“And forth into the fields I went,
And nature’s living motion lent
The pulse of hope to discontent.
“I wonder’d at the bounteous hours
The slow results of winter showers;
You scarce could see the grass for flowers.
“I wonder’d while I paced along;
The woods were fill’d so full with song,
There seem’d no room for sense of wrong.”
“The Two Voices,” Tennyson.
|It was just ten minutes past eleven by the station clock when Ralph,
having parted with his companions, found himself outside in the
highroad. He felt horribly desolate, and stood for a minute or two
dismally contemplating a flaming red and yellow placard of a scene in
“Cramond Prig,” which they had invariably played after “East Lynne.”
Wretched as his experiences with the Company had been, they had at least
been less dreary than solitude. He sorely missed Ivy’s bright face, and
the comedian’s cheerful companionship. There was a certain bitterness
too in the reflection that no one had taken much thought of what was
to become of him, and that even Dudley, who had been kind and friendly
enough in the past, had never dreamt of foregoing his journey to London
and of taking two tickets to Glasgow.
With a last look at Forres he turned his steps southward and somewhat
drearily set off on the first stage of his journey. He meant to reach
Grantown that evening, and Grantown appeared to be at least two and
twenty miles off. Fortunately the weather was all in his favour: it was
one of those mornings of early May when the sun is bright and warm and
the air deliciously fresh, and he had not gone far along the uphill road
before his spirits revived. After all he was young and in good
health, and there was something not altogether unpleasant in entire
independence. He reflected with a laugh that although a change of
clothes might be desirable, a knapsack would have been heavy to carry,
that the great coat though useful on a cold night would have been
unbearable at the present moment, and that the sixpence left to him
after stamping the letter to his landlady and letters to the managers of
an Edinburgh and a Glasgow theatre, would at any rate keep him for a few
days from actual starvation. Then for a while he forgot his difficulties
altogether in sheer enjoyment of the country. The lovely outline of the
Cluny hills, the glimpses of the river Findhorn, the beautiful parks
surrounding many stately houses, looked their very best on this perfect
spring morning. He caught the glowing sunlight through the young leaves
just unfolded and thought that the delicate tracery of dark boughs
seemed as though ablaze with emeralds. He had walked for about two hours
when he came to a little country church and burial ground, and paused
partly to rest, partly to look up at the beautiful viaduct which at a
great height spanned the river Divie.
“Ay, ay,” said a voice, that seemed to rise from one of the graves.
“There are many tourists that stop to admire yonder seven-arched work of
man’s devising, but few--very few that pay much heed to the works of the
Almighty.”
There was a strong northern accent about the words; and the careful,
precise English showed that the speaker was better used to reading than
to speaking the language.
Ralph had started a little at the suddenness with which the silence had
been broken, and on turning round, he saw a venerable-looking old man
with bushy grey hair and beard, and shrewd yet kindly glance. Evidently
he was the minister of this place. Ralph raised his hat, and smiled a
little.
“May not the skill of man be taken as one of God’s works?” he said.
“No doubt, no doubt,” replied the minister. “When rightly applied that
is to say. But railways, sir, are the devil’s own weapon; they desolate
and mar the country they enter; they bring to the country folk all the
evil of the towns and cities. You have a prophet in your own land that
has told you this in plain words, but you will not heed him, but go on
multiplying the works of evil to your own undoing.”
“On such a day as this I am all in favour of walking,” said Ralph,
amused at the minister’s earnestness.
“Sir! it’s a grand exercise, you’ll not be finding a better; there are
your bicycles that bend a man’s back like an overstrung bow, and your
tricycles that are no light diversion to push up our Scottish hills, and
there are those works of the evil one which whirl you through creation
at such a pace that you are no wiser at the end of a journey than you
were at the beginning of it. But a man that walks, sir, must be blind
and deaf if he’s not a better man after his walk than he was before.”
“Well, I shall be able to test your theory,” said Ralph. “For I am
walking as far as Glasgow.”
“And which way will you be taking?” asked the minister. “You should
spend a few days among the Grampians, if you are anything of a
mountaineer.”
“I must push on as fast as I can,” said Ralph; “and by the most direct
route. They told me at Forres that after Grantown I had better make for
Kingussie.”
“If you’ll come into the Manse, I will show you on the map the very
route I have often travelled myself in past days,” said the minister.
And Ralph, nothing loth, followed him into his house, and was soon
poring over a big ordnance map, and receiving some very helpful
information from the old man.
They were interrupted before long by a knock at the door, and the
appearance of an aged housekeeper with a large, well-fed, tabby cat in
her arms.
“The feesh is on the table, sir, and it’s a sair temptation for puss,
puir wee thing, starving hungry as she is.” Ralph sprang up to take
leave, glancing humourously at the fat tabby, who was in such haste for
her food. The minister noted the glance; he noted, too, for the first
time, the extreme shabbiness of his guest’s clothes, and certain signs
of under-feeding about him.
“We’ll no keep puss waiting, Tibbie,” he said. “But just lay another
place at the table, for I hope this gentleman has time to dine with
me.” Then as Ralph hesitated to accept the hospitality he overruled
all objections by adding: “You’ll be doing me a real kindness if you’ll
stay, for it is not very often that I get a visitor to talk with in this
country place.”
He led the way as he spoke into the adjoining room, a plainly-furnished
parlour with nothing ornamental about it, but with a certain charm of
its own, nevertheless, from its pure cleanliness and simplicity. Puss
occupied a chair on her master’s right hand, and purred loudly through
the somewhat long grace, and Tibbie, having provided for the wants of
the visitor, left them to enjoy the meal in peace. For dinner at the
Manse was not an affair with many courses, but just freshly-caught fish
from the river, baps baked that morning by the housekeeper, a salad from
the garden, and the remains of a cheese which had been a present to the
minister on New Year’s day.
“Now the majority of travellers, as I was saying,” continued the
minister, “are just hurried over the viaduct, causing us nothing but
distraction and annoyance, but a pedestrian like yourself really sees
the place, and cheers the day for us and brings us something to think
about.”
“I spent the first thirteen years of my life in a country rectory,” said
Ralph. “And remember what a quiet time we had.”
“And are you studying for the ministry?” asked the old man.
“No,” said Ralph. “My guardian gave me the chance of doing that, but
I think you will agree that one can’t be a parson just for the sake of
earning a living.”
“Certainly not, sir, certainly not. You are quite in the right. No man
should take up such work without a clear call; far better seek some
other profession.”
“That is what I did,” said Ralph, colouring a little. “But I know very
well that you’ll not approve of my profession. I am an actor, and am on
my way now to Stirling where I hope to hear of a fresh engagement either
at Edinburgh or at Glasgow.”
Surprise, consternation, regret, were plainly visible in the old man’s
face. He said nothing for a moment, it bewildered him to find that this
young fellow with his straightforward manner and ingenuous modesty,
should have anything to do with the stage.
“I am thinking that you will be asking me as you did of the viaduct--may
not the skill of man be taken as one of God’s works?” he said,
thoughtfully. “And I’m fain to confess that I have ever considered
theatres as the highway to hell, and actors as so many servants of the
devil. May God forgive me if I have failed in charity and dealt out
harsh judgment to them.”
So they fell into talk together, and Ralph told of the landlady who had
shut the door in his face, and assumed that he was no Christian. He told
of some of the arrangements at the two theatres in London with which he
was acquainted. He told more than one story which he had heard from
Myra Kay of the good that Hugh Macneillie had done. And the old minister
listened and pondered these strange sayings in his heart, looking all
the time with a sort of wistfulness at the fresh, hopeful face opposite
him--a face which somehow haunted him long after Ralph had left the
Manse.
“He had been through a hard apprenticeship, and I doubt he had little
enough in his pockets,” reflected the old man as he paced the bare,
little parlour.
“He’d been defrauded of his pay and had looked on the evil as well as on
the good, but still he pleaded like a born advocate for his calling--his
art; and spite of his troubles there was a blithe look in his face which
sore perplexes me.”
He walked to and fro many times, finally he took a Bible from the shelf
and turned over the pages until he came to the words he sought. They
were these: “The joy of the Lord is your strength.”
“It was _that_ his look kept bringing before me,” he said to himself,
and he sighed because he knew that there was too little of the element
of joy in his life, and that he plodded on from day to day, considering
religion a privilege and a duty, but somehow missing the gladness which
might have been his. Ralph meanwhile, much refreshed by the rest and
food and by his host’s kindly words, tramped on contentedly enough
through the wild, desolate country which led to Grantown. The sun was
just setting as he reached the village; workmen were making their way
homeward, some children with little, dusty, bare feet were playing
battledore and shuttlecock in the road, the ruddy light on their hair
looked like burnished copper.
“Come awa bairns, it’s time ye were a’ in bed,” called a comely mother
standing in the open doorway of one of the houses.
“Just a wee whilie,” pleaded the children.
“Ah!” she replied, yielding under protest, “You’re an awfu’ care to me!”
But there was love and pride in her eyes nevertheless, as she watched
their play.
Ralph sighed a little as he tramped on. He was now both hungry and
tired, and began to consider his plans; it was quite clear that he could
not afford the price of a bed, and it was still too light to venture
upon such shelter as might be found in barns or under hedges. He turned
into a baker’s shop, secured a good-sized stale loaf, and then for want
of anything better to do, found his way to the railway station where he
amused himself by looking out trains which he had no money to travel by,
after which, having had the good fortune to find a _Glasgow Herald_ in
the waiting-room, left behind by some traveller, he read until it was
quite dusk. The quiet little place roused into a sort of activity about
a quarter past eight when two trains arrived, one from Perth, the other
from Elgin, and Ralph sauntered on to the platform with a faint hope
that he might see some face that he knew--he could almost in his
loneliness have welcomed the Skoots! But very few passengers alighted,
and directly they had been seen off the premises the porters began to
lock up for the night--no more trains were expected.
“After all,” reflected Ralph, as he left the village behind him, and
tramped along the highroad in the gathering gloom, “if I had gone out to
the colonies I should think nothing of camping out for a night. There’s
no more disgrace in it here than there. And luckily there’s no law, as
there is in England, against sleeping under a hedge, I can’t be had up
as a vagrant in Scotland. How, if only I had not been forced to sell
Macneillie’s knife it would have been handy enough for cutting this loaf
which must certainly have come out of the Ark.”
He wrenched off the top with difficulty and laughed to himself as he
thought how horrified Lady Mactavish would be, could she see him now in
the shabbiest of clothes, tramping a dusty road and munching stale bread
as he went.
“Most certainly I should have Sir Matthew’s charitable dole of ten
pounds thrust into my hand,” he said, with an exulting sense that come
what would, he would never apply for that relief. “Rather than go to him
for help, I would willingly turn into that Refuge for destitute men at
Edinburgh, which we saw as we walked down the Canongate.” He shuddered
a little as the recollection came to him of the sort of man he had seen
seeking shelter there. At any rate out of doors he would have fresh air
and no companions in misery.
He must have walked nearly five miles from the village, before he saw in
the faint starlight a large farmhouse with many outbuildings. “This is
the place for me,” he thought, making his way into the yard: but he had
yet to learn the difficulties before him. The doors of a hopeful-looking
barn were securely fastened, and, as he crossed the yard to some other
outbuildings, up sprang a huge dog from his kennel, with angry growls
and fierce barks. He walked up to the mastiff, with swift, light steps,
patted its head, fondled its ears, and explained to it the situation.
The dog was mollified, understood that the intruder’s intentions were
honourable, and even licked his hand, which Ralph took very kindly.
Looking round searchingly, he made out, at last, a sort of open shed,
near the stables, and moving across to this, had the good fortune to
discover a cart with trusses of hay in it.
“This will exactly suit me my friend,” he said, with a farewell pat to
the dog. “May you sleep as comfortably in that lordly kennel of yours!”
And, so saying, he climbed up into the cart, stowed the remains of his
loaf in a safe place, and with deft hands had soon made himself as warm
a bed as could be desired, out of the hay.
He slept soundly, being healthily tired with his long walk--so soundly,
indeed, that though cocks and hens and ducks and turkeys, all began,
at an early hour, to blend their voices in a countrified, but scarcely
musical chorus, he heard nothing. In his dream, Miss Brompton, in a
waterproof, was thumping out “Scots wha hae,” between the acts; and
presently, when certain strange rumblings slightly disturbed him, he
dreamed that it was the thunder in the first scene of “Macbeth,” finally
waking himself up by laughing at the comical sight presented by Mrs.
Skoot as she vainly tried to drag him out of his witch’s cloak that he
might appear as Malcolm. Her angry, impatient face convulsed him with
mirth, and it was with no small bewilderment that he awoke to find
himself straggling out of a heap of hay, while from above, the amazed
face of a red-whiskered man gazed down upon him. The rustic’s round,
light-grey eyes had a scared look, and Ralph suddenly remembered where
he was, and began to apologise and explain. The cart no longer stood
in the shed, but had rumbled out into the highroad, and the driver had
evidently no intention of proceeding, while his uncanny visitant still
remained among the hay.
“Gude preserve us!” he exclaimed, “I was thinkin’ the cart was bewitched
when I harkened to yon fearsome laughter.”
Ralph shook off the hay and leapt lightly into the road; his agility
and grace seemed to strike still deeper awe into the heart of the
countryman, who stared like one fascinated.
“A doot you hef brought luck with you to the farm, sir,” he said,
looking down into the comely face and laughing eyes of his astonishing
guest. “And there would hef ben a bowl o’ milk set for you had you
bin expeckit. But it will be a fery long time since the Brownies hef
veesited us, and there’s bin nae luck aboot the farm for mony a year.”
“Great Scott! the man thinks I’m a ‘Robin Goodfellow’ or a warlock!”
thought Ralph, highly amused. “And he’s far too much afraid of me to
offer me a ride in his cart.”
“I’m just a wayfaring man,” he tried to explain. “Very grateful for the
shelter of your hay-cart on a cold night.”
“Oh, ay,” said the carter, still evidently holding to his own opinion.
“And it is fery glad we are to be seein’ you, sir. And a ken weel that
it’s na for human bein’s to come into our place at night. Lassie wad
bark till ilka soul in the hoose was wakened, and she will be flying at
the thrapple o’ ony mortal man. But dogs hef aye descreemination to tell
the Brownies when they see them. I will be wishin’ you gude day, sir.”
And so saying, he drove off hastily, leaving Ralph to trudge along in
solitude, until catching sight of a stream at a little distance from the
road, he reflected that the best things in life were to be had free of
charge, and that a morning bath would freshen him for the day.
As for the driver he chanced to look back from a distance, and catching
sight of his uncanny visitor just as he took a header into the water,
was for ever confirmed in his opinion that he had seen and spoken with a
Brownie.
The second day’s walk proved even more enjoyable than the first had
done, except that there was no kindly old minister to provide a midday
meal. But the sense of freedom, the bracing air, and the loveliness of
the road beside the river Spey, with glimpses every now and then of the
Cairn Gorm range, were things to be remembered through a lifetime. With
Aviemore specially, he was delighted. He began to weave plans for the
future, and to dream of wandering with Evereld among those exquisite
hills with their craggy rocks cropping out here and there from between
dark pines and delicately fresh birches, while beyond there stretched
great pine woods, and mountains whose summits were still white with
snow. Kingussie furnished him with bread and with a somewhat draughty
sleeping apartment in the ruined castle which goes by the name of the
Ruthven Barracks; but the night air was keen, and many a time he longed
for the warmth and comfort of the hay-cart. There was something dreary,
too, in the desolate shell of the old residence of the Comyns, and he
awoke with a feeling of depression which was curiously foreign to him.
The morning was cloudy, and the waters of the Spey felt icy cold as he
plunged into them; however, the walk through Glen Tromie which the old
minister had specially recommended to him soon made him warm enough, and
the wild beauty of Loch Seilich, and its surrounding precipices fully
justified the praises which his guide had bestowed on them. He rested
for some little while by the loch, ate his last crust, and counted over,
as a miser counts his gold, the three pence which must somehow carry him
to Glasgow.
“I must certainly eat less,” he reflected, ruefully, having only dared
the previous night to buy a pennyworth of bread. “The worst of it is
this mountain air makes one so confoundedly hungry. I shall soon
be reduced to eating birds’ eggs, or to singing in front of village
alehouses in the hope of earning money.”
His reverie was interrupted by the falling of some heavy drops of
rain; he set out once more on his walk seeing plainly enough from the
threatening sky that a storm was at hand. It came indeed with a speed
which surprised him. Clouds, which blotted out the landscape, hemmed him
in; the rising wind roared through the wilds of Gaick, and the rain
came down in sheets, blinding and drenching him, for no mackintosh yet
invented could have stood the pitiless deluge which showed no sign of
abating, but rather increased in violence. Worst of all, he missed his
path so that there was not even the comfort of knowing that every step
was bringing him nearer his destination. On the contrary, he began to
fear that he had altogether lost himself.
The further he went the more hopeless he grew; he was wet to the skin,
every bone in his body ached, and no sign of a track was to be found.
It seemed to him that he was the only living creature in this vast
solitude, and his delight was unbounded when at length, through the
driving rain and mist, he caught sight of a figure approaching him. A
collie sprang forward and barked, and was called back by its master, a
tall, manly figure with a crook in his hand, and under his arm an ugly
little black lamb, He seemed not unlike a picture of the Good Shepherd,
and Ralph instantly felt confidence in the clear, kindly eyes which
looked out at him in a friendly fashion from beneath the Scotch bonnet;
there was something noble and winning in this dark-bearded Highlander.
“Can you put me into the track for Dalnacardoch?” asked Ralph, as he
returned the shepherd’s greeting. “I have lost my way in the mist.”