Mr. McColl was right, as Marjory herself had ere long to acknowledge;
for she had not gone far ere quick steps echoed behind her, and,
looking round, she saw the Reverend James Gillespie trying to overtake
her. She paused in resigned vexation, experience having taught her the
wisdom of waiting for him; the fact being that the fusion point of
mind and body was with him extremely low, and heat had a disastrous
effect on both; so she waited--that honest walking boot of hers
beating a very girlish tattoo of impatience the while against a rock.
"This is great news, Miss Marjory," he began, breathlessly. "Great
news--I may say, good news--is--is it not?"
The latter rather alarmed inquiry being the result of a glance at her
face; for she was in a contradictory mood, and the Reverend James
never had any fixed opinions in minor matters. He took them from his
friends and was, in consequence, often in the position of a child who,
having filled both hands with biscuits, is suddenly offered a sweetie.
Even then he was quite ready to swallow the new contribution if it was
firmly put into his mouth. There was no little excuse for him,
however, since his present environment in a measure forced him to a
poor opinion of himself in the past. The fact being that until the age
of fifteen he had been nothing more than the son of a poor crofter on
the estate of Gleneira. A clever lad, no doubt, who might perchance
rise to something above his father's fate. And then the Bishop, on the
lookout for recruits to the Gaelic-speaking clergy necessary to carry
on the work in the remoter glens, where the Episcopal faith still
lingers, had chosen him out like Samuel for the service of the Lord.
It had been a veritable translation, for the Bishop, being High
Church, had exalted views of the priesthood. The result being that
James Gillespie, fulfilled with a virtuous desire to justify the
Bishop's choice, soon lost the small amount of individuality he had
originally possessed. Educated by the Bishop, ordained by the Bishop,
made the Bishop's chaplain in order that the Bishop might coach him
through the rocks of social etiquette, he became, not unnaturally, a
sort of automaton, safe so far as his knowledge of the Bishop's views
went, but no further. On these points he was logic proof; on others
the veriest weathercock at the mercy of every breeze that blew. For
the rest, a good-looking, florid, fair young man, dressed rigorously
in clerical costume. This again being in deference to the Bishop who,
honest man, having his fair share of the serpent's wisdom, saw the
necessity of hedging this prophet in his own country about with every
dignity which might serve to emphasise the difference between his past
and present. The more so because the sparse congregations amid the
fastnesses of the hills were in the charge of different pastors. Once
a month or so the Reverend Mr. Wilson, from the Manse miles away down
the Strath, would drive up in a machine, put up with the Camerons at
the Lodge, and deliver a very cut-and-dried little sermon in the
school-house. On these occasions the Reverend Mr. Gillespie used to
trudge over the hills with his surplice in a brown paper parcel, so
leaving the Geneva gown and bands a fair field while he delivered an
equally cut-and-dried little homily to the still more outlying
faithful in a barn. About this arrangement, necessitated by ancient
custom, even the Bishop constrained his tongue, seeing that Mr. Wilson
belonged to the Church of Scotland, as by law established, and, what
is more, to the very highest and driest portion of it. He was a
courtly old gentleman, with a white tie, yards long, wound round his
neck numberless times, and finished off by an odd little bow made out
of the extreme ends; a learned old man with a turn of the leg,
suggesting a youth when calves were visible, and a vast store of
classical quotations remaining over from the days when he lectured on
the humanities at St. Andrews. Neither did the Bishop consider the
Reverend Father Macdonald, who came once in three months or so, and
generally on a week day, an intruder. On the contrary, the Reverend
James had instructions to ask him to dinner, and, if it was a Friday,
to have cockle soup and stewed lentils for him; that is to say, if the
invitation was accepted, which it was not as a rule, the Father
preferring to eat potatoes and butter at the Camerons, and endure the
old lady's good-natured scorn, for the sake of hearing Marjory sing
Scotch songs and play Scarlatti. For Dr. Carmichael's one relaxation
had been, music, in which, as in other things, the girl had proved
herself to be an apt pupil. As often as not, too, on these occasions,
old Mrs. Cameron would send a man with the dogcart down the Strath to
fetch up Mr. Wilson, and then the two old enemies could fence at each
other courteously over the single glass of port, for which the Jesuit
had a dispensation. And, if the buttons seemed inclined to come off
the foils, Marjory, in the next room, would strike up, "Come, bring to
me a stoup o' wine, and bring it in a silver tassie." Then their old
heads would wag, and they would give over the endless battle for the
sake of hearing a "bonnie lassie" sing their favourite song. But it
was very different when the Free Church missioner came round, for he
was an earnest, red-haired person, who any day of the week would
gladly have testified against Black Prelacy to the bitter end of the
stake. He was a stumbling-block, even to Marjory, who professed calm
tolerance; but then those courtly old admirers of hers, to say nothing
of Cousin Tom's rather foreign manners, had spoilt her. So that amid
all her theories--the theories of clever youth instinct with the love
of justice and liberty--she could not help being repelled by the
roughness of life when, as it were, she touched and handled it. The
people themselves, however, thought it a sign of strength to bang the
pulpit and bellow, as, indeed, it was, undoubtedly. So the consensus
of opinion in all sects was that the Free Church had the finest
preacher. Not that it mattered much in a place where church-going on a
Sunday was a recognised dissipation, which had to last for a week.
Thus, no matter who was in the pulpit, the little school-house on a
fine day overflowed; and even the Reverend Father Macdonald had not a
few applicants for a blessing against witchcraft if the cows did not
milk properly. This, however, was done on the sly, by accident as it
were, when the petitioners chanced to meet priestly authority in the
post-office.
In order, therefore, to hold his own amid the hosts of Midian, the
Reverend James spent quite a large slice of his modest income on
all-round collars and silk cassocks; and even when the old Adam arose
at the sight of a red-brown river, and he _had_ to creep away with a
hazel rod and a bag of worms to some seething pool where the sea-trout
lay, he still kept to his professional garments and sate on a rock
with his long coat-tails pinned behind his back, looking like a
gigantic crow about to fly.
Despite this and other ridiculous habits, Marjory, with her clear,
honest eyes saw the real desire to do his duty to Church and State
underlying the young man's indecision; but, fortunately for him, she
had no notion that of late this had taken the form of wishing to marry
her. The fact being that in a recent visit the Bishop had not only
remarked that the parish clergy should be the husbands of one wife,
but had rather pointedly referred to the immense improvement in the
school standard, since Miss Carmichael had begun to practise teaching
there. The direct consequence of which had been to make the Reverend
James believe himself in love, and at the same time to make him regard
all Marjory's opinions as episcopally blessed. An effort needing
mental gymnastics of the highest class, especially when, as now, she
was bent on mischief.
"Good news," she echoed. "Well, I hardly know; that must surely depend
entirely on what sort of person Captain Macleod turns out to be." This
she knew must, to begin with, savour of blasphemy to one born and bred
on the estate.
"Naturally, I may say, of course, but----" he looked at her
pathetically, like a dog when asked to perform a difficult trick;
"you--you--you surely have not heard anything against him, have you?"
Marjory's eyes twinkled, but only for a moment; after all it was poor
fun depolarising his mental compass.
"Anything against him? No; except that he is too good-looking, I am
told."
"Handsome is that handsome does," remarked the Reverend James,
cheerfully; it was a favourite proverb at the palace, and he felt sure
of his ground. Unfortunately, since it roused Marjory to
contradiction.
"Nonsense! As if all the goodness in the world could change a snub
nose into a Grecian."
"But surely, my dear Miss Marjory," protested the young man feebly,
"the proverb does not assert--em--that sort of thing. I have always
understood it--em--I mean the latter half--perhaps I should say the
simile--alludes to moral worth."
"Now, Mr. Gillespie! does that mean you consider beauty and goodness
to be the same, or simply that you deny the value of physical beauty
altogether?" asked Marjory in aggrieved tones.
"I--I don't think I mean either," he replied, so naively that she was
obliged to laugh; "but indeed," he went on, "it seems to me, as I
remember the Bishop said in his sermon on All Souls, that beauty and
goodness are in a measure synonymous, that----"
"Do you mean," she interrupted hastily, but with a sort of quick
hesitation which came often to her speech when she was really
interested, "that not only are good things necessarily beautiful in a
way, but that beautiful things must be good? Look at Tito! All his
vileness did not mar the perfection of his beauty. It was a tower of
strength to him till the day of his death. It must be so--you can't
help it. The thing is good in itself."
Never having read "Romola," the Reverend James fell back discreetly on
a more unimpeachable proverb, by remarking, with the air of a man
making a valuable contribution to the argument:--
"Beauty is but skin deep."
"Who wants it to be more?" she asked, hotly. "That is all you see. No
one asks whether the muscles follow the proper curves beneath the
skin, or the bones are strong. And, after all, it seems to me that
goodness and beauty appeal to the same chord--the love of everything
that is clear, defined, orderly. Ugliness is so incoherent, so
indistinct, Mr. Gillespie! Did it ever strike you how unnecessarily
ugly we all are? Now, don't deny the fact. Remember the Bishop's hymn
says, 'only man is vile.'"
"But that really does apply to his moral."
"I don't agree with you. Some of us, perhaps, are wicked, but most of
us are hideous."
"Do you really think so?" And the self-conscious look on his smug,
comely face was too much for her gravity. She laughed merrily.
"There are exceptions to every rule, Mr. Gillespie; I only meant to
say that since the strongest and best, and therefore, according to
you, the most beautiful, had survived in the struggle for
existence----"
"By the bye," he put in, for him quite eagerly, "the Bishop has just
sent me an excellent reply to the Darwinian----"
Marjory went on remorselessly, "That we were singularly plain-looking,
as a rule. For my part I would gladly have eliminated the Carmichael
nose if I had had any choice in the matter."
The remark left a grand opening for a compliment if he could at the
moment have thought of anything save the crude assertion that he
considered it the most beautiful nose in the world. So he remained
silent, casting about in his mind for a less absolute form, with such
concentrated admiration in his face, that even Marjory could not avoid
noticing it, and with a sudden curl of her lip, changed the subject by
asking him, in her best categorical manner, when he had last been to
see old Peggy, who was bad with her rheumatism. Now old Peggy's
cottage was not an inviting-looking abode--a boulder-built hut with a
peat roof and a rudimentary chimney--and it lay close by in a hollow
between the road and a bog full of waving cotton grass. So the
Reverend James regretfully gave up his opportunity as lost for the
time; but a gleam of manly resolution came to him as he looked first
at the hut, then down the road, the pleasant sunshiny road stretching
away to where a thin blue smoke from the chimneys of Gleneira Lodge
rose above the silver firs and copper beeches to the right of the big
house. All that distance to traverse with Marjory, as against Peggy
Duncan the pauper, who was bad enough at the best, but, with the
rheumatism, simply appalling.
"I'm afraid I haven't time to-day," he began, with admirable regret,
which, however, changed to consternation as his companion paused and
held out her hand.
"Then good-bye! I promised to look in on my way home. And on the whole
it is better as it is, for it is positively unsafe to visit old Peggy
in couples when she is ill. So long as she has but one visitor, you
know, the fear of losing a gossip bridles her tongue; but when there
are two, one is always a scapegoat." Now, Marjory looked at her
companion gravely, and spoke deliberately, "You wouldn't, I'm sure,
care to hear me abused; so it is wiser for me to go alone. Good-bye."
She was off as she spoke down the brae, leaving him disappointed, yet
still vaguely content, the very thought of in the future having a wife
who would go and visit old Peggy filling him with peace, for that old
woman was a sore trial to his dignity, since she invariably made a
point of remembering his youth as a barefoot cotter's boy. But then at
heart she was a Presbyterian who did not believe in the sanctity of
orders. So he went on his way down the loch fairly satisfied with
himself, while Marjory took his place beside the sick bed of the
rheumatic old woman.
The girl gave one regretful glance at the sunshine before she dived
into the darkness of the cottage. It was mean and squalid in the
extreme, yet to those accustomed to the dirt and warmth, the
discomfort and the cosiness of a Highland hut, its air of tidiness was
unusual. The mud floor was even and clean swept, the single pane of
glass doing duty as a window was neither broken nor patched with rags,
while the crazy, smoke-blackened dresser was ranged with common
earthenware. A gathering peat, just edged with fire, lay on the huge
stone hearth, above which a tiny black pot hung in the thin column of
pale blue smoke which, as it rose to the dim rafters, was illumined by
the only ray of sunlight in the house--that which streamed through the
round hole in the roof which did duty as a chimney. Beside the hearth
a fair-haired boy of about six lay fast asleep, while from a settle in
the darkness a pair of gleaming green eyes revealed the presence of a
cat.
Nothing more to be seen by Marjory's sun-blinded sight. Not a sound to
be heard, until suddenly a grey hen roosting in the rafters began to
cluck uproariously with much sidelong prancings of a pair of yellow
legs, and downward dips of a quaint, irascible, tufted head. Instantly
from a recess bed arose a patient moan and a pious aspiration that the
Lord's will might be done at all costs.
"Good afternoon, Peggy! I hope your sleep has done you good," said
Marjory blithely, as she sate down on the edge of the bed, and looked
steadily at the occupant's face. Old Peggy Duncan, with the assertion
that she had not slept for days trembling on her tongue, wavered
before the girl's decision, and murmured something about closing an
eye.
"That is better than nothing, isn't it?" continued the uncompromising
visitor. "And as for wee Paulie! he's been having a fine snooze.
Haven't you, Paulie?"
The child by the fire, rubbing his eyes drowsily, smiled back at her
rather sheepishly.
"'Deed it's so," broke in the querulous voice, satisfied at finding a
legitimate object for complaint. "He's just the laziest, weariest
wean, and no caring a tinker's damn for his nanny. Just lyin'
sleepin', and me in an agony. Could ye not watch?--Ay!--Ay! But what
can one expect o' a child o' the devil----"
"Peggy! You're a wicked old woman to speak like that. Paul does more
than most boys twice his age. I'll be bound he has been stuffing
indoors with you all day long without a grumble. Run away now, dear
laddie, and get the fresh air."
The order, spoken in Gaelic, produced a sudden flash of life all over
the little fellow, and he was out of the door in a second. Marjory
looked after him with a pleasant smile.
"He is a pretty boy, isn't he, Peggy?--quite the prettiest in the
glen."
"Aye! he has the curse o' beauty. Sae had his mither. Ay! an' her
father before her. Thank the Lord, Miss Marjory, you're no bonnie."
"I shall do nothing of the sort, Peggy. And how is the pain? Better
for that liniment I rubbed in yesterday?"
"Better!" There was a world of satisfied scorn in the old voice.
"Better frae ae teaspoonful o' stuff. Lord be gude to us, Miss
Marjory! Naethin' short o' a meeracle'll better me, an' ye talk o' a
carnal rubbin' doing it."
"It would be a miracle if it did, wouldn't it, Peggy?" retorted the
girl, calmly; "but if it did no good at all there is no use in
repeating it, so I'll be off and leave you to your sleep again."
"Hoot awa! an' you tired wi' your walk. Just sit ye down and rest a
bit and dinna mind me. I'm used to being no minded, ye ken. Wha minds
a bit pauper body but the pairish? Two an' saxpence a week, an' a boll
o' meal term-day that's no meal at a', but just grits; grits and
dirt. I'm no wondering that they puts soddy (soda) until't at the
poor's-house to gar't swall. Ay! Aye! and me lyin' a week without
spiritual food, an' I cravin' for it from anyone."
"Now, Peggy, you know quite well you told Mr. Gillespie you wanted
none of his priestcraft, the last time he was here. You are just a
bad, ungrateful old woman, and I've a great mind to go away without
making you a cup of tea or telling you the news."
The old face set close in its white cap frills brightened visibly at
the last words. "Weel! Weel! I must na be hard on the puir lad. There
be divers gifts, an' may be he's gotten one somewhere. And but for the
pain makin' me clean wud, I'd have had the tea for you. Just cry on
Paulie--the kettle's on the fire, and he'll no be long, puir lammie."
But Marjory preferred to leave the boy to his play, and set about the
task herself quickly, dexterously, while old Peggy watched her with
sagacious eyes; for she herself had been a notable worker, and had
still a regretful admiration for the capability in others. Rather a
despicable object, perhaps, this fretful rheumatic old woman,
grumbling and growling at everything; and yet, could the secrets of
all hearts be revealed, she might have seemed more of a heroine and
martyr than many a canonised saint. A youth of ceaseless plodding toil
had been given in stolid honesty to her master's interests; then late
in life, when the hopes of womanhood were almost over, had come a
brief St. Martin's summer, where a wandering Englishman engaged on
some mining venture close by had married the sober lass as a means of
being comfortable for the time, and after a year had deserted her
shamefully, leaving her to work harder than ever for the sake of the
little daughter who remained to show that Peggy's short spell of love
had not been a dream. Some, indeed, there were who maintained that it
had never had any solid foundation, and that the marriage had been but
a pretence. This coming to the mother's ears had roused in her a
fierce anger, which in its turn gave rise to a passionate desire to
prove this child of hers to be above their petty spite, superior to
their plodding lives. And in a measure she succeeded. Jeanie Duncan
grew up in what, to a girl of her class, was luxury, while her mother
sold brown sugar, herrings, tarred rope, and tobacco--in fact, kept a
general store. Until the girl, like many another, fretted at home,
sought service, and disappeared beyond the circle of blue hills; to be
followed after a time by her mother.
But though pretty Jeanie Duncan never returned, old Peggy did,
bringing with her a baby. Not an unusual sequel to the story; and so,
though the neighbours shook their heads, there was no need to question
the woman. What else could have been expected from flighty Jeanie
Duncan, whose head had been turned by Mr. Paul's painting her picture.
And Peggy said nothing, even while she concealed nothing. Silent from
her youth, she was more silent than ever as she reverted again to the
hard toil of those early days, until one January the cold settled into
her ill-clad old bones when she was gathering sticks in the woods and
left her a cripple. And then the loss of her independence broke her
spirit and turned her into a fretful scold. A dreary, toil-worn,
barren youth, desertion, degradation, outrage of love and pride--all
this gamut of grief had she sounded without an answering groan. The
straw which broke her patience was not the hardness but the charity of
her fellow-creatures. A most irrational old lady, no doubt, yet not
altogether blameworthy in her self-satisfied appreciation of the tea
"that was no from the pairish, praise be to the Lord," and very human,
certainly, in her eager desire to hear the news of that parish. Yet
her face when Marjory told her of the laird's return seemed to settle
into a strange indifference. "The laird! It will be Mr. Paul you're
meaning."
"Yes, Mr. Paul; he is the laird now, you know, and he hasn't been here
for nine years. He has been away in India with his regiment."
"Lord sakes! as if I did na' know that; he has been the laird these
sax years gone. I mind it weel. And I mind him, too; ower weel, maybe.
A winsome laddie, fond of painting; but 'Thou shalt not make to
thyself the likeness,' ye ken. So he is coming home at last--bonnie
nae doot; and she, my Jeanie, is dust and ashes."
It was seldom that Peggy alluded to her dead daughter, and there was a
wistful look in the crabbed old face. Marjory, quickly responsive,
stroked the crabbed old hand which lay on the coverlet gently; but old
Peggy would none of her sympathy and drew it away, while her voice
took almost a triumphant tone.
"Ay! Dust and ashes! That's what we a' come to. Young and auld, Miss
Marjory, my dear, rich and poor. Ay! and pairish officers, forbye;
it's no to be escapit, thank the Lord! And if you're going ye might
just open yon drawer in the aumry an' tak' oot my deid claes. There's
a bonnie blaze in the fire that maun-na be wasted, and in life we are
in death, ye ken, so it's as weel to hae them aired. There's a deal o'
sickness comin' frae damp linen, and I'm sae subjec' to the
rheumatism."
"That would be one of the ills you would leave behind you, Peggy,"
suggested Marjory, with a tender smile at the oddity of the old
woman's thought.
"I'm sure I hope sae, for it wad be maist terrible in the wings,"
replied Peggy, gravely. Her eyes, following the girl as she complied
with the grim request, lit up with satisfaction, her mouth trembled in
the effort for calm indifference.
"Ay! sure enough it's the best of cloth, yon, and there is twa rows
back stitchin' as fine as fine, and a frill down the front. Some has a
lace edgin', but I'm no sure o' furbelows. It wad no be decent for me
to come before my Maker prinked oot like a young lass; though Mary
McAndrews, who was a gude four year aulder nor me, had real
Valenciennes. But, there! she was ae' flighty, puir thing; her mind
set on bows and gum flowers, no on things above. Fine cloth an' a
cambric frill's gude eneuch for my funeral; an' the coffin no from the
pairish, thank the Lord!"
As old Peggy lay there in the bay bed gossiping over her shroud she
was a grim sight; yet a pathetic one, since there is nothing in the
wide world which appeals to the humanity within us so much as the
tired, toil-wasted hands of old age folded on a coverlet waiting for
death. Marjory, with her strong young ones straightening the dead
clothes, felt a strange thrill at her heart, even as she thought of
the long years of welcome struggle before she, too, would be glad of
rest.
"So Mr. Paul is to come hame again?" quavered the old voice, softened
inexplicably by that chill thought of death. "Aye, aye! he will be
bonnie still, for he was aye of the kind to mak' a bonnie corp. And no
that bad for a man--not by ordinair. Weel! when ye see him tell him
that ould Peggy's gone on the pairish, but that it'll no be a pairish
funeral. For there's twa bottles gude whiskey in the draw wi' the deid
claes, my dear, and that's eneuch to carry me to my grave as I sou'd
be carried."