and foul, irresponsible
words. Now Dahlia would be opening the door to him--Nathan knew the
look on her face. When he shut his eyes he could see it even more
clearly. In the middle dark of the night, when he lay sleepless,
staring at the ceiling, he could see it most clearly of all.
For this reason he was in no hurry to finish and put out the light; but
it had to be done at last. And then with his head on the pillow Nathan
Monypenny bethought himself with small satisfaction of his wasted life.
Of what use was his house, his money in the bank, his eldership, the
praise of men, the satisfactory state of his ledger? After all, he was
a lonely man, and out there in the rain, dank and dripping, leafless and
forlorn, shivered the hedge over which in golden weather he had lifted
Dahlia Ogilvy. At the rose-bush in the corner she had once let him kiss
her. Ah! but he must not think of that. She was Dahlia Carnochan, and
her drunken husband had just reeled home to her. Yet as he sat and
stared at the red peats on the hearth Nathan Monypenny could think of
nothing else, and how her hair had had a flower-like scent as he drew
her to him that night when (for once in his grey and barren life) the
roses bloomed red and smelled sweet.
But there was something else which kept Nathan's nerves on the stretch,
something that was not summed up in his thoughts of Dahlia--an
apprehension of impending disaster. Even after he had gone to bed he
lifted his head more than once from the pillow, for his heart, stounding
and rushing in his ears, shut out all other noises. Then he sat up and
listened. He seemed to hear a cry above the roar and swelter of the
storm--a man's cry for help in mortal need.
Nathan rose and drew on his clothes hurriedly, yet buttoning with his
accustomed carefulness an overcoat closely about him. Then, leaving a
lighted candle on the table, he opened the door and stepped out into the
darkness. The wind met him like a wall. The rain assailed his cheeks
and stunned his ears like a volley of bullets. For a full minute he
stood exposed to the broad fury of the tempest, slashed by the driving
sleet, beaten and deafened into bewilderment by a turmoil of buffeting
gusts. Then, recovering himself a little, he turned aside the lee of
the gable of his cottage, which looked towards the north-east. Here he
was more sheltered, and though the winds still sang stridently overhead,
and the swirls of lashing rain occasionally beat upon him like "hale
water," he could listen with some composure for a repetition of the
sound which had disturbed him.
There--there it was again! A hoarse cry, ending in a curious gasp and
gurgle of extinction. Nathan almost thought that he could distinguish
his own name.
He put his hands to his mouth funnel-wise, to form a sort of
rough-speaking trumpet. "Haloo!" he shouted. "Where are you?"
But it was an appreciable interval before any voice replied, and then it
seemed more like a dying man's moan of anguish than any human tones.
"It's somebody in the water!" Nathan cried, and rushed down the little
strip of garden which separated his cottage from the Whinnyliggate Burn.
This was ordinarily a clear little rivulet, running lucidly brown and
pleasantly at prattle over a pebbly bed. Boys fished for "bairdies" in
its three-foot-deep pools. Iris and water-lily fringed the swamps where
it expanded into broad sedgy ponds. But in spite of its apparent
innocence, Whinnyliggate Lane was a stream of a dangerous reputation.
Its ultimate source was a deep mountain lake high among the bosoming
hills of Girthon, and when the rains descended and the floods came, it
sometimes chanced that the inhabitants of the village awoke to find that
their prattling babe had become a giant, and that the burn, which the
night before had scarce covered the pebbles in its bed, was now roaring
wide and strong, thirty feet from bank to bank, crumbling their garden
walls, and even threatening with destruction the sacred Midtoon Brig
itself, from time immemorial the Palladium of the liberties and the
Parliament House of the gossip of the village.
The part of the bank down which Nathan ran was used by the village smith
for the important work of "hooping wheels," or shrinking the iron
"shods" on the wheels of the red farm carts. There were always a few
rusty spare "hoops" of solid iron scattered about, while a general
_debris_ of blacksmithery, outcast and decrepit, cumbered the burnside.
Before Nathan had gone far he found himself splashing in the rising
water.
"Loch Girthon has broken its dam!" he murmured; "God help the puir soul
that fa's intil Whinnyliggate Lane this nicht!"
It was nearly pitch dark, and Nathan Monypenny, standing up to his knees
in the swirl of the flood, called aloud, but got no reply from any human
voice. The forward hurl of the storm whooping overhead, the roar of the
icy torrent fighting with the caving banks beneath, were the only sounds
he could distinguish.
He was indeed on the point of leaving the water edge and regaining his
comfortable cottage, when, wading through a shallow extension of the
stream near the bridge, his foot struck something soft, which carried
with it a curiously human suggestion. He stopped and laid his hand on
the rough cloth and sodden sock which covered a man's ankle.
Though not great of stature, Nathan Monypenny was both strong and brave.
He stooped and endeavoured to disentangle the boot from the iron hoop in
which it was caught. Succeeding in this, he next endeavoured to pull
the drowning man out of the water. But the head and upper part of the
body hung over the bank, and were drawn down by the whole force of the
torrent.
Again and again Nathan strove with all his might, but the water wrenched
and wrestled till the body was almost snatched from his grasp. More than
once, indeed, Nathan came very near going over the verge himself and
sharing the fate of the unfortunate whom he was endeavouring to rescue.
At last, however, by dint of exertions almost superhuman, he succeeded
in getting the man to the edge of the water, and immediately sank
exhausted on the sodden grass. By-and-bye, however, he staggered up,
and without ever thinking of going to seek for help, he succeeded in
balancing the unconscious burden upon his shoulders and carrying it
staggeringly to his own door.
The candle he had lighted was still burning, though it seemed to Nathan
that he must have been a very long time away. He let the body fall upon
the settle bed, and then, catching sight of the pale features, dripping
ghastly under the flicker of the farthing dip, he sank dismayed on a
chair.
It was Doog Carnochan--Dahlia Carnochan's husband. The story was plain
enough. Stumbling homeward from the "Golden Lion," he had missed his
drunken way, and wandered down by the "hooping" place to the water's
edge.
Nathan stared open-mouthed. What should he do?--go for assistance?
That perhaps had been wisest--yet, to leave a man in whom there might be
some faint spark of life! He rose and stretched Doog's arms out over
his head and back again time after time, as he had once seen a doctor do
on the ice after a curling accident.
But there was no drawing of breath, nor could he distinguish the least
beating of the heart. He took down the little hand-mirror, which had
satisfied the frugal demands of his toilet all these years, and put it
close to the drowned man's lips.
Yes--no--it could not be, yet it was just possible that there might be a
faint dimming of the surface of the mirror.
Then a hot wondrous thought leaped up in Nathan Monypenny's heart--the
devil in the garb of an angel of light.
What if he were simply to hold his hand--the man was as good as dead
already.
And what then? There rose up before Nathan Monypenny a vision of the
woman whom he had loved more than life, of a pale and weary face upon
which he would rejoice to bring out the roses as in the days of old.
Happiness would do it, he knew. And, like all true lovers, he believed
that he alone could make that one woman happy. Douglas Carnochan? What
was he but a drunkard who had blighted two lives? If a hand were
stirred to help him now, he would simply go on and finish the fell work
of the years. His Dahlia's face would grow yet more weary, her
shoulders more bent, and her eyes would less seldom be raised from the
ground till on a thrice-welcome day the grave should be opened before
her. Nathan knew it all by heart.
And this man--why did he deserve to live? Had not he (Nathan) afforded
him every chance? Had he not obtained situation after situation for him?
Had he not, in fact, kept Doog Carnochan and his family for years?
Surely God did not require from him this great final sacrifice. It was
certainly a chance to do lasting good--a happy woman, a happy man, a
happy home! Better, too, (so Nathan told himself) for Douglas
Carnochan's children. He would be a father to them--that which this
their own father had never been. He would train, instruct, place them
in the world. _But--he would be a murderer!_
* * * * *
After an hour's hard work Doog Carnochan sighed. Five minutes more and
he opened his eyes. They twinkled blackly up at his preserver with a
kind of ironical appreciation of the situation, and he smiled.
"Ah, Nathan," he murmured, "sae it's you that has drawn me oot o' the
black flood water! Man, ye had better hae let weel alane!"
On this occasion Doog was not a humourist only. He was also a true
prophet. For, from every point of view save that of the Eternal
Decrees, it would indeed have been infinitely better if Nathan had let
well alone, and not wrested back the unstable and degraded spirit of
Douglas Carnochan from the rushing waters of Whinnyliggate Lane, that
January night when Loch Girthon burst its bounds.
For, as Nathan had forecast, even so it was. Doog promptly returned to
his wallowing in the mire, without even making a pretence of amending
his restored life. Duly he brought down his wife's too early grey hairs
in sorrow to the grave. His children, left to run wild, divided their
time between the "Golden Lion" and the country gaol. Doog drank himself
into an unhonoured grave. Only Nathan Monypenny remains, an old man
now, yet holding firm-lipped to a conviction that God has explanations
of the working of His laws which He refuses to us on this Hither Side,
but which will be granted in full to us when we "know as also we are
known."
After Doog's death Nathan bought and immediately razed to the ground the
cottage at the foot of the street where Dahlia Carnochan's life tragedy
had been enacted. He has planted a garden of flowers there, to the
scorn and scandal of the whole village, which is cut to its utilitarian
heart to see so much good potato land wasted--simply wasted.
And every night before Nathan goes to bed he steps quietly to the low
place in the privet hedge, over which he lifted little Dahlia Ogilvy
more than fifty years ago. He does nothing when he gets there. He does
not even pray. He has none to pray for, and he wants nothing for
himself save God's ultimate gift, easeful death, and that, he knows,
cannot long be delayed.
But if you watch him closely, you may see him lift his hand and rest it
gently upon the stem of an ancient rose-tree, as if he had laid it in
benediction upon a young child's head.
_Printed by Hazell, Watson, & Viney, Ld., London and Aylesbury._