A CHARMED SAIL.
In the middle of auld Tam’s perversity, he suddenly announced that he
would take a holiday sail. He had never set up a yacht of his own,
neither had young Tam adopted that refuge and glory of a maritime
people, especially of the young swells of the mercantile world of the
West of Scotland. But there were various friends’ yachts at auld Tam’s
disposal the moment he signified his intention. Neither was company
likely to fail him; but here he was as arbitrary as he had been lately
in other matters. He would have nobody with him save the two Eppies. He
would not allow the presence of young Tam, saying that he might be
wanted at the office and works in his father’s absence. But neither
would Tam have Clary with him, though she was an experienced and
excellent yachtswoman; she should stay at home and keep house while her
mother was away; and he actually scouted the suggestion of the
attendance of Sir Hugo, who had nothing else to do, would have liked
nothing in the world better, and made humble overtures to be allowed to
join the party. The planner of the expedition desired a rest--complete,
however short--from the toils of business, and, for that matter, of
hospitality; and to procure this he must have none except the two
members of his family whom he had chosen--his wife and his younger
daughter--to sail with him.
The drawbacks were that neither of the Eppies were good sailors, that
both had a most unaffected dislike to spending days and nights at sea,
and that though the weather was remarkably fine for the season, the
month of October had been reached, with its lengthening nights,
shortening days, chill, frosty air, and sudden gales, striking terror
into the hearts of landswomen.
But the two women on whom auld Tam had pitched to bear him company would
never fail their lord and master. Had it been Styx and not Clyde he had
fixed on for his watery highway, and had Charon and not an honest man
from Largs been the steersman of the vessel, the two Eppies would have
gone down as devotedly and almost as intrepidly, with a certain fond
pride that auld Tam should have elected them for the partners of his
voyage. It did not signify that their faces were pale--the elder Eppie’s
from sheer quaking before an anticipated experience so foreign and
unpalatable to her, and with the thought of the home and children she
might never see again, if auld Tam, his company and crew, went to the
bottom, in this unchancy autumn trip on which he had set his heart in a
strange, almost an uncanny manner. As for the younger Eppie, her sweet
colour was gone, because her tender heart was wrung by the injustice and
injury done to her lover, while yet she did not dream of resisting her
father--loyal still to auld Tam in the worst of his caprices.
The sail was not to be very prolonged or to involve further risk than
could not be avoided in a change of weather with the squally gusts
concentrated in the passes between the mountains, which sometimes lend a
peculiar peril to such coast-sailing. For auld Tam meant merely to run
up one or other of the arms of the sea with which all the dwellers in
the region are familiar, to lie to in the shadow of the everlasting
hills each night, and resume his course on the following morning.
There was no sign of any fall of the barometer or chopping of the wind,
which was in fact too light, with no more than a harmless ripple on the
water, when the little freight started from the pier at Greenock, to
which the carriage and steamboat had transported them, leaving behind a
disconsolate group of persons, who had insisted on accompanying their
friends so far, looking wistfully after them. The least affected of the
group were Claribel and Eneas Mackinnon, who had ventured unrebuked,
unless by his own unaccounted-for success, to make himself one of the
family. They were neither of them over-burdened with imagination, and
they had enough of business of their own on their hands to occupy them.
He contented himself with observing on the cut of the yacht and
calculating the rate of her speed; and Clary’s moan was summed up in
declaring that really her mother and Eppie had no excuse for being ill.
Then the couple dropped the subject for others more interesting to them,
as they moved away, he sauntering by her side, in the probable style of
their progress through life.
But young Tam muttered discontentedly, ‘I cannot tell what has come
over my father--a yacht trip in October, and my mother and Eppie
frightened out of their wits if the sails fill or the deck inclines a
quarter of an inch.’
Sir Hugo said nothing. He was haunted with the vision of an old picture
he had seen abroad of the Virgin Mary, her mother St. Anne, and St.
Joseph, sailing away on a shoreless sea, and with the echo of the
refrain of one of young Eppie’s saddest songs--
‘Ochone! for fair Helen, ochone!
Ochone! for the flower of Strathco:
In the deep, deep sea,
In the saut, saut bree,
Lord Reoch, thy Helen lies low!’
Sir Hugo had to put the greatest force upon himself to resist rushing
off, securing another yacht, and following in the wake of the Drysdales.
He had just enough judgment left to recognise that no measure would so
offend and outrage auld Tam as the invasion of his privacy to which the
young man was tempted.
In reality no such tremendous calamity as the shipwreck or foundering of
the yacht threatened auld Tam and his faithful womankind. The little
vessel was as good and serviceable as any Clyde-built craft which has an
honourable reputation. The skipper and crew were picked men of their
class, to be depended upon in all circumstances. The weather continued
uninterruptedly fine, so as to soothe the excitable feelings even of the
two Eppies.
‘Oh, it is bonnie, mother; I never knew it would be so bonnie!’ said
young Eppie, standing, without tottering, in her dark serge costume,
with only her cheeks, rosy once more, to relieve it, as she watched the
blue water over which the yacht rode lightly, and the autumn-tinted
hills and woods of the shore. ‘If it is all like this, I don’t think
we’ll be feared, and it will be a fine change for father from the Haugh
and Glasgow.’
‘Bairn, I never saw sic weather in October,’ said her mother, still
inclined to be awed, if not appalled. ‘It is just a ferlie [marvel].
Eh! how gude it will be for the petawties diggin’ and pittin’. If your
father had only ta’en a thocht of driving ower to my auld hame--though
it is in the hands of strangers now--and of bidin’ a day or twa, to
watch the farm folk at their wark, or to fish in the burn, I could have
baked scones sic as he was fond o’ lang syne to give him an appetite.
But, as you say, if the water is nae waur than this, it will be a fine
change, and it may do him a heap of gude; poor chield, he has been
forfochten [over-worked], as he kens best, of late!’
Auld Tam did not seem to reap immediate advantage from the variety he
had sought. He was still engrossed and oppressed, and paced up and down,
taking little notice of his wife and daughter. But as the hours wore on,
and the breeze--though it was no more than a summer breeze--blew
fresher, the wavelets curled with a whiter crest, and the
thickly-populated banks gave place to lonelier, wilder regions, where
the woods of Finnart embowered the hamlet of Ardentinny, and higher and
higher rose the heathery hills, showing nothing but sheep-tracks and the
furrows worn by winter torrents, till the great mass of the Cobbler
loomed dark against the early sunset, auld Tam shook himself up, as if
the wind and the water were blowing away the cobwebs from his brain. He
took note of each well-known landmark, and pointed it out carefully to
his companions--not so familiar with the scene. He told them the stories
he had heard in his boyhood--how the Danes had landed there; and here
the clan Macfarlane had shouted their slogan ‘Lochsloy! Lochsloy!’ when
they started to levy blackmail and plunder and murder whoever resisted
them. He cheered the Eppies with prophecies of the settled nature of the
weather--more to be depended on than in early summer--which would last
their trip. He foretold how quietly the yacht would lie off Arrochar
till morning broke. He incited the ladies to have an informal scrambling
meal--a sort of tea, dinner, and supper in one--of roast fowl and cold
round, ham and tongue, partridges, cheese, and oysters, with bitter
beer, claret and Glenlivat, tea and coffee, toast and cake, grapes and
melons, eaten and drunk on deck. Tam Drysdale waited on his wife and
daughter in spite of their remonstrances, as if he were proud to be
their servant; and he did not forget the shy, independent sailors who
drew off from witnessing the feast, and could only be induced by an
instantly established freemasonry of jokes and grins between auld Tam
and the crew, and gentle solicitations from the two gentlewomen of whom
the men were taking care, to accept a share of the good things lavishly
provided for the occasion.
Auld Tam was himself again, and the two Eppies could not help being
glad, though night was falling, and though they had still the fearful
experience before them of descending to their cabin and going to bed
rocked on the bosom of the deep. In the meantime the moon and star light
shone white over Arrochar, causing the mountains to throw blacker
shadows, and the twinkling lamps of the village to look red and yellow,
and the water between to glisten with a trembling radiance. The
stillness, now that the yacht had stopped sailing, acquired something of
mystery, like everything else in the unwonted surroundings. It was a
clear, cold night, frosty indeed, but there was no fog, and the air was
so pure and rare that it was not unpleasant to meet it, enveloped in the
multitude of ‘haps’--cloaks and plaids, hoods and clouds--with which
Mrs. Drysdale had taken care to come provided. The women stayed on deck,
impressed, as these simple souls had not expected to be, by the new
world around them.
The elder Eppie kept close to her Tam, felt as if they were one again,
and was wonderfully content to sit by him while he smoked in silence,
or occasionally uttered a brief word of admiration, for auld Tam was a
great admirer of nature in an old-fashioned, solemnized style.
The younger Eppie drew away by herself. She sat a little behind the
mast, and looked up with great innocent eyes at the lustrous moon,
asking herself if _he_ were looking at it as she was, and knowing that
he must, for she was sure that he was watching every turn of the
weathercock and every cloud in the sky till she was safe on land again.
She wished he were there, but she felt they would not be long apart, for
her father must relent, and then Sir Hugo would not grudge her for these
few days to him. And oh! she would try to be good to her man, as she
tried to be good to her father and mother, and God would bless them and
take care of them for evermore. As little Eppie gazed across the moonlit
waters, a strange transformation took place. She ceased to see the dim
mountains looming around her, the dark loch at her feet, the planks and
ropes of the yacht close at hand. She beheld, what her bodily eyes had
never rested upon, but what she had heard often described with love’s
eloquence. She saw the rich foliage of a double row of spreading lime
trees in a green park, the low square tower of a Norman church rising
above the mossy park-wall on one side, and a red house, all mullioned
windows and peaked gables, with flower-beds and an ancient fountain and
sundial on a terrace. And she knew it was his English home on which the
same moon was shining as it might shine when the home was hers also,
when she had quitted Scotland and the west, and he was teaching her to
be such a lady as his mother was. Lady Willoughby was grander in her
soft unconscious dignity than stately Clary or restless Lady Semple. Yet
Lady Willoughby had taken Eppie’s flowers and stooped and kissed her,
and, Eppie knew, had received her, for Lady Willoughby’s son’s sake,
into a second mother’s heart, true and tender as Eppie’s own mother’s.
Had the girl not reason to be grateful?
The morning rose with a more silvery haze than if the season had been
summer, though during the night that had passed the frost had laid fiery
fingers on what was left of the heather, on the leaves of the sapling
oaks and the light tresses of the birk-trees--only the dark-green firs,
like the hills above them, defied cold, heat, storm, sunshine.
The hours of sleep might have been dreamful and restless, spent so far
from home, where everything was so out of gear, as even the most
luxurious yacht’s cabin appeared to the dwellers in Drysdale Hall; but
nothing save refreshment could come from the caller air, the sparkling
water, the mist like curdled milk, or flakes of wool drawn back and up
into the highest recesses of the hills. Mrs. Eppie had another and a
lower source of happiness by which maiden Eppie was not altogether
unmoved--not only were they miraculously escaping the pandemonium of
sea-sickness which they had braved like two heroines for the love of
auld Tam, half a day and a night of the pilgrimage were gone, and they
were so much nearer to home and Sir Hugo.
The opening into another loch with an island and a ruined castle was
passed, and the Kyles between Bute and Cowal were entered. The October
sun streamed down mellow, not wan as yet, on crags and knolls, grey
pinnacles, ferny dells and bickering burns, on Colintraive and
Tighnabruaich, deserted by their summer visitors, left to hardy fishers
and herdsmen. Ardlamont Point was turned and Kilbrandon Sound reached,
leaving Tarbet with its tower, and Ardrishaig with its early steamboat
behind. Lochfyne presented a noble landlocked water, bearing in the
season fleets of brown herring-boats swaying with the tide. On its
shores, glens, valleys, and mountains succeeded each other. Here was the
glen of the Leakan; yonder flashed the waters of the Uray and the Shira;
that peaked hill was Dunaquoich, and in its shelter rose the castle of
M‘Callummore.
Auld Tam was peaceful as the weather, pleased as his companions. He
coaxed the two Eppies into a small boat, to undergo the penance of being
rowed up a minor water to the shore where the channel was narrowest; and
the bank he chose offered nothing but shelving rock, rough grass,
bracken and blackberries, curlews and plovers with their shrill,
ear-piercing cries. Perhaps the place was seen more in character when
autumn was beginning to add to the natural desolation of the scenery,
than in spring or summer.
Tam Drysdale rewarded his companions for their submission to his fancies
by letting them sit down and look at sea and sky, all bright and glad in
contrast to the earth, and at the yacht reflected in the blue water; or
to scramble till even the youngest scrambler’s light feet were tired.
The solitude and the stillness sank into minds unaccustomed but not
irresponsive to such influences, and first thrilled the guileless
hearts through and through, and then calmed their throbbing pulses.
As young Eppie sought to pluck the last red ling, singed by the nightly
pinches of frost, over which the bees, safe in their binks until the
summer returned, had ceased to hover, with the lingering tufts of thrift
or sea-pink whitening under the salt spray by the water’s edge, she kept
humming--
‘Lowland lassie, will you go
Whaur the hills are clad wi’ snow;
Whaur, beyond yon icy steep,
The Highland shepherd tends his sheep?’
and pointed exultingly to the farthest-away mountain which had white
streaks across its bald front. But if she had known it, these signs
which she took to be the harbingers of approaching winter had survived
all the summer sunshine, and were no more like the glorious but ghastly
livery of the death of the year than the little streamlet issuing from
the well-eye is like the great river hurrying to the edge of the
precipice and leaping fiercely to destruction before it loses itself in
the islandless sea.
‘Everything looks auld, auld, and yet as fresh as on the day of
creation,’ said the elder Eppie, while the three figures, like the three
corbies to which auld Tarn compared them, perched themselves on some
stones and appeared the only moving, breathing objects in the landscape.
‘Tam, it’s like being alane in the presence of ane’s Maker.’
‘Yet the boat is in sicht and fishing-cobles forbye, and the next minute
a steamer full of the world’s racket may come tearing through the water,
leaving a long wreath of black smoke filing [defiling] the blue lift
[air]. There are far loner spots than this within a day’s sail, if it
had been fit to venture there with timorous women so far on in the year.
But this may serve,’ said Tam, half-absently and with a sigh--‘this
taste of the world as God made it. What do you think, Eppie, woman? It’s
grand in its very nakedness, and on few lines, like a’ His
wark--nothing weak or ower saft and fine and dilittanty about it. It
mak’s us ashamed of the feck [most] of our wark. What do you think? We
could strip ourselves of our warks, as the preachers call them, in His
sicht, and lay them down and leave them without breaking our hearts.
What do you think?’ he kept repeating eagerly.
‘You’re richt, Tam, no doubt,’ said his wife gently, bat with only the
most superficial guess at his meaning. ‘We brocht naething into the
world, and we’ll tak’ naething out--that’s plain. And all our bravery
that we set sic store on is no more than bairns’ toys that the bairns
are brodent [keen] on for a day and forget the next.’
‘Men’s praise amang the lave,’ chimed in Tam.
‘Ay, men’s praise or blame will fa’ dead where there are nae lugs [ears]
greedy to kep it. But are you no weel, Tam, my man,’ asked Eppie
anxiously, ‘that you speak in so serious a strain?’
‘Oh, I’m weel enough,’ said Tam, stretching the arms which were still
brawny. ‘But I was wondering, Eppie, my joe, how you would like if we
had to go back to the beginning and commence afresh, as we did
sax-and-twenty years syne, with a room or twa, and no so muckle as a
servant lass; only me to earn our daily bread, and only you to keep the
house richt, and spend my wages.’
‘Fine, Tam, I would like it--real fine!’ exclaimed Eppie, with honest
readiness and gladness. ‘I dinna pretend that I’m as soople as when I
was young, or that I would not miss mony a thing, for ane soon learns
ill lessons; but to have you all to mysel’ again--to cook for you, to
mend for you, and to keep all richt and ticht for you without any
help--I could do it as well as ever, and prood to do it, my lad! It
would make up for a gude wheen losses.’
And the husband and wife looked into each other’s faithful eyes, grasped
each other’s honest hands, and he knew that she spoke no more than the
truth. Each was dear as ever to the other, and so long as the one
treasure was left, all else might go, without too bitter lamentation.
Young Eppie had been listening in respectful silence to what she, like
her mother, judged too grave talk to be lightly dealt with. But now she
spoke up with something like a pout:
‘And what is to become of me when you two are going to set up house
again by your two selves, wanting nobody else to interfere and upset
you? Father, mother, I’m here. You seem to have forgotten my very
existence. I must say it is not very kind of you.’
The girl spoke more than half in jest, and yet there was a little
soreness in her merry tones. The old ties which had been strong as death
were loosening from her; but it smote her that they should drop from her
in this fashion--that her father and mother should speak of the future
even in the lightest imagination, and leave her out of count. She had
not expected it from them. It was not what _he_ would have done--he who
was above her in rank, and had been used to grand ladies; he could never
draw a picture of his coming life in which she was not in the
foreground.
‘Never fear, bairn,’ said auld Tam tenderly; ‘where there are father and
mother the bairns can never be forgotten--never--even when they’ve grown
to men and women’s estate, are heads of houses of their ain, and have
flown far from the parent nest. But I’ve a question to speer of you,
too, young Eppie;’ and he drew her nearer to him, and made her look into
his face. ‘What if all this speak of a grand lad and a title, and a
Coort and what not, come to nothing some fine morning, after all? Will
you blame your father? Will you never smile in his face again? Will you
and he never more be happy together, as you were before?’
‘Tam, Tam! ye’re tryin’ the bairn; she’s ower young to answer such
questions--though maybe you’ve a richt to judge for her, since she’s
under age, if so be you can show a reasonable warrant for your judgment,
and she’ll submit to your lawful authority when she can; for she’s not
dour [obstinate] or contermacious [refractory]. She’s your ain loving,
obedient little lass. But how can you, man? Would you plague her as gin
she were a patient Grizel and you were a ragin’ tyrant? You’ve no
richt--I will not have it, though I am your wife--it’s fair cruelty,
Tam.’
In truth, little Eppie had grown white and cold, and was trembling in
every limb. At last she said in a low choked voice, looking down and
plucking nervously at the bent grass:
‘Why are you so thrawn [cross] to him, father? He never harmed you. He
has a great liking and respect for you, though you’re not like his
people. Is it just because he likes me that you are so unkind?’
‘Bairn--it will not rest with me,’ said Tam, with something like a
smothered groan. ‘It is supposing Sir Hugie draws back, and will have
no more to say to you.’
‘He will not draw back,’ broke in young Eppie, holding her head high,
and with a rush of colour back into her white cheeks. ‘He’ll never be
forsworn, whatever happens. You may make me give him up, but Sir Hugo
will never give me up.’
‘Not with his will, I daur say,’ granted Tam, ‘or the loon [fellow],
though he were a lord, would not be worth a hoast [cough]. But my
gentleman may be overborne, high-hearted as he is--I’ll not deny it.
Bools may row so that he cannot control them. He has his mither and his
factor to answer to: a young laird is aften sair hadden down by his
factor, and no doubt so is an English squire, though he has a “Sir”
before his name, by his agent, who stands for his factor. The young man
has his credit with his billies [contemporaries] and the inheritance he
has to hand down to the next generation to hamper him. Oh, there are
mony things to consider that young folk dinna tak’ in at a glance and
winna believe can weigh against love itsel’.’
‘I dinna believe it!’ exclaimed auld Eppie indignantly. ‘Dinna heed him,
my lamb!’ she said rebelliously. ‘He’s no in earnest, though why he
should tak’ to sic ill joking in this wild pairt, I canna tell. He’s no
himsel’. This sail in the cauld has been ower hard upon him, that sits
so long in a hot office--that’s what it is. Come back to the boat, Tam,
like a man; and let’s hoist sail and hurry hame, and see the doctor in
the bygaun.’
But he paid no attention to his wife. He went on like a man in earnest,
and a hale man still, determined to ply his daughter with an imaginary
case:
‘Sir Hugie is no a reckless callant of a ne’er-do-weel to care only for
his ain will and pleasure, and he is not just free to make his choice
like a common man. He’s like a young prince, bound to think on the
interests of others. He may be brocht to see--to fancy he sees that it
will be best for you and him to pairt.’
Little Eppie sat motionless with her hands locked together in her lap,
while the contention between these two who loved her, and whom she loved
so well, passed over her head. The eerie October wind and the sad
sea-waves seemed to sigh and sob an accompaniment to the strange
incomprehensible argument.
‘Then, father,’ she said, with a break in her soft voice, and a far-away
look of misery in her gentle eyes, ‘we _will_ part. If you and he agree
that we ought, what have I to say? What am I, that I should stand up
against him and you? We’ll do what is right, and God help us all!’
‘Haud your tongue this minute, Eppie!’ cried her mother. ‘There’s no
call for you to say such words. Make no rash promises. Oh! it is no fair
to bring the bairn here to a place so lonesome that one might commit a
murder and it would never be found out till the day of doom, where
there’s nane but me to interfere between you, and speak her round and
break her heart, and get her to give up her lad--a grand lad and a gude
lad. You that were so fond o’ little Eppie, Tam. You maun have taken
leave of your senses--you maun be fey, if ever man was.’
‘Never, gudewife,’ said auld Tam gruffly, in order to hide a little
tremulousness in his own accents. ‘You micht trust me, woman, at this
time of the day. It’s all fair, and will soon be aboon-board. As for
you, my bairn, that last word was spoken like my gude little lass, and
is a help to her father, as she will like to hear and to think long
after he’s laid in the mools. It’s God’s truth as weel. We’ll do what’s
richt an’ shame the deevil, and trust to the Pooers aboon, who made
baith the city and the solitary places, for the rest. There, think nae
mair of what I’ve been saying. I’ve been trying you baith, as mother
says, and thank God you’ve neither of you been found wanting, which is
nae mair than I looked for, though it’s far mair than a sinfu’ man
deserves. Let’s be happy when we can,’ cried auld Tam, a little
incoherently. ‘What would you say, little Eppie, to a race ower the
stanes or among the bent? No? Then we’ll just take our time--it’s all
our ain the day--and daunder down to the sma’-boat and row back to the
yacht with a gude appetite for the next meal. What will you wager that
I’ve not forgotten in this ploy of idle-set [idleness] whether it’s
luncheon, dinner, or supper? Never mind; it will be welcome, whatever.’
The women were not so easily set at rest. They were disturbed and
dumfoundered; but auld Tam recovered so entirely from the agitation he
had shown, he was so much more at his ease from that minute, so
resolutely calm and cheerful, that the two Eppies could not help
regaining their spirits--though they did not forget--and being as happy
once more as the sea and the dread of storms would let them.
The next day was the last day of the trip, and as it was also Sunday,
auld Tam, like a reverent Scotchman of the old school, the member of a
kirk and a regular attender at the same, caused his vessel to lie-to in
a safe anchorage, went ashore in the morning with his party, and walked
to the most primitive of parish churches, where he worshipped with his
fellow-men. The afternoon was grey, but still calm and quiet. The family
group gathered on the deck once more.
Auld Tam made little Eppie read ‘a lesson’ out of her Testament, as she
had done every Sunday when she first began to read, to her father and
mother, who had listened with pleased attention and secret admiration
that did not prevent their being ready with a homely correction whenever
she mispronounced a word. The childish voice had sounded as if it came
from a cherub oracle, uttering, without comprehension, in a clear,
unfaltering treble, awful words of everlasting moment. The girlish
tones were deeper, and had more rising and falling meaning in them; but
they were almost as unconscious, with no subtle undercurrent of
reflection, as the reader, on this October afternoon, chose for a lesson
the history of Jonah, the secret sinner who concealed his superior
knowledge, kept back his heaven-sent tidings, and imperilled by his
guilty presence an innocent ship’s crew.
‘He came to his senses, and spoke out like a man at last,’ was auld
Tam’s single comment on the reading, uttered as if the final atonement
afforded him great satisfaction.
Then he made young Eppie sing two of the old Scotch psalms. One of them
was ‘The Lord’s my Shepherd,’ with its broad distinctions and wide
stretches--from death’s dark vale, where the Almighty’s rod and staff
are the sole stay for the forlorn wayfarer, to the sumptuous earthly
table furnished in the presence of his human foes, with the kingly oil
and the overflowing cup anointing and confirming him as a prince and
ruler over his fellows.
Tam, like most Scotchmen of his generation, had said that psalm when a
child at his mother’s knee.
The other psalm he and his wife had sung together in the congregation on
many a peaceful Sunday, but never with such vivid realization as now,
when they heard it in the amphitheatre of mountains:
‘I to the hills will lift mine eyes,
From whence doth come mine aid.’
As young Eppie sang ‘with grave, sweet melody’ the solemn, familiar
words, the skipper and his men in their Sunday clothes hanging about the
deck, and putting a touch now and then to the tackle, which, like a
living creature, must be seen to Sunday and Saturday, paused to listen,
and took their pipes out of their mouths as if to hear better, though
they were too blate [bashful] to draw nearer, or make any other sign of
appreciation:
‘Behold He that keeps Israel,
He slumbers not nor sleeps.’
No more than these giant sentries, hemming in and protecting the great
loch, with nothing hidden there that should not be revealed, and nothing
really to fear from a brave revelation.
‘Ay, the hills are grand,’ said Tam emphatically. ‘Grand, like truth
itsel’. No mortal lee, or pridefu’ conceit, or blind self-deception,
will lift up its head before them. I verily believe they’re the
tabernacle of the Almichty.’
Certainly there was, while he spoke, a light as from a divine sanctuary
on Tam Drysdale’s face, which had grown so grey and lined of late. The
light still lingered upon it when he landed in common day with his
womankind at Greenock on the morrow, and was met by the same friends who
had escorted him on board, with congratulations on his prosperous trip,
to which he responded cordially.
Nevertheless auld Tam continued to hold off Sir Hugo--not angrily or
sternly, rather with a half-authoritative, half-deprecating manner, that
seemed to say, ‘Not yet, Sir Hugie; wait a little longer, my fine young
gentleman, till you see and hear everything.’