The period of the hairst-play, that is, of the harvest holiday time,
drew near, and over the north of Scotland thousands of half-grown hearts
were beating with glad anticipation. Of the usual devices of boys to
cheat themselves into the half-belief of expediting a blessed approach
by marking its rate, Robert knew nothing: even the notching of sticks
was unknown at Rothieden; but he had a mode notwithstanding. Although
indifferent to the games of his school-fellows, there was one amusement,
a solitary one nearly, and therein not so good as most amusements,
into which he entered with the whole energy of his nature: it was
kite-flying. The moment that the hairst-play approached near enough to
strike its image through the eyes of his mind, Robert proceeded to
make his kite, or draigon, as he called it. Of how many pleasures does
pocket-money deprive the unfortunate possessor! What is the going into a
shop and buying what you want, compared with the gentle delight of hours
and days filled with gaining effort after the attainment of your end?
Never boy that bought his kite, even if the adornment thereafter lay in
his own hands, and the pictures were gorgeous with colour and gilding,
could have half the enjoyment of Robert from the moment he went to the
cooper's to ask for an old gird or hoop, to the moment when he said
'Noo, Shargar!' and the kite rose slowly from the depth of the aërial
flood. The hoop was carefully examined, the best portion cut away from
it, that pared to a light strength, its ends confined to the proper
curve by a string, and then away went Robert to the wright's shop. There
a slip of wood, of proper length and thickness, was readily granted to
his request, free as the daisies of the field. Oh! those horrid town
conditions, where nothing is given for the asking, but all sold for
money! In Robert's kite the only thing that cost money was the string to
fly it with, and that the grandmother willingly provided, for not
even her ingenuity could discover any evil, direct or implicated, in
kite-flying. Indeed, I believe the old lady felt not a little sympathy
with the exultation of the boy when he saw his kite far aloft,
diminished to a speck in the vast blue; a sympathy, it may be, rooted in
the religious aspirations which she did so much at once to rouse and to
suppress in the bosom of her grandchild. But I have not yet reached the
kite-flying, for I have said nothing of the kite's tail, for the sake of
which principally I began to describe the process of its growth.
As soon as the body of the dragon was completed, Robert attached to its
spine the string which was to take the place of its caudal elongation,
and at a proper distance from the body joined to the string the first
of the cross-pieces of folded paper which in this animal represent the
continued vertebral processes. Every morning, the moment he issued from
his chamber, he proceeded to the garret where the monster lay, to add
yet another joint to his tail, until at length the day should arrive
when, the lessons over for a blessed eternity of five or six weeks, he
would tip the whole with a piece of wood, to which grass, quantum suff.,
might be added from the happy fields.
Upon this occasion the dragon was a monster one. With a little help
from Shargar, he had laid the skeleton of a six-foot specimen, and had
carried the body to a satisfactory completion.
The tail was still growing, having as yet only sixteen joints, when Mr.
Lammie called with an invitation for the boys to spend their holidays
with him. It was fortunate for Robert that he was in the room when Mr.
Lammie presented his petition, otherwise he would never have heard of
it till the day of departure arrived, and would thus have lost all the
delights of anticipation. In frantic effort to control his ecstasy, he
sped to the garret, and with trembling hands tied the second joint of
the day to the tail of the dragon--the first time he had ever broken the
law of its accretion. Once broken, that law was henceforth an object of
scorn, and the tail grew with frightful rapidity. It was indeed a great
dragon. And none of the paltry fields about Rothieden should be honoured
with its first flight, but from Bodyfauld should the majestic child of
earth ascend into the regions of upper air.
My reader may here be tempted to remind me that Robert had been only too
glad to return to Rothieden from his former visit. But I must in my turn
remind him that the circumstances were changed. In the first place, the
fiddle was substituted for grannie; and in the second, the dragon for
the school.
The making of this dragon was a happy thing for Shargar, and a yet
happier thing for Robert, in that it introduced again for a time some
community of interest between them. Shargar was happier than he had been
for many a day because Robert used him; and Robert was yet happier than
Shargar in that his conscience, which had reproached him for his neglect
of him, was now silent. But not even his dragon had turned aside his
attentions from his violin; and many were the consultations between the
boys as to how best she might be transported to Bodyfauld, where endless
opportunities of holding communion with her would not be wanting. The
difficulty was only how to get her clear of Rothieden.
The play commenced on a Saturday; but not till the Monday were they
to be set at liberty. Wearily the hours of mental labour and bodily
torpidity which the Scotch called the Sabbath passed away, and at length
the millennial morning dawned. Robert and Shargar were up before
the sun. But strenuous were the efforts they made to suppress all
indications of excitement, lest grannie, fearing the immoral influence
of gladness, should give orders to delay their departure for an awfully
indefinite period, which might be an hour, a day, or even a week.
Horrible conception! Their behaviour was so decorous that not even a
hinted threat escaped the lips of Mrs. Falconer.
They set out three hours before noon, carrying the great kite, and
Robert's school bag, of green baize, full of sundries: a cart from
Bodyfauld was to fetch their luggage later in the day. As soon as they
were clear of the houses, Shargar lay down behind a dyke with the kite,
and Robert set off at full speed for Dooble Sanny's shop, making a
half-circuit of the town to avoid the chance of being seen by grannie or
Betty. Having given due warning before, he found the brown-paper parcel
ready for him, and carried it off in fearful triumph. He joined Shargar
in safety, and they set out on their journey as rich and happy a pair of
tramps as ever tramped, having six weeks of their own in their pockets
to spend and not spare.
A hearty welcome awaited them, and they were soon revelling in the
glories of the place, the first instalment of which was in the shape of
curds and cream, with oatcake and butter, as much as they liked. After
this they would 'e'en to it like French falconers' with their kite, for
the wind had been blowing bravely all the morning, having business to
do with the harvest. The season of stubble not yet arrived, they were
limited to the pasturage and moorland, which, however, large as their
kite was, were spacious enough. Slowly the great-headed creature arose
from the hands of Shargar, and ascended about twenty feet, when, as if
seized with a sudden fit of wrath or fierce indignation, it turned right
round and dashed itself with headlong fury to the earth, as if sooner
than submit to such influences a moment longer it would beat out its
brains at once.
'It hasna half tail eneuch,' cried Robert. 'It's queer 'at things winna
gang up ohn hauden them doon. Pu' a guid han'fu' o' clover, Shargar.
She's had her fa', an' noo she'll gang up a' richt. She's nane the waur
o' 't.'
Upon the next attempt, the kite rose triumphantly. But just as it
reached the length of the string it shot into a faster current of air,
and Robert found himself first dragged along in spite of his efforts,
and then lifted from his feet. After carrying him a few yards, the
dragon broke its string, dropped him in a ditch, and, drifting away,
went fluttering and waggling downwards in the distance.
'Luik whaur she gangs, Shargar,' cried Robert, from the ditch.
Experience coming to his aid, Shargar took landmarks of the direction in
which it went; and ere long they found it with its tail entangled in the
topmost branches of a hawthorn tree, and its head beating the ground at
its foot. It was at once agreed that they would not fly it again till
they got some stronger string.
Having heard the adventure, Mr. Lammie produced a shilling from the
pocket of his corduroys, and gave it to Robert to spend upon the needful
string. He resolved to go to the town the next morning and make a grand
purchase of the same. During the afternoon he roamed about the farm
with his hands in his pockets, revolving if not many memories, yet
many questions, while Shargar followed like a pup at the heels of
Miss Lammie, to whom, during his former visit, he had become greatly
attached.
In the evening, resolved to make a confidant of Mr. Lammie, and indeed
to cast himself upon the kindness of the household generally, Robert
went up to his room to release his violin from its prison of brown
paper. What was his dismay to find--not his bonny leddy, but her poor
cousin, the soutar's auld wife! It was too bad. Dooble Sanny indeed!
He first stared, then went into a rage, and then came out of it to go
into a resolution. He replaced the unwelcome fiddle in the parcel, and
came down-stairs gloomy and still wrathful, but silent. The evening
passed over, and the inhabitants of the farmhouse went early to bed.
Robert tossed about fuming on his. He had not undressed.
About eleven o'clock, after all had been still for more than an hour,
he took his shoes in one hand and the brown parcel in the other, and
descending the stairs like a thief, undid the quiet wooden bar that
secured the door, and let himself out. All was darkness, for the moon
was not yet up, and he felt a strange sensation of ghostliness in
himself--awake and out of doors, when he ought to be asleep and
unconscious in bed. He had never been out so late before, and felt as
if walking in the region of the dead, existing when and where he had no
business to exist. For it was the time Nature kept for her own quiet,
and having once put her children to bed--hidden them away with the world
wiped out of them--enclosed them in her ebony box, as George Herbert
says--she did not expect to have her hours of undress and meditation
intruded upon by a venturesome school-boy. Yet she let him pass. He
put on his shoes and hurried to the road. He heard a horse stamp in
the stable, and saw a cat dart across the corn-yard as he went through.
Those were all the signs of life about the place.
It was a cloudy night and still. Nothing was to be heard but his own
footsteps. The cattle in the fields were all asleep. The larch and
spruce trees on the top of the hill by the foot of which his road wound
were still as clouds. He could just see the sky through their stems. It
was washed with the faintest of light, for the moon, far below, was yet
climbing towards the horizon. A star or two sparkled where the clouds
broke, but so little light was there, that, until he had passed the
moorland on the hill, he could not get the horror of moss-holes, and
deep springs covered with treacherous green, out of his head. But he
never thought of turning. When the fears of the way at length fell back
and allowed his own thoughts to rise, the sense of a presence, or of
something that might grow to a presence, was the first to awake in him.
The stillness seemed to be thinking all around his head. But the way
grew so dark, where it lay through a corner of the pine-wood, that he
had to feel the edge of the road with his foot to make sure that he was
keeping upon it, and the sense of the silence vanished. Then he passed
a farm, and the motions of horses came through the dark, and a doubtful
crow from a young inexperienced cock, who did not yet know the moon from
the sun. Then a sleepy low in his ear startled him, and made him quicken
his pace involuntarily.
By the time he reached Rothieden all the lights were out, and this was
just what he wanted.
The economy of Dooble Sanny's abode was this: the outer door was always
left on the latch at night, because several families lived in the house;
the soutar's workshop opened from the passage, close to the outer door,
therefore its door was locked; but the key hung on a nail just inside
the soutar's bedroom. All this Robert knew.
Arrived at the house, he lifted the latch, closed the door behind him,
took off his shoes once more, like a housebreaker, as indeed he was,
although a righteous one, and felt his way to and up the stair to the
bedroom. There was a sound of snoring within. The door was a little
ajar. He reached the key and descended, his heart beating more and more
wildly as he approached the realization of his hopes. Gently as he could
he turned it in the lock. In a moment more he had his hands on the spot
where the shoemaker always laid his violin. But his heart sank within
him: there was no violin there. A blank of dismay held him both
motionless and thoughtless; nor had he recovered his senses before he
heard footsteps, which he well knew, approaching in the street. He slunk
at once into a corner. Elshender entered, feeling his way carefully, and
muttering at his wife. He was tipsy, most likely, but that had never yet
interfered with the safety of his fiddle: Robert heard its faint echo
as he laid it gently down. Nor was he too tipsy to lock the door behind
him, leaving Robert incarcerated amongst the old boots and leather and
rosin.
For one moment only did the boy's heart fail him. The next he was in
action, for a happy thought had already struck him. Hastily, that he
might forestall sleep in the brain of the soutar, he undid his parcel,
and after carefully enveloping his own violin in the paper, took the old
wife of the soutar, and proceeded to perform upon her a trick which in
a merry moment his master had taught him, and which, not without some
feeling of irreverence, he had occasionally practised upon his own bonny
lady.
The shoemaker's room was overhead; its thin floor of planks was the
ceiling of the workshop. Ere Dooble Sanny was well laid by the side of
his sleeping wife, he heard a frightful sound from below, as of some one
tearing his beloved violin to pieces. No sound of rending coffin-planks
or rising dead would have been so horrible in the ears of the soutar.
He sprang from his bed with a haste that shook the crazy tenement to its
foundation.
The moment Robert heard that, he put the violin in its place, and took
his station by the door-cheek. The soutar came tumbling down the stair,
and rushed at the door, but found that he had to go back for the key.
When, with uncertain hand, he had opened at length, he went straight to
the nest of his treasure, and Robert slipping out noiselessly, was in
the next street before Dooble Sanny, having found the fiddle uninjured,
and not discovering the substitution, had finished concluding that the
whisky and his imagination had played him a very discourteous trick
between them, and retired once more to bed. And not till Robert had cut
his foot badly with a piece of glass, did he discover that he had left
his shoes behind him. He tied it up with his handkerchief, and limped
home the three miles, too happy to think of consequences.
Before he had gone far, the moon floated up on the horizon, large, and
shaped like the broadside of a barrel. She stared at him in amazement to
see him out at such a time of the night. But he grasped his violin and
went on. He had no fear now, even when he passed again over the desolate
moss, although he saw the stagnant pools glimmering about him in the
moonlight. And ever after this he had a fancy for roaming at night. He
reached home in safety, found the door as he had left it, and ascended
to his bed, triumphant in his fiddle.
In the morning bloody prints were discovered on the stair, and traced to
the door of his room. Miss Lammie entered in some alarm, and found him
fast asleep on his bed, still dressed, with a brown-paper parcel in his
arms, and one of his feet evidently enough the source of the frightful
stain. She was too kind to wake him, and inquiry was postponed till
they met at breakfast, to which he descended bare-footed, save for a
handkerchief on the injured foot.
'Robert, my lad,' said Mr. Lammie, kindly, 'hoo cam ye by that bluidy
fut?'
Robert began the story, and, guided by a few questions from his host, at
length told the tale of the violin from beginning to end, omitting only
his adventure in the factory. Many a guffaw from Mr. Lammie greeted its
progress, and Miss Lammie laughed till the tears rolled unheeded down
her cheeks, especially when Shargar, emboldened by the admiration Robert
had awakened, imparted his private share in the comedy, namely, the
entombment of Boston in a fifth-fold state; for the Lammies were none
of the unco guid to be censorious upon such exploits. The whole business
advanced the boys in favour at Bodyfauld; and the entreaties of
Robert that nothing should reach his grandmother's ears were entirely
unnecessary.
After breakfast Miss Lammie dressed the wounded foot. But what was to
be done for shoes, for Robert's Sunday pair had been left at home? Under
ordinary circumstances it would have been no great hardship to him to
go barefoot for the rest of the autumn, but the cut was rather a serious
one. So his feet were cased in a pair of Mr. Lammie's Sunday boots,
which, from their size, made it so difficult for him to get along, that
he did not go far from the doors, but revelled in the company of his
violin in the corn-yard amongst last year's ricks, in the barn, and in
the hayloft, playing all the tunes he knew, and trying over one or two
more from a very dirty old book of Scotch airs, which his teacher had
lent him.
In the evening, as they sat together after supper, Mr. Lammie said,
'Weel, Robert, hoo's the fiddle?'
'Fine, I thank ye, sir,' answered Robert.
'Lat's hear what ye can do wi' 't.'
Robert fetched the instrument and complied.
'That's no that ill,' remarked the farmer. 'But eh! man, ye suld hae
heard yer gran'father han'le the bow. That was something to hear--ance
in a body's life. Ye wad hae jist thoucht the strings had been drawn
frae his ain inside, he kent them sae weel, and han'led them sae fine.
He jist fan' (felt) them like wi' 's fingers throu' the bow an' the
horsehair an' a', an' a' the time he was drawin' the soun' like the sowl
frae them, an' they jist did onything 'at he likit. Eh! to hear him play
the Flooers o' the Forest wad hae garred ye greit.'
'Cud my father play?' asked Robert.
'Ay, weel eneuch for him. He could do onything he likit to try, better
nor middlin'. I never saw sic a man. He played upo' the bagpipes, an'
the flute, an' the bugle, an' I kenna what a'; but a'thegither they cam'
na within sicht o' his father upo' the auld fiddle. Lat's hae a luik at
her.'
He took the instrument in his hands reverently, turned it over and over,
and said,
'Ay, ay; it's the same auld mill, an' I wat it grun' (ground) bonny
meal.--That sma' crater noo 'ill be worth a hunner poun', I s' warran','
he added, as he restored it carefully into Robert's hands, to whom it
was honey and spice to hear his bonny lady paid her due honours. 'Can ye
play the Flooers o' the Forest, no?' he added yet again.
'Ay can I,' answered Robert, with some pride, and laid the bow on the
violin, and played the air through without blundering a single note.
'Weel, that's verra weel,' said Mr. Lammie. 'But it's nae mair like as
yer gran'father played it, than gin there war twa sawyers at it, ane at
ilka lug o' the bow, wi' the fiddle atween them in a saw-pit.'
Robert's heart sank within him; but Mr. Lammie went on:
'To hear the bow croudin' (cooing), and wailin', an' greitin' ower the
strings, wad hae jist garred ye see the lands o' braid Scotlan' wi' a'
the lasses greitin' for the lads that lay upo' reid Flodden side; lasses
to cut, and lasses to gether, and lasses to bin', and lasses to stook,
and lasses to lead, and no a lad amo' them a'. It's just the murnin' o'
women, doin' men's wark as weel 's their ain, for the men that suld
hae been there to du 't; and I s' warran' ye, no a word to the orra
(exceptional, over-all) lad that didna gang wi' the lave (rest).'
Robert had not hitherto understood it--this wail of a pastoral and
ploughing people over those who had left their side to return no
more from the field of battle. But Mr. Lammie's description of his
grandfather's rendering laid hold of his heart.
'I wad raither be grutten for nor kissed,' said he, simply.
'Haud ye to that, my lad,' returned Mr. Lammie. 'Lat the lasses greit
for ye gin they like; but haud oot ower frae the kissin'. I wadna mell
wi' 't.'
'Hoot, father, dinna put sic nonsense i' the bairns' heids,' said Miss
Lammie.
'Whilk 's the nonsense, Aggy?' asked her father, slily. 'But I doobt,'
he added, 'he'll never play the Flooers o' the Forest as it suld be
playt, till he's had a taste o' the kissin', lass.'
'Weel, it's a queer instructor o' yowth, 'at says an' onsays i' the same
breith.'
'Never ye min'. I haena contradickit mysel' yet; for I hae said
naething. But, Robert, my man, ye maun pit mair sowl into yer fiddlin'.
Ye canna play the fiddle till ye can gar 't greit. It's unco ready
to that o' 'ts ain sel'; an' it's my opingon that there's no anither
instrument but the fiddle fit to play the Flooers o' the Forest upo',
for that very rizzon, in a' his Maijesty's dominions.--My father playt
the fiddle, but no like your gran'father.'
Robert was silent. He spent the whole of the next morning in reiterated
attempts to alter his style of playing the air in question, but in
vain--as far at least as any satisfaction to himself was the result. He
laid the instrument down in despair, and sat for an hour disconsolate
upon the bedside. His visit had not as yet been at all so fertile in
pleasure as he had anticipated. He could not fly his kite; he could not
walk; he had lost his shoes; Mr. Lammie had not approved of his playing;
and, although he had his will of the fiddle, he could not get his will
out of it. He could never play so as to please Miss St. John. Nothing
but manly pride kept him from crying. He was sorely disappointed and
dissatisfied; and the world might be dreary even at Bodyfauld.
Few men can wait upon the bright day in the midst of the dull one. Nor
can many men even wait for it.