"Gloomy winter's noo awa,
Soft the westlin' breezes blow,
Amang the birks o' Stanley Shaw
The mavis sings hoo cheery O?"
Burns.
"I asked a glad mother, just come from the post,
With a letter she kissed, from a far-away coast,
What heart-thrilling news had rejoiced her the most,
And--gladness for mourning! Her boy was returning
To love her--at home."
Tupper.
Scene: The wildery round Grayling House in early spring. Everything in
gardens and on lawns looks fresh and joyful. Spring flowers peeping
through the brown earth, merle and mavis making music in the spruce and
fir thickets, and louder than all the clear-throated chaffinch. Effie
walking alone with book in hand, a great deerhound, the son of faithful
Ossian, following step by step behind.
Effie is not reading, though she holds that book in her hand, and albeit
her eyes seem glued to the page. For Effie is thinking, only thinking
the same thoughts she thinks so very often, only making the same
calculations she makes every day of her somewhat lonely life, and which
often cause her pillow at night to be bedewed with tears.
Thinking, wondering, calculating.
Thinking of the past, thinking what a long, long time has elapsed since
Leonard and Douglas--her brother's friend--went last away to sea;
wondering where they might be at that very moment, and calculating the
weeks and days that had yet to elapse before the time they had promised
to return should arrive. She finished by breathing a little prayer for
them. What a joyful thing it is for us poor mortals, that He, Who
sticketh closer than a brother, is ever and always by our side, and ever
and always ready to lend a willing ear to our silent supplications!
Effie ended with a sigh that was half a sob, a sigh that made great Orla
the deerhound thrust his muzzle right under her elbow, and so throw her
arm around his neck.
What would Effie have thought or done, I wonder, had she known that at
this very moment Leonard's ship lay safe at Leith, and that not only he,
but Douglas and Captain Blunt, were making all the haste that could be
made in a chaise and pair towards Glen Lyle?
On the arrival of the _Gloaming Star_, our heroes first and foremost did
something which may not accord with my readers' idea of romance. A most
useful and most needful something it was. They paid a visit to a West
End tailor. Before doing so, however, they went to Captain Lyle's
lawyer.
The old man--he was very old--did not at first know Leonard, but as soon
as he did, he shook hands with him over and over again. He was almost
childlike in his joy to see him again.
"What will your father say?" he cried, "and all of them, all of them?"
Of course Leonard had a dozen questions to ask, and what a big sigh of
relief he got rid of, when told that not only were all of them well,
including Peter and Peter's pike, which by some means or another--
considered supernatural by Peter--was once more all alive and plunging,
but that the estate of Glen Lyle was free again, and that Captain
Fitzroy had rented one of the farms, thus figuratively, if not
literally, turning his sword into a ploughshare.
Leonard had stood all the time he was getting this news, but now that
the hysterical ball of doubt and anxiety had left his throat, he flung
his hat to the other end of the room, and took a chair. Douglas and
Blunt did the same, and the whole four glided right away into a right
jolly, right merry whole hour's conversation, what the Scotch folks
would call "a foursome crack." The old lawyer's clerk--and _he_ was
old, too--came on tiptoe to the door and listened, for he had not heard
such laughing and joking and merriment for many and many a long year.
The wanderers rose at last to say good-bye for the present.
"_Now_ don't write and tell them we've come," said Leonard. "We want to
go and surprise them."
"But, my dear young squire--"
"Bother the squire!" cried Leonard, laughing.
"Well, my dear Leonard, then--"
"Yes, that's better."
"Aren't you going right away down at once? Do you mean to say you'll
let the grass grow beneath your shoes for an hour?"
And now Douglas put in his oar.
"Why, Mr Fraser," he said, "look at us. Run your eagle eye over us
from stem to stern. Rough and unkempt. Covered with salt. Barnacles
growing on us. Could you, Mr Fraser, suggest our putting in an
appearance before ladies in such a plight? No, sir, the tailor must
first and foremost come upon the scene."
Mr Fraser laughed heartily.
"Well, well," he said, "young men will be young men, but I'll warrant
you, gentlemen, the ladies would be right glad to see you, barnacles and
all."
And the old gentleman laughed and rubbed his hands, as if he had said
something very clever indeed.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Once upon a time, as the fairy stories begin, my good ship _M--_ had
arrived at Portsmouth after a long commission of cruising along the
shores of Eastern Africa and round India.
At luncheon the day after we came in, our chief engineer said, in his
quiet, stoical manner,--
"My wife is coming to-day by the three train."
"What!" cried somebody. "And you are not going to meet her at the
station, after so long an absence?"
"No, I'm not," was the answer. "The fact is, I've a very great horror
of anything approaching what people call a scene. Now if I had gone to
meet my wife, the poor thing, overcome by her feelings, would be sure to
faint in my arms or something. So I've sent my assistant to meet her.
She isn't likely to faint in little Jones's arms."
On the same principle, the reader must excuse me if I omit describing
the scene of the meeting and reunion at Grayling House. I will not even
tell of the tears that were shed, tears of joy and anxiety long pent up,
of the hearty handshakes, of the whispered words and half-spoken
sentences of welcome, for all this can be better imagined than told.
It was three days, at least, before the old house settled down again to
anything like solid order, and conversation became less spasmodic in
character.
Old Peter, who, of course, was quite one of the family, was probably the
last to settle down, owing perhaps to the fact that he listened with
wonder and astonishment to the conversation at table, and to the tales
the wanderers had to tell, about the wonders they had seen, and the
adventures they had come through. More than once, indeed, he had let
fall a plate, and he had actually filled up Effie's cup on the second
morning from the water-bottle instead of the teapot. That same day,
when he found Leonard and Douglas in the garden by themselves, he
treated them to the following morsel of edification.
"Oh, laddies!" he said, "it's a wondrous warld we live in, whether we
dwall upo' the dry lan' or gang doon to the sea in ships. But few, unco
few, hae come through what ye've come through. And what brocht ye back,
think ye? What else but prayer, prayer, prayer? Your father prayed,
and your lady mither prayed, and Miss Effie prayed, and poor auld Peter
prayed, and--and thare ye are. And yonder is Grayling Ha', and all
aroond us is the bonnie estate o' Glen Lyle, its hills and dells, and
moors and fields, and woods and waters, a' oor ain again. And the
muckle pike ploupin' aboot [ploupin', _Scottice_--plunging] as if
naething had ever ailed him. Verily, verily, we've a lot to be thankfu'
for!"
"Well, bless you, Peter, dear old friend, for your prayers, and long may
you live to pray. But tell me, Peter, for I forgot to ask mother, what
has become of Zella the gipsy girl?"
"Oh! hae they no tauld you? It's a year ago come Whitsunday since they
cam' for her."
"Who?"
"Who? who but the Faas of her ain tribe, and bonnily they decked her, in
a muslin gown o' gowden-spangled white, and they put roses and ferns in
her dark hair, and a croon upon her head, and it's wondrous beautiful
she looked. Ay, ye may stare, but Zella is queen o' the gipsies, and no
doubt ye'll see her ere lang."
He turned sharp round towards Douglas as he spoke.
"I dinna doubt, sir," he said, "but that the gipsy queen will come to
your weddin'."
Now Douglas's face was, from exposure to sun and weather, of a sort of
dignified brick-dust hue. One would have thought it impossible for such
a face to blush, but deeper in colour it really got as he laughingly
replied to the garrulous old Peter.
"My wedding, Peter! Why, my dear old friend, you've been dreaming."
"Och, mon!" said Peter, with a sly wink. "I can see as far through a
millstone as the miller himself. But I'm off, there's the bell. It's
that auld limmer of a cook, she keeps ring, ring, ringing for me a' day
lang, with `Peter, do this' and `Peter, do that.' Sorrow tak' her!
Ring, ring, ring; there it goes again. Comin', comin,' comin'."
"Strange old man!" said Douglas.
"That he is," said Leonard, "but yet how leal and true he has been to
our family."
A day or two after this the old family carriage was had out--and a
stately and ancient-looking affair it was, hung on monster leather
straps, which permitted it to swing about like a hammock, while inside
it was as snug and soft as a feather bed--the carriage was got out, and
accompanied by a phaeton, in which rode the younger folks, a visit was
made to the gipsy camp in a far-off forest.
A horseman had been sent the day before with a note to her gracious
majesty Queen Zella to apprise her of their coming, so that after a
delightful drive on this lovely spring day they arrived at the
encampment, safe and merry, and were received in state.
The gipsies were arrayed in their very best, and the queen was a sight
to see, and indeed she really did look charming.
"Oh!" she said to Mr Lyle, "I was pleased to be with you in your
cottage by the sea, and pleased to be at bonnie Glen Lyle, but the brown
blood is strong within me. I was _born to wander_, and here I am wild
and free as the birds that sing so sweetly on the trees to-day.
"Oh!" she continued, turning to our heroes, "it is not altogether
because the sun is shining so brightly that their notes are so joyous.
They sing thus madly because _you_ have returned."
Verily the queen knew how to pay a pretty compliment.
"And," she added, "you have been happy. Oh! you must have been happy.
Every one must be happy at sea. I dreamt you had met Captain Bland."
"Your majesty has dreamt a strange dream, and a true one, for we did.
He saved our lives. But, alas! he is no more. For just two days after
he left us we saw a fire at sea. We bore down towards the burning ship.
It was Bland's barque. There was no sign of life on board. All was
silent except for the rush of the flames and the crackling of the
burning wood. And I fear no one was saved."
The conversation was somewhat saddened for a time by Leonard's recital,
but what hearts could long remain sad in the fair, fresh scene, amid the
greenery of trees, the wild melody of birds, and the soft spring
sunshine?
"Man was made to mourn." No, great poet, no; I will not have it. Man
was made to be glad and to rejoice with everything that is glad and
rejoiceth around him on this fair earth of ours.
"Tell me not in mournful numbers
Life is but an empty dream,
For the soul is dead that slumbers,
And things are _not_ what they seem.
"Life is real; life is earnest,
And the grave is not its goal.
Dust thou art, to dust returnest,
Was not spoken of the soul."
If there be anything in this world more lovely than a ship under full
sail on a summer's sea, I have yet to learn what it is. Look at the
_Gloaming Star_ yonder as she goes proudly bowing and curtseying
westward over the Atlantic waves. A thing of beauty, a thing of life
almost. Let us glance on board for a moment. How white the decks!
almost as white as the beard of her commander Captain Blunt. Her
woodworks are polished, her brass shines like yellow gold, the men are
neat and tidy, and every rope is coiled and in its place on deck.
Yonder on the quarter-deck sits Effie beside her brother's friend. Her
brother's friend? Yes, but Effie's husband now!
And Leonard himself is at the wheel.