BACK TO THE MOORLAND
I had seen yon remnant of a man in the Tolbooth cell, and an immediate
death upon the gallows seemed less dreadful than the degradation and the
doubt he must suffer waiting weary months behind bars. But gallows or
cell was become impossible for the new poltroon of Dan Risk's making to
contemplate with any equanimity, and I made up my mind that America was
a country which would benefit greatly by my presence, if I could get a
passage there by working for it.
Perhaps I would not have made so prompt a decision upon America had
not America implied a Clyde ship, and the Clyde as naturally implied
a flying visit to my home in Mearns. Since ever I had set foot on
Scotland, and saw Scots reek rise from Scots lums, and blue bonnets on
Scots heads, and heard the twang of the true North and kindly from the
people about me, I had been wondering about my folk. It was plain they
had never got the letter I had sent by Horn, or got it only recently,
for he himself had only late got home.
To see the house among the trees, then, to get a reassuring sight of its
smoke and learn about my parents, was actually of more importance in my
mind than my projected trip to America, though I did not care to confess
so much to myself.
I went to Glasgow on the following day; the snow was on the roofs; the
students were noisily battling; the bells were cheerfully ringing as
on the day with whose description I open this history. I put up at the
“Saracen Head,” and next morning engaged a horse to ride to Mearns. In
the night there had come a change in the weather; I splashed through
slush of melted snow, and soaked in a constant rain, but objected none
at all because it gave me an excuse to keep up the collar of my cloak,
and pull the brim of my hat well forward on my face and so minimise the
risk of identification.
There is the lichened root of an ancient fallen saugh tree by the side
of Earn Water between Kirkillstane and Driepps that I cannot till this
day look on without a deep emotion. Walter's bairns have seen me sitting
there more than once, and unco solemn so that they have wondered, the
cause beyond their comprehension. It was there I drew up my horse to see
the house of Kirkillstane from the very spot where I had rambled with my
shabby stanzas, and felt the first throb of passion for a woman.
The country was about me familiar in every dyke and tree and eminence;
where the water sobbed in the pool it had the accent it had in my
dreams; there was a broken branch of ash that trailed above the fall,
where I myself had dragged it once in climbing. The smell of moss and
rotten leafage in the dripping rain, the eerie aspect of the moorland in
the mist, the call of lapwings--all was as I had left it. There was not
the most infinite difference to suggest that I had seen another world,
and lived another life, and become another than the boy that wandered
here.
I rode along the river to find the smoke rising from my father's
house--thank God! but what the better was the outlaw son for that? Dare
he darken again the door he had disgraced, and disturb anew the hearts
he had made sore?
I pray my worst enemy may never feel torn by warring dictates of the
spirit as I was that dreary afternoon by the side of Earn; I pray he may
never know the pang with which I decided that old events were best let
lie, and that I must be content with that brief glimpse of home before
setting forth again upon the roads of dubious fortune. Fortune! Did I
not wear just now the very Shoes of Fortune? They had come I knew not
whence, from what magic part and artisan of heathendom I could not even
guess, to my father's brother; they had covered the unresting foot of
him; to me they had brought their curse of discontent, and so in wearing
them I seemed doomed to be the unhappy rover, too.
The afternoon grew loud with wind as I sat my horse beside the
increasing water; I felt desolate beyond expression.
“Well, there must be an end of it some way!” I said bitterly, and I
turned to go.
The storm opposed me as I cantered over Whig-gitlaw, and won by Brooms,
and Bishops Offerance, and Kilree. Shepherds sheltered in the lee
of dykes, and women hurried out and shuttered windows. I saw sheep
hastening into the angles of the fields, and the wild white sea-gull
beating across the sky. The tempest thrashed on me as though it could
not have me go too soon from the country of my shame; I broke the horse
to gallop, and fields and dykes flew by like things demented.
Then of a sudden the beast grew lame; I searched for a stone or a cast
shoe, but neither ailed him, and plainly the ride to town that night was
impossible. Where the beast failed was within half a mile of Newton,
and at all hazards I decided I must make for the inn there. I felt there
were risks of recognition, but I must run them. I led the horse by a
side path, and reached the inn no sooner than the darkness that fell
that night with unusual suddenness. Lights were in the house, and the
sound of rural merriment in the kitchen, where farm lads drank twopenny
ale, and sang.
A man--he proved to be the innkeeper--came to my summons with a lantern
in his hand, and held it up to see what wayfarer was this in such a
night. He saw as little of me as my hat and cloak could reveal, and I
saw, what greatly relieved me, that he was not John Warnock, who had
tenanted the inn when I left the country, but a new tenant and one
unknown to me. He helped me to unsaddle the horse, discovered with me
that the lameness would probably succumb to a night in the stall, and
unburdened himself to the questions every unknown traveller in the shire
of Renfrew may expect.
“You'll be frae Ayr, maybe, or Irvine?”
No, I was from neither; I was from Glasgow.
“Say ye sae, noo! Dod! it's nae nicht for travelling and nae wonder your
horse is lamed. Ye'll be for ower Fenwick way, noo, i' the mornin'?” Nor
was I for over Fenwick way in the morning. I was for Glasgow again.
He looked from the corners of his eyes at this oddity who travelled
like a shuttle in such weather. I was drenched with rain, and my
spatter-dashes, with which I had thought to make up in some degree for
the inadequate foot-wear of red shoes on horseback, were foul with clay.
He presumed I was for supper?
“No,” I answered; “I'm more in the humour for bed, and I will be obliged
if you send to my room for my clothes in a little so that they may be
dry by the time I start in the morning, and I shall set out at seven if
by that time my horse is recovered.”
I drank a tankard of ale for the good of the house, as we say, during
a few minutes in the parlour, making my dripping clothes and a headache
the excuse for refusing the proffered hospitality of the kitchen where
the ploughboys sang, and then went to the little cam-ceiled room where a
hasty bed had been made for me.
The world outside was full of warring winds and plashing rains, into
which the yokels went at last reluctantly, and when they were gone I
fell asleep, wakening once only for a moment when my wet clothes were
being taken from the room.