Alas, how often do Christ's words, "I come not to bring peace, but a
sword," prove true. George Selwyn went away, but the seed he had
dropped in this far-off corner of Scotland did not bring forth
altogether the peaceable fruits of righteousness. In fact, as we have
seen, it had scarcely begun to germinate before the laird and the
dominie felt it to be a root of bitterness between them. For if
Crawford knew anything he knew that Tallisker would never relinquish
his new work, and perhaps if he yielded to any reasonable object
Tallisker would stand by him in his project.
He did not force the emigration plan upon his notice. The summer was
far advanced; it would be unjustifiable to send the clan to Canada at
the beginning of winter. And, as it happened, the subject was opened
with the dominie in a very favorable manner. They were returning from
the moors one day and met a party of six men. They were evidently
greatly depressed, but they lifted their bonnets readily to the chief.
There was a hopeless, unhappy look about them that was very painful.
"You have been unsuccessful on the hills, Archie, I fear."
"There's few red deer left," said the man gloomily. "It used to be
deer and men; it is sheep and dogs now."
After a painful silence the dominie said,
"Something ought to be done for those braw fellows. They canna ditch
and delve like an Irish peasant. It would be like harnessing stags in
a plough."
Then Crawford spoke cautiously of his intention, and to his delight
the dominie approved it.
"I'll send them out in Read & Murray's best ships. I'll gie each head
o' a family what you think right, Tallisker, and I'll put £100 in your
hands for special cases o' help. And you will speak to the men and
their wives for me, for it is a thing I canna bear to do."
But the men too listened eagerly to the proposition. They trusted the
dominie, and they were weary of picking up a precarious living in
hunting and fishing, and relying on the chief in emergencies. Their
old feudal love and reverence still remained in a large measure, but
they were quite sensible that everything had changed in their little
world, and that they were out of tune with it. Some few of their
number had made their way to India or Canada, and there was a vague
dissatisfaction which only required a prospect of change to develop.
As time went on, and the laird's plan for opening the coal beds on his
estate got known, the men became impatient to be gone.
In the early part of March two large ships lay off the coast waiting
for them, and they went in a body to Crawford Keep to bid the chief
"farewell." It was a hard hour, after all, to Crawford. The great
purpose that he had kept before his eyes for years was not at that
moment sufficient. He had dressed himself in his full chieftain's suit
to meet them. The eagle's feather in his Glengary gave to his great
stature the last grace. The tartan and philibeg, the garters at his
knee, the silver buckles at his shoulder, belt, and shoon, the
jewelled mull and dirk, had all to these poor fellows in this last
hour a proud and sad significance. As he stood on the steps to welcome
them, the wind colored his handsome face and blew out the long black
hair which fell curling on his shoulders.
Whatever they intended to say to him, when they thus saw him with
young Colin by his side they were unable to say. They could only lift
their bonnets in silence. The instincts and traditions of a thousand
years were over them; he was at this moment the father and the chief
of their deepest affection. One by one they advanced to him. He
pressed the hands of all. Some of the older men--companions of his
youth in play and sport--he kissed with a solemn tenderness. They went
away silently as they came, but every heart was full and every eye was
dim. There was a great feast for them in the clachan that night, but
it was a sombre meeting, and the dominie's cheerful words of advice
and comfort formed its gayest feature.
The next day was calm and clear. The women and children were safely on
board soon after noon, and about four o'clock the long boats left the
shore full of men. Tallisker was in the front one. As they pulled away
he pointed silently to a steep crag on the shingly beach. The chief
stood upon it. He waved his bonnet, and then the long-pent feelings of
the clan found vent in one long, pitiful Gallic lament, _O hon a rie!
O hon a rie!_ For a few moments the boats lay at rest, no man was able
to lift an oar. Suddenly Tallisker's clear, powerful voice touched the
right chord. To the grand, plaintive melody of St. Mary's he began the
125th Psalm,
"They in the Lord that firmly trust
shall be like Sion hill,
Which at no time can be removed,
but standeth ever still.
As round about Jerusalem
the mountains stand alway;
The Lord his folk doth compass so
from henceforth and for aye."
And thus singing together they passed from their old life into a new
one.
Colin had been indignant and sorrowful over the whole affair. He and
Helen were still young enough to regret the breaking of a tie which
bound them to a life whose romance cast something like a glamour over
the prosaic one of more modern times. Both would, in the
unreasonableness of youthful sympathy, have willingly shared land and
gold with their poor kinsmen; but in this respect Tallisker was with
the laird.
"It was better," he said, "that the old feudal tie should be severed
even by a thousand leagues of ocean. They were men and not bairns, and
they could feel their ain feet;" and then he smiled as he remembered
how naturally they had taken to self-dependence. For one night, in a
conversation with the oldest men, he said, "Crawfords, ye'll hae to
consider, as soon as you are gathered together in your new hame, the
matter o' a dominie. Your little flock in the wilderness will need a
shepherd, and the proper authorities maun be notified."
Then an old gray-headed man had answered firmly, "Dominie, we will
elect our ain minister. We hae been heart and soul, every man o' us,
with the Relief Kirk; but it is ill living in Rome and striving wi'
the pope, and sae for the chief's sake and your sake we hae withheld
our testimony. But we ken weel that even in Scotland the Kirk willna
hirple along much farther wi' the State on her back, and in the
wilderness, please God, we'll plant only a Free Kirk."
The dominie heard the resolve in silence, but to himself he said
softly, "_They'll do! They'll do!_ They'll be a bit upsetting at
first, maybe, but they are queer folk that have nae failings."
A long parting is a great strain; it was a great relief when the ships
had sailed quite out of sight. The laird with a light heart now turned
to his new plans. No reproachful eyes and unhappy faces were there to
damp his ardor. Everything promised well. The coal seam proved to be
far richer than had been anticipated, and those expert in such matters
said there were undoubted indications of the near presence of iron
ore. Great furnaces began to loom up in Crawford's mental vision, and
to cast splendid lustres across his future fortunes.
In a month after the departure of the clan, the little clachan of
Traquare had greatly changed. Long rows of brick cottages, ugly and
monotonous beyond description, had taken the place of the more
picturesque sheilings. Men who seemed to measure everything in life
with a two-foot rule were making roads and building jetties for
coal-smacks to lie at. There was constant influx of strange men and
women--men of stunted growth and white faces, and who had an insolent,
swaggering air, intolerably vulgar when contrasted with the Doric
simplicity and quiet gigantic manhood of the mountain shepherds.
The new workers were, however, mainly Lowland Scotchmen from the
mining districts of Ayrshire. The dominie had set himself positively
against the introduction of a popish element and an alien people; and
in this position he had been warmly upheld by Farquharson and the
neighboring proprietors. As it was, there was an antagonism likely to
give him full employment. The Gael of the mountains regarded these
Lowland "working bodies" with something of that disdain which a rich
and cultivated man feels for kin, not only poor, but of contemptible
nature and associations. The Gael was poor truly, but he held himself
as of gentle birth. He had lived by his sword, or by the care of
cattle, hunting, and fishing. Spades, hammers, and looms belonged to
people of another kind.
Besides this great social gulf, there were political and religious
ones still wider. That these differences were traditional, rather than
real, made no distinction. Man have always fought as passionately for
an idea as for a fact. But Dominie Tallisker was a man made for great
requirements and great trusts. He took in the position with the eye of
a general. He watched the two classes passing down the same streets as
far apart as if separated by a continent, and he said, with a very
positive look on his face, "These men are brethren and they ought to
dwell in unity; and, God helping Dugald Tallisker, they will do it,
yes, indeed, they will."