"Will cannot hinder nor keenness foresee
What Destiny holds in the darkness for me."
Tupper.
Scene: Dugald's garden on the cliff top. You have to climb up to it
from the road that goes winding through a wooded ravine, up a few steep
gravel steps. It is spring-time, and the soft west wind goes sighing
through the trees.
It is gloomy enough in the ravine below, but here the sun is brightly
shining, and primroses are blooming on the borders, and the blue
myosotis that rivals the noonday sky in the brightness of its colour.
On a wooden dais, near the keeper's door, Kenneth is lying rolled in his
plaid and propped up with pillows. On the arm of the dais old Nancy's
cat is seated, blinking in the sunshine and singing. On the pathway is
Kooran, and book in hand--'tis Burns's poems--Archie is seated on a
stone.
Kenneth's mother comes out and stands beside her boy, smiling and
talking for a little, then goes in again. Dugald himself comes up the
path, gun on shoulder, singing low, but he finishes the line in a louder
voice when he sees Kenneth.
"Ah, lad! out once more," he cries joyfully. "Och, man! it's myself
that is glad to see you."
The moisture had gathered in the honest fellow's eye. Kenneth smiled
faintly.
"You'll soon see me on foot again, the doctor says."
"But, man, if I live to be as auld as Methuselah, I'll never forget that
dreary nicht your Kooran came howling to the door. He would hardly give
me time to put my plaid on, and then he led me away and away to
Brownie's Howe, and I found your body--there seemed no life in it--and
carried you hame here on my shoulder.
"Ay, and Kooran has never left ye one hour since then, nor Nancy's cat
either. She came here the very day after Nancy's funeral. Poor auld
Nancy! How quietly she wore away. And how sensible she was to the
last. And she told me a story about the laird, our dear laird McGregor,
that you maunna hear noo, Kenneth. Good-bye. I'm off to the hills.
Mind to keep the wind from him, Archie."
"How I should like to go too, Archie," said Kenneth.
"Oh!" said the boy, "that will soon be now. And oh! how bonnie the
woods are, and the birds have all begun to build."
"Are the woods very bonnie, Archie?"
"Oh! delightful," cried the boy. "The moss is so soft and green under
the trees. The wild flowers are creeping out and blowing on the banks.
The pine trees are all stuck over with long white-green fingers."
"I know," said Kenneth.
"The birch tree stems are whiter than ever I saw them, just like silver,
Kennie."
"Yes."
"And their branches are trailing down with the weight of their bonnie
wee glittering leaves."
"Yes, yes."
"Then the needles on the larch trees were never so soft and green
before, I'm sure, and they are just covered with red tassels."
"Yes."
"And the rowan trees [Rowan tree--the mountain ash] are covered with
white flowers. What lots of scarlet roddans they'll have in autumn!
And the birds are all building, as I said. I have a hoody-craw's nest
in a Scotch fir in Alva, and a kestrel's in a terribly tall tree at
Aultmore. That magpie is building a brand-new nest; I knew she'd have
to."
"Well?"
"Well, there are five eggs in a laverock's among the corn, and I know
where there is a ptarmigan's and a whaup's, far away up among the
mountains."
"Oh! I do so long to be well, Archie."
"And the sheep, Archie?" continued poor Kenneth. "I've dreamed about
them so often since I've been sick. I always see them lookin' up,
Archie, with their bonnie brown een" (eyes), "and wonderin' what has
come of me. And I'm sure Kooran wants to see them."
"Kooran could see them any day, and they're doin' finely, but Kooran
won't leave you."
"Dear me, what shall I do?" cried Archie's mother, running distractedly
up the garden with a bucketful of greens in her hand. To have seen her
half-scared looks, one would have imagined something terrible was about
to happen. "Gentry coming, and I'm no' dressed."
The gently arrived about five minutes afterwards, little Jessie, Miss
Gale, and Miss Grant.
As soon as she found herself on the garden path Jessie, who had a bunch
of primroses in her hand, and some long drooping crimson-tipped twigs
from the larch, started to run. But she paused half-way, and an
expression of sadness stole over her face, as she noticed how wan and
white Kenneth was looking.
She advanced more slowly and tendered the flowers.
"Poor boy!" she said; "are you very, very ill?"
Kenneth took the flowers, and a flush of joy lit his pale cheeks as he
replied,--
"Not now, Miss Jessie. The doctor says I have nothing to do but get
well."
"Oh, I'm so glad," cried Jessie.
Her governess now came up, and Miss Grant. The latter had been often
before to see the invalid, but Jessie and Miss Gale had only recently
arrived from Inverness-shire, and were loud in their praises of its
magnificent scenery. Archie went and brought a chair for Jessie, so
that she could sit while she talked to the invalid boy. Archie was
improving. He even spoke to Jessie to-day, and promised to bring her
something very nice if she would accept it. The something very nice
ultimately proved to be a young hedgehog, so young that its spines had
only just turned hard.
Presently the ladies went into the keeper's cottage. Archie lay down on
the gravel-path with his head on Kooran's neck, and Jessie sat and
talked to Kenneth.
What was she telling him? He looked intensely interested. His eyes
were dilated, his hands clasped, his face flushed. It was but a simple
story she was telling him, told in simple child's language. The story
of her own London life, her life in society. But it was all, all so new
to Kenneth.
Ah! little did innocent Jessie know that her prattle had lighted the
fires of ambition in that boy's soul. But so it was. She had
inaugurated a new phase in his existence. She had inadvertently led him
to see that there were other--can I say better worlds than his?
So Jessie went away, with many a promise to come again when he was
stronger, and could play soft melodies on the flute,--melodies, she
said, that made her feel she wanted to cry, but that she loved all the
same.
Jessie went away. She had found the boy on this bright lovely spring
morning but a boy; she left him a man at heart.
Archie came and sat by him, and recommenced his tales of mountain and
moorland and forest. He told him of the fairy knoll and the smugglers'
cave, about the heather, now so green and promising, about early lambs,
and all the little incidents of life in the hills. Kenneth listened,
but his thoughts were far away.
These glens and wilds, dearly though he loved them, were not all the
world. The poets and writers that had so charmed him hitherto, and
served to throw a glamour of romance over the beautiful land in which he
lived--Burns, Ossian, Tannahill, Campbell, Scott, and the Ettrick
Shepherd,--they had made him love it, oh! so dearly love it, with that
burning, passionate patriotism which only the heart can feel.
"That beats beneath a Scottish plaid."
But--had he not been living too much in the past? was there not a power
setting in that was threatening to tear Scotland from the hands of the
Scotch? Ought he to stay among these mountains and dream dreams,
instead of going out into the world beyond to work or fight for the dear
land that gave him birth? Ought he not to try even to gather wealth for
the sake of those he would leave behind?
Clouds were gathering over the glen. A foreigner was soon to take
possession of it, with no more love for the soil than if the heather
that grew on every acre of it had not been dyed a hundred times over
with the blood of the hero and the patriot. Could he stay at home and
see his father's grave, poor old Nancy's too, levelled?
His thin hands covered his face, the boy sobbed quietly, and the tears
trickled through his fingers.