The time between the visit to Glasgow and the departure of Walkinshaw
for Glengael was the busiest period that had occurred in the annals
of Camrachle from the placing of Mr. Eadie in the cure of the parish.
To the young men belonging to the hamlet, who had grown up with
Walkinshaw, it was an era of great importance; and some of them doubted
whether he ought not to have beaten up for recruits in a neighbourhood
where he was known rather than in the Highlands. But the elder
personages, particularly the matrons, were thankful that the Lord was
pleased to order it differently.
His mother and sister, with the assistance of Ellen Frazer, were
more thriftily engaged in getting his baggage ready; and although
the sprightliness of Ellen never sparkled more brilliantly for the
amusement of her friends, there were moments when her bosom echoed in a
low soft murmur to the sigh of anxiety that frequently burst from his
mother’s breast.
Mr. Eadie was not the least interested in the village. He seemed as if
he could not give his pupil advice enough, and Walkinshaw thought he
had never before been so tiresome. They took long walks together, and
ever and anon the burden of the worthy minister’s admonition was the
sins and deceptions of the world, and the moral perils of a military
life.
But no one--neither tutor, mother, nor amorosa--appeared so profoundly
occupied with the event as Mrs. Eadie, whose majestic intellect was
evidently touched with the fine frenzy of a superstition at once awful
and elevated. She had dreams of the most cheering augury, though all
the incidents were wild and funereal; and she interpreted the voices of
the birds and the chattering of the magpies in language more oriental
and coherent than Macpherson’s _Ossian_.
The moon had changed on the day on which Walkinshaw went into
Glasgow, and she watched the appearance of its silver rim with the
most mysterious solicitude. Soon after sunset on the third evening,
as she was sitting on a tombstone in the churchyard with Mr. Eadie,
she discovered it in the most favourable aspect of the Heavens, and
in the very position which assured the most fortunate issues to all
undertakings commenced at its change.
‘So it appears,’ said she, ‘like a boat, and it is laden with the old
moon--that betokens a storm.’
‘But when?’ said her husband with a sigh, mournfully disposed to humour
the aberrations of her fancy.
‘The power is not yet given to me to tell,’ was her solemn response.
‘But the sign is a witness that the winds of the skies shall perform
some dreadful agency in the fortunes of all enterprises ruled by this
lunar influence. Had the moon been first seen but as a portion of a
broken ring, I would have veiled my face, and deplored the omen. She
comes forth, however, in her brightness--a silver boat sailing the
azure depths of the Heavens, and bearing a rich lading of destiny to
the glorious portals of the sun.’
At that moment a cow looked over the churchyard wall, and lowed so
close to Mr. Eadie’s ear, that it made him start and laugh. Instead,
however, of disturbing the Pythian mood of his lady, it only served to
deepen it; but she said nothing, though her look intimated that she was
offended by his levity.
After a pause of several minutes she rose, and moved towards the gate
without accepting his proffered arm.
‘I am sorry,’ said he, ‘that you are displeased with me; but really the
bathos of that cow was quite irresistible.’
‘Do you think,’ was her mystical reply, ‘that an animal, which, for
good reasons, the wise Egyptians hardly erred in worshipping, made to
us but an inarticulate noise? It was to me a prophetic salutation. On
the morning before my father left Glengael to join the royal standard,
I heard the same sound. An ancient woman, my mother’s nurse, and one of
her own blood, told me that it was a fatal enunciation, for then the
moon was in the wane; but heard, she said, when the new moon is first
seen, it is the hail of a victory or a bridal.’
‘It is strange,’ replied the minister, unguardedly attempting to reason
with her, ‘that the knowledge of these sort of occurrences should be
almost exclusively confined to the inhabitants of the Highlands.’
‘It is strange,’ said she; ‘but no one can expound the cause. The
streamers of the northern light shine not in southern skies.’
At that moment she shuddered, and, grasping the minister wildly by the
arm, she seemed to follow some object with her eye that was moving past
them.
‘What’s the matter--what do you look at?’ he exclaimed with anxiety and
alarm.
‘I thought it was Walkinshaw’s uncle,’ said she with a profound and
heavy sigh, as if her very spirit was respiring from a trance.
‘It was nobody,’ replied the minister thoughtfully.
‘It was his wraith,’ said Mrs. Eadie.
The tone in which this was expressed curdled his very blood, and he
was obliged to own to himself, in despite of the convictions of his
understanding, that there are more things in the heavens and the earth
than philosophy can yet explain; and he repeated the quotation from
_Hamlet_, partly to remove the impression which his levity had made.
‘I am glad to hear you allow so much,’ rejoined Mrs. Eadie; ‘and I
think you must admit that of late I have given you many proofs in
confirmation. Did I not tell you when the cock crowed on the roof of
our friend’s cottage, that we should soon hear of some cheerful change
in the lot of the inmates? and next day came Walkinshaw from Glasgow
with the news of the happy separation from his uncle. On the evening
before I received my letter from Glengael, you may well remember the
glittering star that announced it in the candle. As sure as the
omen in the crowing of the cock, and the shining of that star, were
fulfilled, will the auguries which I have noted be found the harbingers
of events.’
Distressing as these shadows and gleams of lunacy were to those by whom
Mrs. Eadie was justly beloved and venerated, to herself they afforded
a high and holy delight. Her mind, during the time the passion lasted,
was to others obscure and oracular. It might be compared to the moon in
the misty air when she is surrounded with a halo, and her light loses
its silveryness, and invests the landscape with a shroudy paleness and
solemnity. But Mrs. Eadie felt herself as it were ensphered in the
region of spirits, and moving amidst marvels and mysteries sublimer
than the faculties of ordinary mortals could explore.
The minister conducted his wife to the house of Walkinshaw’s mother,
where she went to communicate the agreeable intelligence, as she
thought, of the favourable aspect of the moon, as it had appeared
to her Highland astrology. But he was so distressed by the evident
increase of her malady, that he did not himself immediately go in.
Indeed, it was impossible for him not to acknowledge, even to the most
delicate suggestions of his own mind towards her, that she was daily
becoming more and more fascinated by her visionary contemplations;
and in consequence, after taking two or three turns in the village,
he determined to advise her to go with Walkinshaw to Glengael, in the
hope that the change of circumstances, and the interest that she might
take once more in the scenes of her youth, would draw her mind from its
wild and wonderful imaginings, and fix her attention again on objects
calculated to inspire more sober, but not less affecting, feelings.