ANOTHER WAY OF LOVE.
(_Comment and Addition by Hob MacClellan._)
Lord! Lord! Was there ever a more bungled affair--a more humiliating
confession. Our poor Quintin--great as he was at the preaching, an
apostle indeed, none in broad Scotland to come within miles of him in
the pulpit--with a lass was simply fair useless. I must e’en tell in a
word how mine own wooing sped, that I may prove there was some airt and
spunk left among the MacClellans.
For by Quintin’s own showing the girl had no loop-hole left, being wooed
as if she had been so many sacks of corn. She was fairly tied up to
refuse so hopeless and fushionless a suitor.
But of all this there was no suspicion at the time, neither in the
parish of Balmaghie, or yet even among ourselves at Ardarroch. For
though nothing gets wind so quickly in a parish as the news that the
minister is “seekin”--that is, going from home courting, yet such was my
brother’s repute for piety “within the bounds of the Presbytery,” such
the reverence in which he was held, that the popular voice considered
him altogether trysted to no maiden, but to the ancient and honourable
Kirk of Scotland as she had been in the high days of her pride and
purity.
“Na,” they would say, “our minister will never taingle himsel’ wi’
marriage engagements while there is a battle to be fought for the Auld
Banner o’ Blue.” So whereas another might not so much as look over the
wall, my brother might have stolen all the horses before their eyes.
And I think it was this great popular repute of him which first set his
fellow-ministers against him, far more than any so-called “defections”
and differences either ecclesiastical or political.
I have seen him at a sacrament at Dalry hold the listening thousands so
that they swayed this way and that like barley shaken by the winds.
Never beheld I the like--the multitude of the folk all bending their
faces to one point--careless young lads from distant farms,
light-headed limmers of lasses, bairns that had been skipping about the
kirk-yard and playing “I spy” among the tombstones while other ministers
were preaching--all now fixed and spellbound when my brother rose to
speak, and his full bell-like voice sounded out from the preaching-tent
over their heads.
I think that if at any time he had held up his hand and called them to
follow him to battle, every man would have gone forth as unquestionably
as did Cameron’s folk on that fatal day of the Moss of Ayr.
But I who sat there, with eyes sharpened and made jealous by exceeding
love for my brother, could see clearly the looks of dark suspicion, the
sneers that dwelt on sanctimonious lips, the frowns of envy and ill-will
as Quintin stood up, and the folk poured anxiously inward towards the
preaching-tent to hear him. I noted also the yet deeper anger of those
who succeeded him, when multitudes rose and forsook the meeting because
there was to be no more of the young minister o’ Balmaghie that day.
Now though it was rather on the point of politics and of the standing of
the kirk, her right to rule herself without interference of the State,
her ancient independence and submission to Christ the only head of the
church, that Quintin was finally persecuted and called in question, yet,
as all men know in Galloway, it was really on account of the popular
acclaim, the bruit of great talents and godliness which he held among
all men, beyond any that ever came into the countryside, and of his
quietness and persistence also in holding his own and keeping a straight
unvarying course amid all threatenings and defections, which brought the
final wrath upon him and constituted the true head and front of his
offending.
Aye, and men saw that the storm was brewing over him long before it
burst.
For several of the Galloway ministers had deliberately left the folk of
the mountains for the sake of a comfortable down-sitting in bein and
sheltered parishes. Some of them even owed their learning at the Dutch
Universities to the poor purses of these covenanting societies.
And so when papers came down from the Privy Council or from the men who,
like Carstairs, posed as little gods and popes infallible, the
Presbytery men greedily signed them, swallowing titles, oaths and
obligations with shut eye and indiscriminate appetite lest unhappily
they would be obliged to consult their consciences.
Such men as constituted the Presbytery of Kirkcudbright had but one
motto--a clear and useful one indeed at such a time, “Those in power can
do no wrong!”
So three years went uneasily by, and meantime the parish of Balmaghie
had grown to know and love our Quintin. There was hardly a rascal
drover, a common villain pig-dealer who was not ready to crack a skull
at an ill word said of him even in jest. Men who in time past had
sneered at religion, and had never any good report of ministers, dull
clods with ideals tethered to the midden and the byre, waked up at sight
of him, and would travel miles to hear him preach.
And thus three happy unstirred years went by. I abode in the manse with
Quintin, and every morning when I arose at break of day to take the
cattle afield, or to set the plough in the glebe, I would see that his
window-blind was withdrawn, his candle alight if it were winter, and
that he had already set him down with his book. Or sometimes when the
summer evening darkened to dusk I would meet him wandering, his hands
clasped behind his back, and his whole soul steeped in meditation by the
whispering rushes of the waterside.
Yet what a simpleton in worldly things he was; and, mayhap, that was
what made me love him the more.
For about this time there began a stir and a bruit of the matter of
little Jean Gemmell, a soft-voiced, die-away lass that I would not have
troubled my head about for a moment. She had, truth to tell, set herself
to catch our foolish Quintin, whose heart was in good sooth fully given
to another. And how she did it, let himself tell. But I, that thought
nothing of a lass without spirit, would often warn him to beware. But he
minded me not, smiling and giving the subject the go-by in a certain
sober and serious way he had which somehow silenced me against my will.
But in between my brother’s ill-starred wooing of the bonny lass of
Earlstoun, and Jean Gemmell’s meek-eyed courtship of him, I also had
been doing somewhat on mine own account.
At the house of Drumglass there abode one who to my mind was worth all
the haughty damsels of great houses and all the sleek and kittenish
eyes-makers in broad Scotland.
When first I saw Alexander-Jonita come over the hill, riding a Galloway
sheltie barebacked, her dark hair streaming in the wind, and the pony
speeding over the heather like the black charger of Clavers on the side
of Cairn Edward, I knew that there was no hope for my heart. I had
indeed fancied myself in love before. So much was expected of a lad in
our parts. But Alexander-Jonita was a quest worth some enterprising to
obtain.
The neighbours, at least the rigidly righteous of them, were inclined to
look somewhat askance upon a lass that went so little to the Kirk, and
companioned more with the dumb things of the field than with her own
kith and kin. But Quintin would ask such whether their own vineyard was
so well kept, their own duty so faultlessly done, that they could afford
to keep a stone ready to cast at Alexander-Jonita.
I remember the first time that ever I spoke to her words beyond the
common greetings and salutations of lad and lass.
It was a clear night in early June. I had been over at Ardarroch seeing
my mother, and now having passed high up the Black Water of Dee, I was
making my way across the rugged fells and dark heathery fastnesses to
the manse of Balmaghie.
The mist was rising about the waterside. It lingered in pools and drifts
in every meadowy hollow, but the purpling hilltops were clear and bare
in the long soft June twilight.
Suddenly a gun went off, as it seemed in my very ear. I sprang a foot
into the air, for who on honourable business would discharge a musket in
that wild place at such a time.
But ere I had time to think, above me on the ridge a figure stood black
against the sky--a girl’s shape it was, slim, tall, erect. She carried
something in one hand which trailed on the heather, and a musket was
under her arm, muzzle down.
I had not yet recovered my breath when a voice came to me.
“Ah, Hob MacClellan, the ill deil tak’ your courting-jaunts this nicht!
For had ye bidden at hame I would have gotten baith o’ the red foxes
that have been killing our weakly lambs. As it is, I gat but this.”
And she held up a great dog fox by the brush before throwing the body
into a convenient moss-hole.
It was Alexander-Jonita, the lass whom our college-bred Quintin had once
called the Diana of Balmaghie. I care not what he called her. Without
question she was the finest lass in the countryside. And that I will
maintain to this day.
“Are you going home, Jonita?” cried I, for the direction in which she
was proceeding led directly away from the house of Drumglass.
“No,” she answered carelessly, “I am biding all night in the upper
‘buchts.’ The foxes have been very troublesome of late, and I am
thinning them with the gun. I have the feck of the lambs penned up
there.”
“And who is with you to help you?” I asked her in astonishment.
“Only the dogs,” she made answer, shifting the gun from one shoulder to
the other.
“But, lassie,” I cried, “ye surely do not sleep out on the hills all
your lone like this?”
“And what for no?” she answered sharply. “What sweeter bed than a truss
of heather? What safer than with two rough tykes of dogs and a good gun
at one’s elbow, with the clear airs blowing over and the sheep lying
snugly about the folds?”
“But when it rains,” I went on, still doubtfully.
“Come and see,” she laughed; “we are near the upper ‘buchts’ now!”
Great stone walls of rough hill boulders, uncut and unquarried, rose
before me. I saw a couple of rough collies sit guardian one at either
side of the little lintelled gate that led within. The warm smell of
gathered sheep, ever kindly and welcome to a hill man, saluted my
nostrils as I came near. A lamb bleated, and in the quiet I could hear
it run pattering to nose its mother.
Alexander-Jonita led me about the great “bucht” to a niche formed by a
kind of cairn built into the side of a wall of natural rock. Here a sort
of rude shelter had been made with posts driven into the crevices of the
rock and roughly covered with turves of heather round the sides of a
ten-foot enclosure. The floor was of bare dry rock, but along one side
there was arranged a couch of heather tops recently pulled, very soft
and elastic. At first I could not see all this quite clearly in the
increasing darkness, but after a little, bit by bit the plan of the
shelter dawned upon me, as my eyes grew accustomed to the dim light.
“When it rains,” she said, going back to my question, “I set a post in
the middle for a tent pole, spread my plaid over it and fasten it down
at the sides with stones.”
“Jonita,” said I, “does your sister never come up hither with you?”
“Who--our Jean!” she cried, astonished, “faith, no! Jean takes better
with the inside of a box-bed and the warmth of the _peat-grieshoch_[11]
on the hearth! And, indeed, the lass is not over-strong. But as for me,
more than the cheeping of the house-mice, I love the chunnering of the
wild fowl in their nests and the bleat of the sheep. These are honey and
sweetness to me.”
“But, Jonita,” I went on, “surely no girl is strong enough to take
shower and wind-buffet night and day on the wild moors like this. Why,
you make me ashamed, me that am born and bred to the trade.”
“And what am I?” she asked sharply, “I am over twenty, and yet nothing
but an ignorant lass and careless of seeming otherwise. I am not even
like my sister Jean that can look and nod as if she understood
everything your brother is talking about, knowing all the while naught
of the matter. But, at least, I ken the ways of the hills. Feel that!”
She thrust her arm suddenly out to me.
I clasped it in my hands, sitting meantime on a great stone in the
angle, while she stood beside me with the dogs on either side of her. It
was a smooth, well-rounded arm, cool and delicate of skin, that she gave
into my fingers. Her loose sleeve fell back, and if I had dared to
follow my desire, I should have set my lips to it, so delightful did the
touch of it seem to me. But I refrained me, and presently underneath the
satin skin I felt the muscles rise nobly, tense yet easy, clean of curve
and spare flesh, moulded alike for strength and suppleness.
“I would not like to pull at the swingle-tree with you, my lass,” said
I, “and if it came to a Keltonhill collieshangie I would rather have you
on my side than against me.”
And I think she was more pleased at that than if I had told her she was
to be a great heiress.
As I waited there on the rough stones of the sheepfold, and looked at
the slight figure sitting frankly and easily beside me, thinking, as I
knew, no more of the things of love than if she had been a neighbour lad
of the hills, a kind of jealous anger came over me.
“Jonita,” said I, “had ye never a sweetheart?”
“A what?” cried Jonita in a tone of as much surprise as if I had asked
her if she had ever possessed an elephant.
“A lad that loved you as other maids are loved.”
“I have heard silly boys speak nonsense,” she said, “but I am no
byre-lass to be touselled in corners by every night-raker that would
come visiting at the Drumglass.”
“Jonita,” I went on, “hath none ever helped you with your sheep on the
hill, run when you wanted him, stopped when you told him, come like a
collie to your foot when he was called?”
“None, I tell you, has ever sat where you are sitting, Hob MacClellan!
And hear ye this, had I thought you a silly ‘cuif’ like the rest, it
would have been the short day of December and the long again before I
had asked you to view my bower under the rock.”
“I was only asking, Jonita,” said I; “ye ken that ye are the bonniest
lass in ten parishes, and to me it seemed a strange thing that ye
shouldna hae a lad.”
“Bah,” said she, “lads are like the pebbles in the brook. They are run
smooth with many experiences, courting here and flattering there. What
care I whether or no this one or that comes chapping at my door? There
are plenty more in the brook. Besides, are there not the hills and the
winds and the clear stars over all, better and more enduring than a
thousand sweethearts?”
“But,” said I, “the day will come, Jonita, when you may be glad of the
friend’s voice, the kindly eye, the helping hand, the arm beneath the
head----”
“I did not say that I desired to have no friends,” she said, as it
seemed in the darkness, a little shyly.
“Will you let me be your friend?” I said, impulsively, taking her hand.
“I do not know,” said Alexander-Jonita; “I will tell you in the morning.
It is over-dark to-night to see your eyes.”
“Can you not believe?” said I. “Have you ever heard that I thus offered
friendship to any other maid in all the parish?”
“You might have offered it to twenty and they taken it every one for
aught I care. But Alexander-Jonita Gemmell accepts no man’s friendship
till she has tried him as a fighter tries a sword.”
“Then try me, Jonita!” I cried, eagerly.
“I will,” said she, promptly; “rise this instant from the place where ye
sit, look not upon me, touch me not, say neither good e’en nor yet
good-day, but take the straight road and the ready to the manse of
Balmaghie.”
The words were scarce out of her mouth when with a leap so quick that
the collies had not even time to rise, I was over the dyke and striding
across the moss and whinstone-crag towards the house by the waterside,
where my brother’s light had long been burning over his books.
I did not so much as look about me till I was on the crest of the hill.
Then for a single moment I stood looking back into the clear grey bath
of night behind me, where the lass I loved was keeping her watch in the
lonely sheepfold.
Yet I was pleased with myself too. For though my dismissal had been so
swift and unexpected, I felt that I had not done by any means badly for
myself.
At least I could call Alexander-Jonita my friend. And there was never a
lad upon all the hills of heather that could do so much.