OUR BOYHOOD'S LIFE.
On our boyhood's life--that, I mean, of my brothers and myself--I must
dwell no longer than the interest of our strange story demands, for our
chapters must soon be filled with the relation of events and adventures
far more stirring than anything that happened at home in our day.
And yet no truer words were ever spoken than these--'the boy is father of
the man.' The glorious battle of Waterloo--Wellington himself told us--was
won in the cricket field at home. And in like manner our greatest pioneers
of civilisation, our most successful emigrants, men who have often
literally to lash the rifle to the plough stilts, as they cultivate and
reclaim the land of the savage, have been made and manufactured, so to
speak, in the green valleys of old England, and on the hills and moors of
bonnie Scotland.
Probably the new M'Crimman of Coila, as my father was called on the lake
side and in the glens, had mingled more, far more, in life than any chief
who had ever reigned before him. He would not have been averse to drawing
the sword in his country's cause, had it been necessary, but my brothers
and I were born in peaceful times, shortly after the close of the war with
Russia. No, my father could have drawn the claymore, but he could also use
the ploughshare--and did.
There were at first grumblers in the clans, who lamented the advent of
anything that they were pleased to call new-fangled. Men there were who
wished to live as their forefathers had done in the 'good old
times'--cultivate only the tops of the 'rigs,' pasture the sheep and
cattle on the upland moors, and live on milk and meal, and the fish from
the lake, with an occasional hare, rabbit, or bird when Heaven thought fit
to send it.
They were not prepared for my father's sweeping innovations. They stared
in astonishment to see the bare hillsides planted with sheltering spruce
and pine trees; to see moss and morass turned inside out, drained and made
to yield crops of waving grain, where all was moving bog before; to see
comfortable cottages spring up here and there, with real stone walls and
smiling gardens front and rear, in place of the turf and tree shielings of
bygone days; and to see a new school-house, where English--real
English--was spoken and taught, pour forth a hundred happy children almost
every weekday all the year round.
This was 'tempting Providence, and no good could come of it;' so spoke the
grumblers, and they wondered indeed that the old warlike chiefs of
M'Crimman did not turn in their graves. But even the grumblers got fewer
and further between, and at last long peace and plenty reigned contentedly
hand in hand from end to end of Glen Coila, and all around the loch that
was at once the beauty and pride of our estate.
Improvements were not confined to the crofters' holdings; they extended to
the castle farm and to the castle itself. Nothing that was old about the
latter was swept away, but much that was new sprang up, and rooms long
untenanted were now restored.
A very ancient and beautiful castle was that of Coila, with its one huge
massive tower, and its dark frowning embattled walls. It could be seen
from far and near, for even the loch itself was high above the level of
the sea. I speak of it, be it observed, in the past tense, solely because
I am writing of the past--of happy days for ever fled. The castle is still
as beautiful--nay, even more so, for my aunt's good taste has completed
the improvements my father began.
I do not think any one could have come in contact with father, as I
remember him during our early days at Coila, without loving and respecting
him. He was our hero--my brothers' and mine--so tall, so noble-looking, so
handsome, whether ranging over the heather in autumn with his gun on his
shoulder, or labouring with a hoe or rake in hand in garden or meadow.
Does it surprise any one to know that even a Highland chieftain, descended
from a long line of warriors, could handle a hoe as deftly as a claymore?
I grant he may have been the first who ever did so from choice, but was he
demeaned thereby? Assuredly not; and work in the fields never went half so
cheerfully on as when father and we boys were in the midst of the
servants. Our tutor was a young clergyman, and he, too, used to throw off
his black coat and join us.
At such times it would have done the heart of a cynic good to have been
there; song and joke and hearty laugh followed in such quick succession
that it seemed more like working for fun than anything else.
And our triumph of triumphs was invariably consummated at the end of
harvest, for then a supper was given to the tenants and servants. This
supper took place in the great hall of the castle--the hall that in
ancient days had witnessed many a warlike meeting and Bacchanalian feast.
Before a single invitation was made out for this event of the season every
sheaf and stook had to be stored and the stubble raked, every rick in the
home barn-yards had to be thatched and tidied; 'whorls' of turnips had to
be got up and put in pits for the cattle, and even a considerable portion
of the ploughing done.
'Boys,' my father would say then, pointing with pride to his lordly stacks
of grain and hay, 'Boys,
'"Peace hath her victories,
No less renowned than war."
And now,' he would add, 'go and help your tutor to write out the
invitations.'
So kindly-hearted was father that he would even have extended the right
hand of peace and fellowship to the Raes of Strathtoul. The head of this
house, however, was too proud; yet his pride was of a different kind from
father's. It was of the stand-aloof kind. It was even rumoured that Le
Roi, or Rae, had said at a dinner-party that my good, dear father brought
disgrace on the warlike name of M'Crimman because he mingled with his
servants in the field, and took a very personal interest in the welfare of
his crofter tenantry.
But my father had different views of life from this semi-French Rae of
Strathtoul. He appreciated the benefits and upheld the dignity, and even
sanctity, of honest labour. Had he lived in the days of Ancient Greece, he
might have built a shrine to Labour, and elevated it to the rank of
goddess. Only my father was no heathen, but a plain, God-fearing man, who
loved, or tried to love, his neighbour as himself.
If our father was a hero to us boys, not less so was he to our darling
mother, and to little Sister Flora as well. So it may be truthfully said
that we were a happy family. The time sped by, the years flew on without,
apparently, ever a bit of change from one Christmas Day to another. Mr.
Townley, our tutor, seemed to have little ambition to 'better himself,' as
it is termed. When challenged one morning at breakfast with his want of
desire to push,
'Oh,' said Townley, 'I'm only a young man yet, and really I do not wish to
be any happier than I am. It will be a grief to me when the boys grow
older and go out into the world and need me no more.'
Mr. Townley was a strict and careful teacher, but by no means a hard
taskmaster. Indoors during school hours he was the pedagogue all over. He
carried etiquette even to the extent of wearing cap and gown, but these
were thrown off with scholastic duties; he was then--out of doors--as
jolly as a schoolboy going to play at his first cricket-match.
In the field father was our teacher. He taught us, and the 'grieve,' or
bailiff, taught us everything one needs to know about a farm. Not in
headwork alone. No; for, young as we were at this time, my brothers and I
could wield axe, scythe, hoe, and rake.
We were Highland boys all over, in mind and body, blood and bone.
I--Murdoch--was fifteen when the cloud gathered that finally changed our
fortunes. Donald and Dugald were respectively fourteen and thirteen, and
Sister Flora was eleven.
Big for our years we all were, and I do not think there was anything on
dry land, or on the water either, that we feared. Mr. Townley used very
often to accompany us to the hills, to the river and lake, but not
invariably. We dearly loved our tutor. What a wonderful piece of
muscularity and good-nature he was, to be sure, as I remember him! Of both
his muscularity and good-nature I am afraid we often took advantage. Flora
invariably did, for out on the hills she would turn to him with the utmost
_sang-froid_, saying, 'Townley, I'm tired; take me on your back.' And for
miles Townley would trudge along with her, feeling her weight no more than
if she had been a moth that had got on his shoulders by accident. There
was no tiring Townley.
To look at our tutor's fair young face, one would never have given him the
credit of possessing a deal of romance, or believed it possible that he
could have harboured any feeling akin to love. But he did. Now this is a
story of stirring adventure and of struggle, and not a love tale; so the
truth may be as well told in this place as further on--Townley loved my
aunt. It should be remembered that at this time she was young, but little
over twenty, and in every way she was worthy to be the heroine of a
story.
Townley, however, was no fool. Although he was admitted to the
companionship of every member of our family, and treated in every respect
as an equal, he could not forget that there was a great gulf fixed between
the humble tutor and the youngest sister of the chief of the M'Crimmans.
If he loved, he kept the secret bound up in his own breast, content to
live and be near the object of his adoration. Perhaps this hopeless
passion of Townley's had much to do with the formation of his history.
* * * * *
Those dear old days of boyhood! Even as they were passing away we used to
wish they would last for ever. Surely that is proof positive that we were
very happy, for is it not common for boys to wish they were men? We never
did.
For we had everything we could desire to make our little lives a pleasure
long drawn out. Boys who were born in towns--and we knew many of these,
and invited them occasionally to visit us at our Highland home--we used to
pity from the bottom of our hearts. How little they knew about country
sports and country life!
One part of our education alone was left to our darling mother--namely,
Bible history. Oh, how delightful it used to be to listen to her voice as,
seated by our bedside in the summer evenings, she told us tales from the
Book of Books! Then she would pray with us, for us, and for father; and
sweet and soft was the slumber that soon visited our pillows.
Looking back now to those dear old days, I cannot help thinking that the
practice of religion as carried on in our house was more Puritanical in
its character than any I have seen elsewhere. The Sabbath was a day of
such solemn rest that one lived as it were in a dream. No food was cooked;
even the tables in breakfast-room and dining-hall were laid on Saturday;
no horse left the stables, the servants dressed in their sombrest and
best, moved about on tiptoe, and talked in whispers. We children were
taught to consider it sinful even to think our own thoughts on this holy
day. If we boys ever forgot ourselves so far as to speak of things
secular, there was Flora to lift a warning finger and with terrible
earnestness remind us that this was God's day.
From early morn to dewy eve all throughout the Sabbath we felt as if our
footsteps were on the boundaries of another world--that kind, loving
angels were near watching all our doings.
I am drawing a true picture of Sunday life in many a Scottish family, but
I would not have my readers mistake me. Let me say, then, that ours was
not a religion of fear so much as of love. To grieve or vex the great Good
Being who made us and gave us so much to be thankful for would have been a
crime which would have brought its own punishment by the sorrow and
repentance created in our hearts.
Just one other thing I must mention, because it has a bearing on events to
be related in the next chapter. We were taught then never to forget that a
day of reckoning was before us all, that after death should come the
judgment. But mother's prayers and our religion brought us only the most
unalloyed happiness.