HARTLEY'S GLEN.
How many girls, among all the girls who may read this little book, have
seen with their own eyes Hartley's Glen? Not one, perhaps, save Brynhild
and the Rosicrucian, for whom the book is written. But the others must
try to see it with my eyes, for it is a fair place and a sweet as any on
earth. Behind the house, and just under the brow of the little hill that
shelters it, a narrow path dips down to the right, and goes along for a
bit, with a dimpled clover-meadow on the one hand, and a stone wall, all
warm with golden and red-brown lichens, on the other. Follow this, and
you come to a little gateway, beyond which is a thick plantation of
larches, with one grim old red cedar keeping watch over them. If he
regards you favorably, you may pass on, down the narrow path that winds
among the larches, whose feathery finger-tips brush your cheek and try
to hold you back, as if they willed not that you should go farther, to
see the wonders which they can never behold.
But you leave them behind, and come out into the sunshine, in a little
green glade which might be the ballroom of the fairy queen. On your
right, gleaming through clumps of alder and black birch, is a pond,--the
home of cardinal flowers and gleaming jewel-weed; a little farther on, a
thicket of birch and maple, from which comes a musical sound of falling
water. Follow this sound, keeping to the path, which winds away to the
left. Stop! now you may step aside for a moment, and part the heavy
hanging branches, and look, where the water falls over a high black
wall, into a sombre pool, shut in by fantastic rocks, and shaded from
all sunshine by a dense fringe of trees. This is the milldam, and the
pond above is no natural one, but the enforced repose and outspreading
of a merry brown brook, which now shows its true nature, and escaping
from the gloomy pool, runs scolding and foaming down through a
wilderness of rocks and trees. You cannot follow it there,--though I
have often done so in my barefoot days,--so come back to the path again.
There are pines overhead now, and the ground is slippery with the fallen
needles, and the air is sweet--ah! how sweet!--with their warm
fragrance. See! here is the old mill itself, now disused and falling to
decay. Here the path becomes a little precipice, and you must scramble
as best you can down two or three rough steps, and round the corner of
the ruined mill. This is a millstone, this great round thing like a
granite cheese, half buried in the ground; and here is another, which
makes a comfortable seat, if you are tired.
But there is a fairer resting-place beyond. Round this one more corner,
now, and down,--carefully, carefully!--down this long stairway, formed
of rough slabs of stone laid one below the other. Shut your eyes now for
a moment, and let me lead you forward by the hand. And now--now open the
eyes wide, wide, and look about you. In front, and under the windows of
the old mill, the water comes foaming and rushing down over a rocky fall
some sixty feet high, and leaps merrily into a second pool. No sombre,
black gulf this, like the one above, but a lovely open circle, half in
broad sunshine, half dappled with the fairy shadows of the boughs and
ferns that bend lovingly over it. So the little brook is no longer
angry, but mingles lovingly with the deep water of the pool, and then
runs laughing and singing along the glen on its way down to the sea. On
one side of this glen the bank rises abruptly some eighty feet, its
sides clothed with sturdy birches which cling as best they may to the
rocky steep. On the other stretches the little valley, a narrow strip of
land, but with turf as fine as the Queen's lawn, and trees that would
proudly grace Her Majesty's park,--tall Norway firs, raising their
stately forms and pointing their long dark fingers sternly at the
intruders on their solitude; graceful birches; and here and there a
whispering larch or a nodding pine. The other wall of the valley, or
glen, is less precipitous, and its sides are densely wooded, and fringed
with barberry bushes and climbing eglantine.
And between these two banks, and over this green velvet carpet, and
among these dark fir-trees,--ah! how the sun shines. Nowhere else in the
whole land does he shine so sweetly, for he knows that his time there is
short, and that the high banks will shut him out from that green,
pleasant place long before he must say good-night to the more
common-place fields and hill-sides. So here his beams rest right
lovingly, making royal show of gold on the smooth grass, and of diamonds
on the running water, and of opals and topazes and beryls where the
wave comes curling over the little fall.
And now, amid all this pomp and play of sun and of summer, what is this
dash of blue that makes a strange, though not a discordant, note in our
harmony of gold and green? And what is that round, whitish object which
is bobbing up and down with such singular energy? Why, the blue is
Hildegarde's dress, if you must know; and the whitish object is the head
of Zerubbabel Chirk, scholar and devotee; and the energy with which said
head is bobbing is the energy of determination and of study. Hilda and
Bubble have made themselves extremely comfortable under the great
ash-tree which stands in the centre of the glen. The teacher has curled
herself up against the roots of the tree, and has a piece of work in her
hands; but her eyes are wandering dreamily over the lovely scene before
her, and she looks as if she were really too comfortable to move even a
finger. The scholar lies at her feet, face downwards, his chin
propped on his hands, his head bobbing up and down. The silence is only
broken by the noise of the waterfall and the persistent chirping of some
very cheerful little bird.
Presently the boy raised his head and cried joyfully, "I've fetched him,
Miss Hildy! I know it, now, jest like pie!" Whereupon he stood up, and
assuming a military attitude, submitted to a severe geographical
catechising, and came off with flying colors.
"That was a very good recitation," said Hilda, approvingly, as she laid
the book down. "You shall have another ballad to-day as a reward. But,
Bubble," she added, rather seriously, "I do wish you would not use so
much slang. It is so senseless! Now what did you mean by saying 'just
like pie,' in speaking of your lesson just now?"
"Oh! come now, Miss Hildy!" said Bubble, bashfully, "the' ain't no use
in your tellin' me you don't know what pie is."
"Of course I know what pie is, you silly boy!" said Hilda, laughing.
"But what has pie to do with your geography lesson?"
"That's so!" murmured the boy, apologetically. "That's a fact, ain't it!
I won't say 'like pie' no more; I'll say 'like blazes,' instead."
"You needn't say 'like' anything!" cried Hilda, laughing again; "just
say, I know my lesson 'well,' or 'thoroughly.' There are plenty of
_real_ words, Bubble, that have as much meaning as the slang ones, and
often a great deal more."
"That's so," said Bubble, with an air of deep conviction. "I'll try not
to talk no more slang, Miss Hildy. I will, I swan!"
"But, Bubble, you must not say 'I swan' either; that is _abominable_
slang."
Bubble looked very blank. "Why, what _shall_ I say?" he asked, simply.
"Pink won't let me say 'I swow,' 'cause it's vulgar; an' if I say 'by'
anything, Ma says it's swearin',--an' I can't swear, nohow!"
"Of course not," said Hilda. "But why _must_ you say anything,
Bubble,--anything of that sort, I mean?"
"Oh!" said the boy, "I d' 'no 's I kin say ezackly _why_, Miss Hildy;
but--but--wal, I swan! I mean, I--I don't mean I swan--but--there now!
You see how 'tis, Miss Hildy. Things don't seem to hev no taste to 'em,
without you say _somethin'_."
"Let me think," said Hilda. "Perhaps I can think of something that will
sound better."
"I might say, 'Gee Whittekers!'" suggested Bubble, brightening up a
little. "I know some fellers as says that."
"I don't think that would do," replied Hilda, decidedly. "What does it
mean?"
"Don't mean nothing as I knows on," said the boy; "but it sounds kind o'
hahnsome, don't it?"
Hilda shook her head with a smile. She did not think "Gee Whittekers" a
"hahnsome" expression.
"Bubble," she said after a few moments' reflection, during which her
scholar watched her anxiously, "I have an idea. If you _must_ say
'something,' beside what you actually have to say, let it be something
that will remind you of your lessons; then it may help you to remember
them. Instead of Gee--what is it?--Gee Whittekers, say Geography, or
Spelling, or Arithmetic; and instead of 'I swan,' say 'I study!' What do
you think of this plan?"
"Fustrate!" exclaimed Bubble, nodding his head enthusiastically. "I like
fustrate! Ge-_o_graphy! Why, that sounds just like pie! I--I don't mean
that, Miss Hildy. I didn't mean to say it, nohow! It kind o' slipped
out, ye know." Bubble paused, and hung his head in much confusion.
"Never mind!" said Hilda, kindly. "Of course you cannot make the change
all at once, Bubble. But little by little, if you really think about it,
you will bring it about. Next week," she added, "I think we must begin
upon grammar. You are doing very well indeed in spelling and geography,
and pretty well in arithmetic; but your grammar, Bubble, is simply
frightful."
"Be it?" said Bubble, resignedly. "I want to know!"
"And now," said the young instructress, rising, and shaking out her
crumpled frock, "that is enough for to-day, Bubble. We must be going
home soon; but first, I want to take a peep at the lower part of the old
mill, that you told me about yesterday. You have been in there, you say?
And how did you get in?"
"I'll show ye!" cried Bubble, springing up with alacrity, and leading
the way towards the mill. "I'll show ye the very place, Miss Hildy.
'Tain't easy to get in, and 'tain't no place for a lady, nohow; but I
kin git in, jist like--like 'rithmetic!"
"Bravo, Bubble!" said Hilda, laughing merrily. "That is very well for a
beginning. How long is it since the mill was used?" she asked, looking
up at the frowning walls of rough, dark stone, covered with moss and
lichens.
"Farmer Hartley's gran'f'ther was the last miller," replied Bubble
Chirk. "My father used to say he could just remember him, standin' at
the mill-door, all white with flour, an' rubbin' his hands and laughin',
jes' the way Farmer does. He was a good miller, father said, an' made
the mill pay well. But his eldest son, that kem after him, warn't no
great shakes, an' he let the mill go to wrack and ruin, an' jes' stayed
on the farm. An' then he died, an' Cap'n Hartley came (that's the
farmer's father, ye know), an' he was kind o' crazy, and didn't care
about the mill either, an' so there it stayed.
"This way, Miss Hildy!" added the boy, breaking off suddenly, and
plunging into the tangled thicket of shrubs and brambles that hid the
base of the mill. "Thar! ye see that hole? That's whar I get in. Wait
till I clear away the briers a bit! Thar! now ye kin look in."
The "hole" was a square opening, a couple of feet from the ground, and
large enough for a person of moderate size to creep through. Hildegarde
stooped down and looked in. At first she saw nothing but utter
blackness; but presently her eyes became accustomed to the place, and
the feeble light which struggled in past her through the opening,
revealed strange objects which rose here and there from the vast pit of
darkness,--fragments of rusty iron, bent and twisted into unearthly
shapes; broken beams, their jagged ends sticking out like stiffly
pointing fingers; cranks, and bits of hanging chain; and on the side
next the water, a huge wheel, rising apparently out of the bowels of the
earth, since the lower part of it was invisible. A cold, damp air seemed
to rise from the earth. Hilda shivered and drew back, looking rather
pale. "What a _dreadful_ place!" she cried. "It looks like a dungeon of
the Inquisition. I think you were very brave to go in there, Bubble. I
am sure _I_ should not dare to go; it looks so spectral and frightful."
"Hy Peters stumped me to go," said Bubble, simply, "so o' course I went.
Most of the boys dassent. And it ain't bad, after the fust time. They do
say it's haunted; but I ain't never seed nothin'."
"Haunted!" cried Hilda, drawing back still farther from the black
opening. "By--by what, Bubble?"
"Cap'n's ghost!" replied the boy. "He used to go rooklin' round in there
when he was alive, folks say, and some thinks his sperit haunts there
now."
"Oh, nonsense!" said Hildegarde, with a laugh which did not sound quite
natural. "Of course you don't believe any such foolishness as that,
Bubble. But what did the old--old gentleman--want there when he was
alive? I can't imagine any one going in there for pleasure."
"Dunno, I'm sure!" replied Bubble. "Father, he come down here one day,
after blackberries, when he was a boy. He hearn a noise in there, an'
went an' peeked in, an' there was the ol' Cap'n pokin' about with his
big stick in the dirt. He looked up an' saw father, an' came at him with
his stick up, roarin' like a mad bull, father said. An' he cut an' run,
father did, an' he hearn the ol' Cap'n laughin' after him as if he'd
have a fit. Crazy as a loon, I reckon the Cap'n was, though none of his
folks thought so, Ma says."
He let the wild briers fly back about the gloomy opening, and they
stepped back on the smooth greensward again. Ah, how bright and warm the
sunshine was, after that horrible black pit! Hilda shivered again at the
thought of it, and then laughed at her own cowardice. She turned and
gazed at the waterfall, creaming and curling over the rocks, and making
such a merry, musical jest of its tumble into the pool. "Oh, lovely,
lovely!" she cried, kissing her hand to it. "Bubble, do you know that
Hartley's Glen is without exception the most beautiful place in the
world?"
"No, miss! Be it really?" asked Zerubbabel, seriously. "I allays thought
'twas kind of a sightly gully, but I didn't know't was all that."
"Well, it is," said Hilda. "It is all that, and more; and I love it! But
now, Bubble," she added, "we must make haste, for the farmer will be
wanting you, and I have a dozen things to do before tea."
"Yes, miss," said Bubble, but without his usual alacrity.
Hilda saw a look of disappointment in his honest blue eyes, and asked
what was the matter. "I ain't had my ballid!" said Zerubbabel, sadly.
"Why, you poor lad, so you haven't!" said Hildegarde. "But you shall
have it; I will tell it to you as we walk back to the farm. Which one
will you have,--or shall I tell you a new one?"
The blue eyes sparkled with the delight of anticipation. "Oh, please!"
he cried; "the one about the bold Buckle-oh!"
Hilda laughed merrily. "The bauld Buccleugh?" she repeated. "Oh! you
mean 'Kinmont Willie.' Yes, indeed, you shall have that. It is one of my
favorite ballads, and I am glad you like it."
"Oh, I tell yer!" cried Bubble. "When he whangs the table, and says do
they think his helmet's an old woman's bunnit, an' all the rest of
it,--I tell ye that's _some_, Miss Hildy!"
"You have the spirit of the verse, Bubble," said Hilda, laughing softly;
"but the words are not _quite_ right." And she repeated the splendid,
ringing words of Buccleugh's indignant outcry:
"Oh! is my basnet a widow's curch,
Or my lance a wand o' the willow-tree,
Or my arm a lady's lily hand,
That an English lord should lightly me?
"And have they ta'en him, Kinmont Willie,
Against the truce of Border tide,
And forgotten that the bauld Buccleugh
Is warden here o' the Scottish side?
"And have they e'en ta'en him, Kinmont Willie,
Withouten either dread or fear,
And forgotten that the bauld Buccleugh
Can back a steed or shake a spear?"
Zerubbabel Chirk fairly danced up and down in his excitement "Oh! but
begin again at the beginning, _please_, Miss Hildy," he cried.
So Hilda, nothing loth, began at the beginning; and as they walked
homeward, recited the whole of the noble old ballad, which if any
girl-reader does not know, she may find it in any collection of Scottish
ballads.
"And the best of it is, Bubble," said Hilda, "that it is all
true,--every word of it; or nearly every word."
"I'll bet it is!" cried Bubble, still much excited. "They couldn't make
lies sound like that, ye know! You kind o' _know_ it's true, and it goes
right through yer, somehow. When did it happen, Miss Hildy?"
"Oh! a long time ago," said Hildegarde; "near the end of the sixteenth
century. I forget just the very year, but it was in the reign of Queen
Elizabeth. She was very angry at Buccleugh's breaking into Carlisle
Castle, which was an English castle, you see, and carrying off Lord
Scroope's prisoner; and she sent word to King James of Scotland that he
must give up Buccleugh to her to punish as she saw fit. King James
refused at first, for he said that Lord Scroope had been the first to
break the truce by carrying off Kinmont Willie in time of peace; but at
length he was obliged to yield, for Queen Elizabeth was very powerful,
and always would have her own way. So the 'bauld Buccleugh' was sent to
London and brought before the great, haughty English queen. But he was
just as haughty as she, and was not a bit afraid of her. She looked down
on him from her throne (she was very stately, you know, and she wore a
crown, and a great stiff ruff, and her dress was all covered with gold
and precious stones), and asked him how he dared to undertake such a
desperate and presumptuous enterprise. And Buccleugh--O Bubble, I
always liked this so much!--Buccleugh just looked her full in the face,
and said, 'What is it a man dare not do?' Now Queen Elizabeth liked
nothing so much as a brave man, and this bold answer pleased her. She
turned to one of her ministers and said, 'With ten thousand such men our
brother in Scotland might shake the firmest throne in Europe.' And so
she let him go, just because he was so brave and so handsome."
Bubble Chirk drew a long breath, and his eyes flashed. "I wish't I'd ben
alive then!" he said.
"Why, Bubble?" asked Hilda, much amused; "what would you have done?"
"I'd ha' killed Lord Scroope!" he cried,--"him and the hull kit of 'em.
Besides," he added, "I'd like t' ha' lived then jest ter see
_him_,--jest ter see the bold Buckle-oh; that's what _I_ call a man!"
And Queen Hildegardis fully agreed with him.
They had nearly reached the house when the boy asked: "If that king was
her brother, why did she treat him so kind o' ugly? My sister don't act
that way."
"What--oh, you mean Queen Elizabeth!" said Hilda, laughing. "King James
was not her brother, Bubble. They were cousins, but nothing more."
"You _said_ she said 'brother,'" persisted the boy.
"So I did," replied Hilda. "You see, it was the fashion, and is still,
for kings and queens to _call_ each other brother and sister, whether
they were really related to each other or not."
"But I thought they was always fightin'," objected Bubble. "I've got a
hist'ry book to home, an' in that it says they fit like time whenever
they got a chance."
"So they did," said Hilda. "But they called each other 'our royal
brother' and 'our beloved sister;' and they were always paying each
other fine compliments, and saying how much they loved each other, even
in the middle of a war, when they were fighting as hard as they could."
"Humph!" said Bubble, "nice kind o folks they must ha' been. Well, I
must go, Miss Hildy," he added, reluctantly. "I've had a splendid time,
an' I'm _real_ obleeged to ye. I sh'll try to larn that story by heart,
'bout the bold Buckle-oh. I want to tell it to Pink! _She_'d like
it--oh, my! wouldn't she like it, jest like--I mean jest like spellin'!
Good by, Miss Hildy!" And Bubble ran off to bring home the cows, his
little heart swelling high with scorn of kings and queens, and with a
fervor of devotion to Walter Scott, first lord of Buccleugh.