THE BONNY LASS OF EARLSTOUN.
So I was settled in my parish, which was a good one as times went. The
manse had recently been put in order. It was a pleasant stone house
which sat in the bieldy hollow beneath the Kirk Knowe of Balmaghie. Snug
and sheltered it lay, an encampment of great beeches sheltering it from
the blasts, and the green-bosomed hills looking down upon it with kindly
tolerant silence.
The broad Dee Water floated silently by, murmuring a little after the
rains; mostly silent however--the water lapping against the reeds and
fretting the low cavernous banks when the wind blew hard, but on the
whole slipping past with a certain large peace and attentive
stateliness.
My brother Hob abode with me in the manse of Balmaghie to be my man. It
was great good fortune thus to keep him; and in the coming troublous
days I ken not what I should have done without his good counsel and
strongly willing right hand. My father and mother came over to see me on
the old pony from Ardarroch, my mother riding on a pillion behind my
father, and both of them ready on the sign of the least brae to get off
and walk most of the way, with the bridle over my father’s arm, while my
mother discoursed of the terrible thing it was to have two of your sons
so far from home, strangers, as it were, in a strange land.
It had not seemed so terrible to her when we went to Edinburgh, both
because she had never been to the city herself, and never intended to
go. On these occasions Hob and I had passed out of sight along the green
road to Balmaclellan on the way to Minnyhive, and there was an end of us
till the spring, save for the little presents which came by the carrier,
and the letters I had to write every fortnight.
But this parish of Balmaghie! It was a far cry and a coarse road, said
my mother, and she was sure that we both took our lives in our hands
each time that we went across its uncanny pastures.
Nevertheless, once there, she did not halt nor slacken till she had
taken in hand the furniture and plenishing of the manse, and brought
some kind of order out of the piled and tortured confusion, which had
been the best that Hob and I could attain.
“Keep us, laddies!” she cried, after the first hopeless look at our
handiwork. “I canna think on either o’ ye takin’ a wife. Yet I’m feared
that a wife ye maun get atween ye. For I canna thole to let ye gang on
this wild gate, wi’ the minister’s meal o’ meat to ready, and only
gomeril Hob to do it.”
“Then ye’ll let Anna come to bide with us for a while, if ye are so
vexed for us,” I said, to try her.
“Na, indeed, I canna do that. Anna is needed at hame where she is.
There’s your faither now--he’s grown that bairnly he thinks there can be
nae guid grass in the meadow that Anna’s foot treads not on. The hens
wouldna lay, the kye wouldna let doon their milk withoot Anna. Ardarroch
stands on the braeface because ’tis anchored doon wi’ Anna. Saw ye ever
sic a fyke made aboot a lass?”
“Quintin has!” said Hob with intention, for which I did not thank him.
“What!” cried my mother, instantly taking fire, “hae some o’ the
impudent queans o’ Balmaghie been settin’ their caps at him already?”
“There ye are, mither,” said Hob, “ye speak bravely aboot Quintin
gettin’ married. But as soon as we speak aboot ony lass--_plaff_, ye
gang up like a waft o’ tow thrown in the fire.”
“I wad like to see the besom that wad make up to my Quintin!” said my
mother, her indignation beginning to simmer down.
“Then come over to the Drum----” he was beginning.
“Hob,” said I, sternly, “that is enough.”
And when I spoke to him thus Hob was amenable enough.
“Aweel, mither!” continued Hob in an injured tone, “ye speak aboot
mairrying. Quintin there, ye say, is to get mairried. But how can he get
mairried withoot a lass that is fond o’ him? It juist canna be done, at
least no in the parish o’ Balmaghie.”
It was my intent to accompany my father and mother back to Ardarroch in
name of an escort, but, in truth, chiefly that I might accept the
invitation of the laird of Earlstoun and once more see Mary Gordon, the
lass whose image I had carried so long on my heart.
For, strange as it may appear, when she went forth from the kirk that
day she left a look behind her which went straight to my heart. It was
like a dart thrown at random which sticks and is lost, yet inly rankles
and will not let itself be forgotten.
I tried to shut the desire of seeing her again out of my heart. But do
what I could this was not to be. It would rise, coming between me and
the very paper on which I wrote my sermon, before I began to learn to
mandate. When the sun looked over the water in the morning and shone on
the globed pearls of dew in the hollow palms of the broad dockleaves on
the gracious clover blooms, and on the bending heads of the spiked
grasses, I rejoiced to think that he shone also on Earlstoun and the
sunny head of a fairer and more graceful flower.
God forgive a sinful man! At these times I ought to have been thinking
of something else. But when a man carries such an earthly passion in his
heart, all the panoply of heavenly love is impotent to restrain thoughts
that fly swift as the light from hilltop to hilltop at the sun-rising.
So I went home for a day or two to Ardarroch, where with a kind of
gratitude I stripped my coat and fell to the building of dykes about the
home park, and the mending of mangers and corn-chests with hammer and
nail, till my mother remonstrated. “Quintin, are ye not ashamed, you
with a parish of hungry souls to be knockin’ at hinges and liftin’
muckle stanes on the hillsides o’ Ardarroch?”
But Anna kept close to me all these days, understanding my mood. We had
always loved one another, she and I. I had used to say that it was Anna
who ought to have been the minister; for her eyes were full of a fair
and gracious light, the gentle outshining of a true spirit within. And
as for me, after I had been with her awhile, in that silence of
sympathy, I was a better and a stronger man--at least, one less unfit
for holy office.
Right gladly would I have taken Anna back with me to the manse of
Balmaghie, but I knew well that she would not go.
“Quintin,” she was wont to say, “our faither and mither are not so young
as they once were. My faither forgets things whiles, and the herd lads
are not to trust to. David there is for ever on the trot to this
farm-town and that other--to the clachan o’ St. John, to the New Town
of Galloway, or to Balmaclellan--’tis all one to him. He cannot bide at
home after the horses are out of the collar and the chain drops from the
swingle-tree into the furrow.”
“But some day ye will find a lad for yourself, Anna, and then you will
also be leaving Ardarroch and the auld folk behind ye.”
My sister smiled a quiet smile and her eyes were far away.
“Maybe--maybe,” she said, temperately, “but that day is not yet.”
“Has never a lad come wooin’ ye, Anna? Was there not Johnny of
Ironmacanny, Peter Tait frae the Bogue, or----”
“Aye,” said Anna, “they cam’ and they gaed away to ither lasses that
were readier to loe them. For I never saw a lad yet that I could like as
well as my great silly brother who should be thinking more concerning
his sermon-making than about putting daft thoughts into the heads of
maidens.”
After this there was silence between us for a while. We had been sitting
in the barn with both doors open. The wide arch to the front, opening
out into the quadrangle of the courtyard, let in a cool drawing sough
of air, and the smaller door at the back let it out again, and gave us
at the same time a sweet eye-blink into the orchard, where the apples
were hanging mellow and pleasant on the branches, and the leaves hardly
yet loosening themselves for their fall. The light sifted through the
leaves from the westering sun, dappling the grass and wavering upon the
hard-beaten earthen floor of the barn.
“I am going over by to Earlstoun!” I said to Anna, without looking up.
Anna and I spoke but half our talks out loud. We had been such close
comrades all our lives that we understood much without needing to clothe
our thoughts in words.
Apparently Anna did not hear what I said, so I repeated it.
“Dinna,” was all she answered.
“And wherefore should I not?” I persisted, argumentatively. “The laird
most kindly invited me, indeed laid it on me like an obligation that I
should come.”
“Ye are going over to Earlstoun to see the laird?”
“Why, yes,” I said; “that is, he has a desire to see me. He is the
greatest of all the Covenant men, and we have much in common to speak
about.”
“To-morrow he will be riding by to the market at Kirkcudbright, where he
has business. Ye can ride with him to the cross roads of Clachan Pluck
and talk all that your heart desires of Kirk and State.”
“Anna,” said I, seriously, “I tell you again I am going to the house of
Earlstoun to-morrow.”
In a moment she dropped her pretence of banter.
“Quintin, ye will only make your heart the sorer, laddie.”
“And wherefore?” said I.
“See the sparkle on the water out there,” she said, pointing to the
bosom of Loch Ken far below us, seen through the open door of the barn;
“it’s bonny. But can ye gather it in your hand, or wear it in your
bosom? Dear and delightsome is this good smell of apples and of orchard
freshness, but can ye fold these and carry them with you to the bare
manse of Balmaghie for comfort to your heart? No more can ye take the
haughtiness of the great man’s daughter, the glance of proud eyes, the
heart of one accustomed to obedience, and bring them into subjection to
a poor man’s necessities.”
“Love can do all,” said I, sententiously.
“Aye,” she said, “where love is, it can indeed work all things. But I
bid ye remember that love dwells not yet in Mary Gordon’s breast for any
man. Hers is not a heart to bend. For rank or fame she may give herself,
but not for love.”
“Nevertheless,” said I, “I will go to the house of Earlstoun to-morrow
at ten o’ the clock.”
Anna rose and laid her hand on mine.
“I kenned it,” she said, “and little would I think of you, brother of
mine, if ye had ta’en my excellent advice.”