OF THE COMING OF UNCLE ANDREW WITH A SCARRED FOREHEAD AND A BRASS-BOUND
CHEST, AND HOW I TOOK AN INFECTION
It was a night--as often happens in the uplands of our shire in autumn
weather--of vast and brooding darkness: the world seemed to swound in
a breathless oven, and I had scarcely come to my chamber when thunder
broke wild upon the world and torrential rain began to fall. I did not
go to bed, but sat with my candle extinguished and watched the lightning
show the landscape as if it had been flooded by the gleam of moon and
star.
Between the roar of the thunder and the blatter of the rain there were
intervals of an astounding stillness of an ominous suspense, and it
seemed oddly to me, as I sat in my room, that more than I was awake in
Hazel Den House. I felt sure my father and mother sat in their
room, still clad and whispering; it was but the illusion of a
moment--something felt by the instinct and not by reason--and then a
louder, nearer peal of thunder dispelled the notion, and I made to go to
bed.
I stopped like one shot, with my waistcoat half undone.
There was a sound of a horse's hoofs coming up the loan, with the beat
of them in mire sounding soft enough to make me shiver at the notion of
the rider's discomfort in that appalling night, and every now and then
the metal click of shoes, showing the animal over-reached himself in the
trot.
The rider drew up at the front; a flash of the lightning and the wildest
thunder-peal of the night seemed to meet among our outhouses, and when
the roll of the thunder ceased I heard a violent rapping at the outer
door.
The servants would be long ere they let this late visitor out of the
storm, I fancied, and I hurried down; but my father was there in the
hall before me, all dressed, as my curious intuition had informed me,
and his face strange and inscrutable in the light of a shaded candle.
He was making to open the door. My appearance seemed to startle him. He
paused, dubious and a trifle confused.
“I thought you had been in bed long ago,” said he, “and--”
His sentence was not finished, for the horseman broke in upon it with a
masterful rataplan upon the oak, seemingly with a whip-head or a pistol
butt, and a cry, new to my ear and uncanny, rose through the beating
rain.
With a sigh the most distressing I can mind of, my father seemed to
reconcile himself to some fate he would have warded off if he could. He
unbolted and threw back the door.
Our visitor threw himself in upon us as if we held the keys of
paradise--a man like a rake for lankiness, as was manifest even through
the dripping wrap-rascal that he wore; bearded cheek and chin in a
fashion that must seem fiendish in our shaven country; with a wild and
angry eye, the Greig mole black on his temple, and an old scar livid
across his sunburned brow. He threw a three-cocked hat upon the floor
with a gesture of indolent possession.
“Well, I'm damned!” cried he, “but this is a black welcome to one's
poor brother Andy,” and scarcely looked upon my father standing with
the shaded candle in the wind. “What's to drink? Drink, do you hear that
Quentin? Drink--drink--d-r-i-n-k. A long strong drink too, and that's
telling you, and none of the whey that I'm hearing's running through
the Greigs now, that once was a reputable family of three bottles and a
rummer to top all.”
“Whist, whist, man!” pleaded father tremulously, all the man out of him
as he stood before this drunken apparition.
“Whist I quo' he. Well stap me! do you no' ken the lean pup of the
litter?” hiccoughed our visitor, with a sort of sneer that made the
blood run to my head, and for the first time I felt the great, the
splendid joy of a good cause to fight for.
“You're Andrew,” said my father simply, putting his hand upon the man's
coat sleeve in a sympathy for his drenchen clothes.
That kindly hand was jerked off rudely, an act as insolent as if he had
smitten his host upon the mouth: my heart leaped, and my fingers went at
his throat. I could have spread him out against the wall, though I knew
him now my uncle; I could have given him the rogue's quittance with a
black face and a protruding tongue. The candle fell from my father's
hand; the glass shade shattered; the hall of Hazel Den House was plunged
in darkness, and the rain drave in through the open door upon us three
struggling.
“Let him go, Paul,” whispered my father, who I knew was in terror of
frightening his wife, and he wrestled mightily with an arm of each of
us.
Yet I could not let my uncle go, for with the other arm he held a knife,
and he would perhaps have died for it had not another light come on the
stair and my mother's voice risen in a pitiful cry.
We fell asunder on a common impulse, and the drunken wanderer was the
first to speak.
“Katrine,” said he; “it's always the old tale with Andy, you see;
they must be misunderstanding me,” and he bowed with a surprising
gentlemanliness that could have made me almost think him not the man
who had fouled our house with oaths and drawn a knife upon us in the
darkness. The blade of the same, by a trick of legerdemain, had gone up
the sleeve of his dripping coat. He seemed all at once sobered. He took
my good mother by the hand as she stood trembling and never to know
clearly upon what elements of murder she had come.
“It is you, Andrew,” said she, bravely smiling. “What a night to come
home in after twenty years! I'm wae to see you in such a plight. And
your horse?” said she again, lifting her candle and peering into the
darkness of the night. “I must cry up Sandy to stable your horse.”
I'll give my uncle the credit of a confusion at his own forgetfulness.
“Good Lord! Katrine,” said he, “if I did not clean forget the brute, a
fiddle-faced, spavined, spatter-dasher of a Gorbals mare, no' worth her
corn; but there's my bit kistie on her hump.”
The servant was round soon at the stabling of the mare, and my mother
was brewing something of what the gentleman had had too much already,
though she could not guess that; and out of the dripping night he
dragged in none of a rider's customary holsters but a little brass-bound
chest.
“Yon night I set out for my fortune, Quentin,” said he, “I did not think
I would come back with it a bulk so small as this; did you? It was the
sight of the quiet house and the thought of all it contained that made
me act like an idiot as I came in. Still, we must just take the world as
we get it, Quentin; and I knew I was sure of a warm welcome in the old
house, from one side of it if not from the other, for the sake of lang
syne. And this is your son, is it?” he went on, looking at my six feet
of indignation not yet dead “Split me if there's whey in that piece! You
near jammed my hawze that time! Your Uncle Andrew's hawze, boy. Are you
not ashamed of yourself?”
“Not a bit,” said I between my teeth; “I leave that to you.”
He smiled till his teeth shone white in his black beard, and “Lord!”
cried he, “I'm that glad I came. It was but the toss of a bawbee, when I
came to Leith last week, whether I should have a try at the old doocot,
or up Blue Peter again and off to the Indies. I hate ceiled rooms--they
mind me of the tomb; I'm out of practice at sitting doing nothing in
a parlour and saying grace before meat, and--I give you warning,
Quentin--I'll be damned if I drink milk for supper. It was the notion
of milk for supper and all that means that kept me from calling on
Katrine--and you--any sooner. But I'm glad I came to meet a lad of
spirit like young Andy here.”
“Not Andy,” said my father. “Paul is his name.”
My uncle laughed.
“That was ill done of you, Quentin,” said he; “I think it was as little
as Katrine and you could do to have kept up the family name. I suppose
you reckoned to change the family fate when you made him Paul. H'm! You
must have forgotten that Paul the Apostle wandered most, and many ways
fared worst of all the rest. I haven't forgotten my Bible, you see,
Quentin.”
We were now in the parlour room; a servant lass was puffing up a
new-lighted fire; my uncle, with his head in the shade, had his
greatcoat off, and stood revealed in shabby garments that had once been
most genteel; and his brass-bound fortune, that he seemed averse from
parting with a moment, was at his feet. Getting no answer to what he had
said of the disciples, he looked from one to the other of us and laughed
slyly.
“Take off your boots, Andy,” said my father.
“And where have you been since--since--the Plantations?”
“Stow that, Quentin!” cried my uncle, with an oath and his eye on me.
“What Plantations are you blethering about? And where have I been? Ask
me rather where have I not been. It makes me dizzy even to think of it:
with rotten Jesuits and Pagan gentlemen; with France and Spain, and
with filthy Lascars, lying Greeks, Eboe slaves, stinking niggers, and
slit-eyed Chinese! Oh! I tell you I've seen things in twenty years. And
places, too: this Scotland, with its infernal rain and its grey fields
and its rags, looks like a nightmare to me yet. You may be sure I'll be
out of it pretty fast again.”
“Poor Scotland!” said father ambiguously.
There must be people in the world who are oddly affected by the names
of places, peoples, things that have never come within their own
experience. Till this day the name of Barbadoes influences me like a
story of adventure; and when my Uncle Andrew--lank, bearded, drenched
with storm, stood in our parlour glibly hinting at illimitable travel,
I lost my anger with the tipsy wretch and felt a curious glow go through
my being.