SWEETHEART ABBEY
Soon after their arrival Whitney and Andrew drove back to the boat,
which was moored in the mouth of a stream at some distance from
Appleyard. It was a bright morning and they sat smoking in the cockpit
when they had shaken some of the canvas and laid their sea clothes and
blankets out to dry.
Behind the white beach, a strip of marish heath led back to the broad
belt of cultivated land, with neat farmsteads scattered about; in
front, the narrow channel, in which the shallow-bodied boat lay nearly
upright, wound seaward through a great stretch of sand. The open sea
was not visible, but three or four miles away a glistening streak that
seemed to be in motion caught the light. In the middle distance a
green lagoon and two ribands of water were rapidly widening. Flocks of
black and white oyster-catchers fluttered about the banks of the
channels, and long rows of salmon nets ran back along the shore.
"This is a curious place to navigate," Whitney remarked. "You were
right in insisting on shallow draught and a centerboard."
"The shoals are not the worst," Andrew replied. "The tide runs up
these gutters very fast, and, as a rule, you can't take out an anchor
if you get aground."
"But that's the first thing one generally does."
"It's dangerous here. If the anchor held until she floated on the
flood tide, the strain on the cable would probably pull her down. If
it didn't hold, which is much more likely, it would check her while
she drove across the bank, sheering athwart the stream, in danger of
rolling over. The safest plan is to keep all sail set and try to make
for deep water as soon as she floats."
Whitney glanced at the nearest channel. A small white ridge, perhaps
six inches high, stretched from bank to bank, moving forward about as
fast as one could walk, and as the wave passed on the riband of water
changed into a lake. He thought it would not be pleasant to meet the
advancing tide at some distance from the land.
On looking round, Whitney saw a man walking toward them across the
bank. The fellow was old and his brown face was deeply lined. He wore
a yellow oilskin cap, an old blue jersey, and rubber waders that
reached to his thighs. Clambering on board, he nodded to Andrew.
"Weel," he said, "I'm glad to see ye back, an' it's a bonny wee boat
ye have got."
"She's not bad for work among the shoals, but she's not the best type
for the long seas you get in open water," Andrew replied, and turned
to Whitney. "You might bring up the bottle in the port locker, Jim,
and the soda."
"Ye can let the sodda bide; I've nae use for't." When Whitney returned
the fisherman filled his glass. "Here's til ye an' her! Ye have given
her a right name," he said.
"Why's the name good? What does _Rowan_ mean?" asked Whitney.
"The mountain-ash. The old mosstroopers sometimes wore a spray in
their steel caps as a protection against witchcraft and bad luck.
We're descendants of the Norse pirates, and the ash was the
Scandinavians' sacred Ysdragil, the tree of life."
"You're a curious lot," Whitney remarked. "I guess our beachcombers
don't know much about archaeology: they don't have superstitions a
thousand years old."
"Were ye thinking o' making a trip to the deep water doon wast?" the
Scotsman inquired.
"I don't know yet. We might do some shooting here. Is there much fowl
about?"
"Ye'll get shellduck noo, an' a few teal; whaups, too, if ye're
wanting them, but the lag-geese an' the bernicle are no' here yet." He
paused and added: "I wouldna' say but it might be better if ye bide
until they come."
Andrew looked hard at him.
"Why?"
"I'm thinking ye're wanted here. It would be an ill thing to see
Appleyard gang doon, and it might be yours some day."
"It's my cousin's and he's younger than I am," Andrew answered with a
frown.
"Just that! Ye're leal, we ken. Weel, as ye're fond o' the young
laird, it might be wiser to keep an eye on him. He's overmuch under
yon foreigner's thumb."
"How's the fishing?" Andrew asked pointedly.
The old fellow broke into a slow chuckle.
"It might be better an' it might be waur; there's ower many o' the
Board's watchers here awa' for my liking. An' noo, I'll need to win
ashore before the tide's on the bank."
He went off across the sands and Whitney turned to Andrew with a
smile.
"You people leave a good deal to the imagination, but, so far as I
could understand him, he gave you a hint or two. What's his business?"
"Salmon-fishing with a drift net. I've known Jock Marshall since I was
a boy, and I believe he takes a well-meaning interest in me."
"Why did he call Staffer a foreigner?"
"In a sense, he is a foreigner, although he's been a naturalized
British subject for some time. We knew nothing about him until he
married Dick's mother, but there's reason to believe his name used to
be Von Stauffer, or something like it. Mrs. Woodhouse was born in
Austria, but she came over young, and her husband was all right."
Whitney was not much interested.
"What about to-morrow?" he asked.
"If the breeze holds, we'll have no trouble in crossing the sands to
New Abbey. Elsie and Dick will come, and I expect you'll enjoy the
trip. It's an interesting place."
As they stowed the sails the boat suddenly rose upright, drifted a few
yards, and then brought up with a jar of tightening cable while the
tide splashed against her planks. Launching the light dinghy, they
paddled shoreward with the stream.
At high-water the next day they went back on board and the _Rowan_
stood out across the sands. Elsie sat at the tiller, while Andrew
sounded with a long boat-hook, and Dick lounged in the cockpit,
smoking a cigarette. He laughed and told humorous stories, but
Whitney noticed that Elsie was intent upon her steering. He had
expected this, for he thought that whatever the girl undertook would
be well done; but she did not obtrude her earnestness. Now and then
she glanced at Andrew as he dipped the pole and a nod or a gesture was
exchanged. He was feeling his way across the shoals with
half-instinctive skill and the girl understood what he wished her to
do. Their task was not an easy one: there was only a foot or two of
water under the boat and she forged ahead fast through the short seas
the tide made as it raced across the banks.
The seas began to curl as the ebb met the freshening wind, and little
showers of spray splashed into the straining canvas. The deck got wet;
the water was filled with sand and streaked with foam. There was no
mark in all the glittering stretch, but Andrew knew when he reached
the main channel, and told Whitney to let the centerboard down. Then
they went to windward faster, the sea hurrying westward with them in
confused eddies while small white combers foamed about the boat. She
plunged through them, scooping their broken crests on board, and by
and by the water ahead grew yellow and marked by frothy lines.
Elsie looked at Andrew, and he took out his watch.
"We ought to get a fathom most of the way across," he said, and turned
to Whitney. "You might stand by below to pull up the board."
Whitney crept into the low-roofed cabin, where he sat on a locker,
holding the tackle that lifted the heavy iron centerplate. He knew
that it would be desirable to heave it up as soon as possible after he
got the order. From where he sat he could see nothing outside the
boat, but as he looked aft through the hatch he was offered a
fascinating picture.
A strip of the tanned mainsail, shining ruby-red, cut against a patch
of clear blue sky, and Elsie sat beneath it, her gracefully lined
figure swaying easily as the boat rose and fell. She leaned on the
long tiller, and a lock of loosened hair that shone like the sail
fluttered across her forehead. Her eyes were bright, and there was a
fine color in her face; but it was not so much her beauty as her
decision and confidence that Whitney liked. The girl was capable of
keen enjoyment, but it must be in something that was worth doing. He
was already conscious of a curious respect for Elsie Woodhouse.
Andrew called to him to lift the board and come up; and when he
reached the deck he saw close ahead of them a long, hump-backed
mountain that rose abruptly from a narrow strip of rolling pasture. A
row of very small white houses bordered a green common behind the
beach, and the tide swept, froth-streaked, down the channel in front.
"Where do we bring up?" he asked.
"In the Carsethorn gut," said Andrew. "Do you think you can find it,
Elsie?"
"I'll try. Give her a foot or two of sheet."
The boat swung round a little, edging in toward the beach, and Whitney
saw by the ripples that they were in shallow water. Andrew let the
staysail run down, but when he stood ready with the boathook, Elsie
smiled.
"Sound if you like, but you won't find bottom here," she said.
"A good shot. You have hit the mouth of the gut."
"You'll touch now," said Elsie a few minutes later; and Andrew dipped
the pole, then threw it down and lowered the jib. The boat came round
head to wind, and the anchor went down with a rattle of running chain.
Landing from the dinghy, they struck across the fields, and although
it was autumn, Whitney wondered at the lush greenness of the grass.
Close on their left hand, Criffell's lonely ridge ran up against the
sky, colored purple-red, though the hollows in its curving side were
filled with dark-blue shadows. The ash-trees in the hedgerows that
crossed the rolling pasture obscured their view ahead, and they were
crossing the last rise when Whitney stopped.
"This is worth coming a very long way to see!" he exclaimed.
A deep glen, where the light was subdued and the colors dim, cleft the
mountain's northern flank, and at its mouth a cluster of white houses
stood among the trees; then, on a narrow green level, bright in the
sun, the old abbey shone rosy red. Ancient ash-trees and crumbling
granite walls straggled about it, but the molding of the high, east
window, buttress and tower, still rose in lines of beauty, worked in
warm-colored stone.
Elsie gave him a quick look and he knew that she was pleased with his
frank admiration. When they entered the cool, shadowy interior she
acted as his guide, for Dick and Andrew stayed outside in the sun.
Presently she stopped near the east end of the building, and Whitney
looked back down the long rows of plinths, from which the pillars had
fallen, and up into the hollow of the great ruined tower.
"It must have been a wonderful place in the old days; a jewel in the
shape of a church. And I dare say if they'd searched Scotland they
couldn't have found a finer setting than these rich meadows at the
mountain's foot."
Elsie led him a few yards along a wall, over which a low, groined roof
still hung.
"Its building was a labor of love, and perhaps that's why it never
leaves one cold," she said. "I suppose you know its history?"
"I only know it's called Sweetheart Abbey."
"The Countess Devorgilla built it as a shrine for her husband's heart,
which was embalmed and buried on her breast. It's a moving story, when
one thinks of what she undertook. Galloway was then, for the most
part, a savage waste; skilled workmen must be brought from somewhere
else, perhaps from Italy or France. Then there is only granite, which
could not be cut and molded, on these hills, and the soft red stone
had to be carried down the Firth and across the sands. They had no
mechanical transport, and you can see the size of the blocks. In spite
of all this, the abbey rose and still stands, marked, I often think,
by a tender, elusive beauty that's peculiar to the North."
Elsie moved back to where the sun shone down into the roofless nave,
and Whitney thought he understood why she did so. Her imagination was
fastidiously refined: she would not loiter talking by Devorgilla's
tomb. Standing silent beside her, he waited, with a faint smile. He
was not a sentimentalist trying to play up to a pretty girl; somehow,
she had stirred him. He felt that she had the gift of seizing what
was true in romance and missing what was false. Then, she had the
strange elusive beauty of the North which she had spoken of: an
ethereal tenderness that flashed out and vanished, leaving the hard
rock of a character steadfast as the granite upon the Solway shore.
Elsie turned and looked east with grave, steady eyes.
"One reaches out for something that's on the other side," she said;
"but perhaps when one knocks and the gate is opened, one goes through
unawares--"
"You mean, that when one's eyes are opened, there may not be much
difference between the land of enchantment and ours?"
"Something like that."
During the short silence that followed, Whitney looked round the great
church that was still majestic in its decay.
"Well," he said, "there can't be many of us, nowadays, who'd deserve
the love and labor this place must have cost."
"But there must be some," she insisted.
"It seems a big thing to claim, but I have met two or three who, so
far as my judgment goes, were good enough for the kind of woman your
Countess seems to have been; not clever men and in no way remarkable,
until you knew them well, but you felt that, whatever happened, they'd
do the square thing. One could trust them. Somehow, one man in
particular stands out from the rest."
Elsie turned toward him and he saw the strange, elusive tenderness
shining in her eyes. Momentary as it was, it transformed her face,
and he wondered whether she approved his sentiment or knew whom he
meant.
"I imagine you are a good friend," she said softly. "It must be nice
to have somebody who believes in you like that."
"If the man I'm thinking of knew how he stood with me and others, it
would make him embarrassed." Whitney laughed. "But that's natural.
It's a hard thing to feel that you must live up to your reputation."
"I like you best when you're serious," Elsie rebuked him, though she
smiled.
She took the lead he gave her and they went back to the others,
engaged in careless talk. When they reached an arch that opened on a
sweep of sunny grass, Andrew looked up from the stone on which he sat.
"You haven't hurried," he remarked.
"No," said Whitney. "I've been learning some more of your traditions,
and they're inspiring. The people round here seem to have been great
lovers as well as pretty hard fighters."
"A happy thought has struck me," Dick broke in. "It would be hot work
dragging the dinghy down across a quarter of a mile of sand, and I
don't feel up to carrying a heavy lunch basket. There's a hotel in the
village where they'd give us something to eat, and we could stroll up
the burnside afterward. It's a pretty walk."
Whitney noticed that Andrew's glance rested for a second on Elsie's
face and then passed on. She made no sign, but it seemed that Andrew
understood without it.
"I think not," he said; "the place would probably be full of Dumfries
excursionists. It would be pleasanter on the beach."
"And I want to see the view you talked about," Whitney followed him
up.
Dick broke into a resigned grin.
"Very well; but you'll drag the dinghy down yourselves."
They had to carry the boat some distance, and afterward they rowed
lazily along the edge of the sand until they landed at the foot of a
little glen. Here they lunched and lounged in the sun until the flood
tide came softly lapping across the flats.
The breeze had fallen very light when the stream swept the _Rowan_
east across the shoals, and Whitney, sitting on the cabin-top, watched
the Galloway shore recede. The western sky was a pale saffron, against
which Criffell rose, steeped in a wonderful blue. The shadows were
gathering fast about the rolling ground below, but the hollow where
the old red abbey stood still could be distinguished.