MY BROTHER HOB.
The years which took me, Quintin MacClellan, from the boyishness of
thirteen to eighteen and manhood were eventful ones for Scotland. The
second Charles had died just when the blast was strongest, and for a
while it looked as if his brother would be the worst of the two. But
because he wished well to the Papists, and could not ease them without
also somewhat benefiting us of the Covenant, the bitterness of the
shower slacked and we had some peace.
But, as for me, it mattered not greatly. My heart within me was
determined that which it should do. Come storm or peaceful years, come
life or death, I was determined to stand in the forefront and hold up
again the banner which had been dabbled in the blood of Richard Cameron
at Ayrsmoss, and trailed in the dust of victory by the haughty and the
cruel.
That very year I went to my father, and I asked of him a wage to be
spent in buying me books for my learning.
“You want to be a minister?” said my father, looking, as he well might,
no little astonished. “Have you gotten the grace of God in your heart?”
“Nay, father,” I answered him, “that I know not. But nevertheless I have
a desire to know and to learn----”
But another voice cut into the matter and gravity of our discourse.
“Bless the lad, and so you shall, Quintin!” cried my mother from the
door.
I heard my father sigh as though he would have said, “The fat is in the
fire now!” Yet he refrained him and said nothing, standing as was his
custom with his hands deep in the long side flaps of his waistcoat. Then
he showed how hard it was to become a minister, and ever my mother
countered his objections, telling how such-an-one’s son had gone forward
and been successful.
“And they had none such a comfortable down-sitting nor yet any such
blessing in flocks and herds as you, goodman!” she would say.
“Nor yet a mother so set and determined in her own way!” cried my father
a little sharply.
“Nay, now, John,” she made answer; “I did but mention those other lads,
because not one of them is to be compared with our Quintin!”
My father laughed a little.
“Well,” he said, “at all events there is time enough. The lad is but
fourteen, and muckle much good water will run under the brigs ere it be
time to send him to the college. But I will speak to Gilbert Semple, the
Edinburgh carrier, to ask his cousin, the goodly minister, what books
are best fitted for a lad who desires to seek learning and college
breeding. And in the meantime the laddie has aye his Bible. I mind what
good Master Rutherford said when he was in Anwoth: ‘If so be ye want
manners e’en read the Bible. For the Bible is no ill-bred book. It will
take you unashamed through an earthly court as well as through the
courts of the Master of Assemblies, through the Star Chamber as well as
through the chamber of the stars.’”
And though at the time I understood not well then what my father meant,
yet I read in my Bible as I had opportunity, keeping it with one or two
other books in the poke-nook of my plaid whenever I went to the hills.
After a while Gilbert Semple, the carrier, brought me from Edinburgh
certain other volumes--some of Latin and Greek grammar, with one or two
in the mathematics which were a sore puzzle and heartbreak to me, till
there came among us one of the Hill Folk, a well-learned man, who, being
in hiding in a Whig’s hole on the side of Cairn Edward, was glad for the
passing of the time to teach me to thread the stony desolation of verbs
irregular and the quags of the rules of syntax.
Nevertheless, at this time, I fear there was in me no very rooted or
living desire for the ministry. I longed, it is true, for a wider and
more ample career than the sheep-herding on the hills of Kells could
afford. And in this my mother supported me. Hob and David also, though
they desired not the like for themselves, yet took some credit in a
brother who had it in him to struggle through the narrow and thorn-beset
wicket gate of learning.
Many a time did our great, stupid, kindly, butter-hearted Hob come to
me, as I lay prone kicking my heels to some dyke-back with my Latin
grammar under my nose, and stand looking over with a kind of awe on his
honest face.
“Read us a bit,” he would say.
Whereat very gladly I would screed him off half a page of the rules of
the syntax in the Latin tongue, according to the Dutch pronunciation
which the preacher lad of the Cairn Edward cave had taught me.[3]
And as I rolled the weighty and sounding words glibly off, Hob would
listen with an air of infinite satisfaction, like one that rolls a sweet
morsel under his tongue.
“Read that leaf again! It’s a grand-soundin’ ane that! Like ‘And the
Lord said unto Moses’ in the Book of Exodus. Certes, what it is to have
learning!”
Then very gravely I would read to the foot of the page and stop.
Hob would stand a moment to digest his meal of the Humanities.
“Lie ye there, laddie,” he would say; “gather what lear ye can out of
your books. I will look to the hill sheep for you this day!”
I shall never forget his delight when, after great wrestlings, I taught
him the proper cases of _Penna_, “a pen,” which in time he attained so
great a mastery over that even in his sleep he could be heard muttering,
“_Penna_, a pen; _pennae_, of a pen.” And our David, slinking sulkily in
at a wolf-lope from his night-raking among the Glenkens lasses, would
sometimes bid him to be silent in no kindly tones, at which the burly
Hob, who could have broken slender David over his knee, would only grunt
and turn him over, recommencing monotonously under his breath, “_Penna_,
a pen!”
My father smiled at all this--but covertly, not believing, I think, that
there was any outgate for me into the ministry. And with the state of
things in Scotland, indeed, I myself saw none. Nevertheless, I had it in
me to try. And if Mr. Linning, Mr. Boyd, Mr. Shields, Mr. Renwick and
others had gotten their learning in Holland, why should not I?
In return for _Penna_, a pen (_pennae_, of a pen, _et cetera_), Hob
taught me the use of arms, the shooting to the dot of an “i” with a gun
and a pistol, the broad sword and the small sword, having no mercy on me
at all, but abusing me like a sheep-stealer if I failed or grew slack at
the practice.
“For,” he said, “if ever you are to be a right minister in Scotland, it
is as like that ye will need to lead a charge with Richard Cameron, as
that ye will spend all your time in the making of sermons and delivering
them.”
So he taught me also single-stick till I was black and blue all over. He
would keep on so long belabouring me that I could only stop him with
some verbal quib, which as soon as it pierced his thick skull would make
him laugh so long and so loudly that the lesson stopped of itself. Yet
for all that he had in after time the mighty assurance to say that it
was I who had no true appreciation of humour.
One day, when he had basted me most unmercifully, I said to him, “I also
would ask you one thing, Hob, and if you tell me without sleeping on it,
I will give you the silver buckle of my belt.”
“Say on,” said he, casting an eager eye at the waist-leather which Jean
Gordon had sent me.
“Wherein have I the advantage over the leopard?” I asked him.
He thought it over most profoundly.
“I give it up,” he said at last. “I do not know.”
“Why,” said I, as if it had been the simplest thing, “because when I
play back-sword with you I can change my spots and Scripture declares
that the leopard cannot.”
This he understood not at the time, but the next Sabbath morning it came
upon him in the time of worship in the kitchen, and in the midst of the
solemnity he laughed aloud, whereat my father, much incensed, asked him
what ailed him and if his wits had suddenly taken leave of him.
“It was our Quintin,” dithered Hob, tremulously trying to command his
midriff; “he told me that when I played back-sword with him he could
change his spots and that the leopard could not.”
“When said he that?” asked my father, with cold suspicion, for I had
been sitting demure as a gib cat at his own elbow.
“Last Monday in the gloaming, when we were playing at back-sword in the
barn,” said Hob.
“Thou great fool,” cried my father, “go to the hill breakfastless, and
come not in till ye have learned to behave yourself in the time of
worship.”
To which Hob responded nothing, but rose and went obediently,
smothering his belated laughter in his broad bonnet of blue.
He was waiting for me after by the sheep-buchts, when I went out with a
bicker of porridge under my coat.
“I am sore vexed to have made our father angry,” he said, “but the
answer came upon me suddenly, and in truth it was a proper jest--for, of
course, a leopard could not play back-sword.”