A HERO IN HUMBLE LIFE.
“Is there, for honest poverty,
That hangs his head, and a’ that;
The coward-slave, we pass him by,
We daur be poor for a’ that!
For a’ that, and a’ that,
Our toil’s obscure, and a’ that;
The rank is but the guinea stamp,
The man’s the gowd for a’ that.”--BURNS.
Bright as the lark that rising from the dewy corn sings high at heaven’s
gate were Mina and Miguel next morning at breakfast. Romantic language
this may seem. Perhaps it is, only it suits me, and it suits the
occasion.
Reeves, too, was pleasant and jolly; and I myself felt as happy as a
sight of the Highlands in autumn never fails to make me.
Before bidding these good folks good-bye, I had to promise to come
back--nay, not only that, but even to appoint the day.
When I told my friend the minister of my pleasant adventure, he said
they had not been there very long. He was very old and somewhat stout,
so had put off calling from week to week.
But on the very day after this he did get out his gig and pay them a
visit of ceremony; and not only that, but invited the three to dinner.
“And,” he added, “I’m rather an old man, as you can see; and if I have
one chief pleasure in life, it is music. Might I make so bold as to
request this young lady and gentleman to bring their instruments with
them?”
The young lady and gentleman would be delighted. And so now
introductions were complete; and soon the most perfect and home-like
friendship reigned between the manse and The Cañon, as the glen villa
was called.
But for his daughter Mina, Captain Reeves would have been a somewhat
lonely man, despite the beauty of his gardens and all his wild and
romantic surroundings, for his wife had been dead now for some years. He
had formerly resided in Aberdeen; but his health breaking down
temporarily, he had come here, and was already as well as ever he had
been in his life, so strong and life-giving are the breezes that blow
over the Highland hills.
* * * * *
I have no great desire to describe little Mina’s beauty, though in my
eyes she was very charming indeed. But there are different tastes in
beauty, just as there are in straw hats or fancy waistcoats. If the
reader, then, wonders what Mina was like, let him just imagine to
himself the loveliest and most innocent-looking girl he happens to know,
and let her pose as Mina.
Of course she and I became great friends, because, whatever else I may
be, I am always frank; and I do think children like frankness. Well, I
am always _frank_ and I am always _merry_.
But Don Miguel’s story is a somewhat strange though not a very unusual
one away up north, and I may best tell it briefly here.
I may say this, to begin with, that there really is a kind of
freemasonry between sailors, else why should Reeves have told me poor
Miguel’s history after only a fortnight’s acquaintance?
I may mention, too, that the nephew himself had gone away--I shall tell
you whither presently. I happened to see the parting betwixt him and
bonnie wee Mina, and it was indeed a sorrowful one.
She hung around his neck in an _abandon_ of childish grief and tears.
“O don’t go, Miggie--don’t go! I cannot let you leave me!”
And the lad, with tears in his dark eyes, had really to tear himself
away.
Even Reeves himself was affected.
I do not remember ever before having met so happy and bright a young
fellow as Miguel. He was very good-looking, rather tall, and though
somewhat slender to suit a Highlander’s taste, supple and energetic
beyond compare.
At the university (Aberdeen) he excelled in all sports that required
more agility than strength. He never went in for wrestling, putting the
stone, or hammer-throwing. But in racing he needed handicapping. No one
was in it with him at the running-high-leap. Sometimes, when sudden
“funk” seized him just as he approached the bar, he ran right through
under it laughing, and without even bending his neck. But he returned
immediately and took it like a hero.
He was, moreover, a fairly good bagpiper, having once come in second at
a meeting where some Gordon Highlanders competed. People said his legs
were the best of him. He had a good “sonsy” calf, and could not have got
inside those ridiculous leather drain-pipes that English mashers wear.
Consequently he looked well in the kilt, and wherever he choose to
compete, he took first prize in Highland dancing.
Miguel was a capital linguist, talking Spanish and French as easily as
English.
But I am sure it was as a humorous conversationalist that he excelled.
No matter what kind of company he happened to be thrown into, Miguel
kept them laughing just all the time. It was worth walking twenty miles
just to hear him talk. And, mind, there was no braggadocio about him,
very little anecdote either; if he did throw in a story now and then, he
did so half-apologetically. It interrupted the flow of conversation, he
used to remark.
Perhaps I ought not to say just here that Miguel was in every way a
gentleman; I ought rather to let his doings prove it. Well, pardon me.
It was one beautiful day, when Captain Reeves had gone high up among the
mountain tops in search of ptarmigan, that he told me something
concerning the poor fellow’s life.
“Yes,” he said, “Miggie, as Mina calls him, is very, very merry in
company, but I can assure you that he has his melancholy moments when
alone. For although his mother and he were both in comfortable
circumstances before his father’s death, they are terribly badly off
now.
“It is not an uncommon story theirs. Mr. M‘Lean, my brother-in-law, was
a retired advocate, and the little family lived in a most charming villa
in the west-end suburbs.
“It was indeed strange that an advocate should have put all his eggs in
one basket, so to speak; but like many hundreds, he had the most perfect
faith in the L----r Society, its interest and its dividends, and all
his savings were locked up therein.
“The society came down, as we all know, with a terrible crash,
scattering its members broadcast through the land--well-to-do one day,
beggars and paupers the next.
“It was far more than my poor brother could stand. The beautiful villa
was given up, and its furniture sold, nothing more being left than just
sufficient to furnish two rooms and a kitchen in a poorer district of
the town.
“Then the poor fellow sickened and died.
“Miguel had already secured the degree of M.A. from the university, and
was in his first year’s study of divinity when the crash came and his
father died.
“‘Mother,’ he had said, ‘I shall now give up all idea of the church,
much as I should like to be a minister, and become a schoolmaster. I
thus can keep you, and we may be happy yet in a humble way.’
“But his mother answered, ‘No, no, no, boy mine. I can do something with
my needle, and brother has promised to help us a little every week. You
must study on till you become a minister, and I feel sure God has your
church waiting for you somewhere.’
“Heigh-ho!” continued Captain Reeves, “I am but poor myself at present,
though I think there is a silver cloud looming in the distance--but
hereby hangs another tale. I am poor, you see; but mind you, that Miguel
is not only poor, but proud as well.
“But it is genuine pride, and I believe you will like the young fellow
better when I tell you that he is in my view a hero.
“During the divinity session a student who desires to enter the
Established Church, and to make a good show before the examiners, has
hard work enough in following out his studies, which as a rule are as
dry as dust.
“But Mig adds considerably to his income, pays his fees, keeps himself
in clothes, and is able to purchase his mother many a little luxury by
teaching music and languages all the weary winter through, and during a
part of the early summer also.”
“Brave boy!” I cried; “he is indeed a hero!”
“Ah! but wait a wee,” said Reeves; “this is not all.”
“No?”
“No, indeed; the greatest heroism is to come. Mind you, I would not care
if he stayed here during the long vacation. Limited though my means are,
I should not miss his food.
“But here again his pride comes in, and what do you think he has been
doing during the last two months or over?”
“I fear I could not even guess.”
“Well, he has been engaged in the herring fishery at Peterhead.”
I could not help smiling.
“It is dangerous work, is it not?” I said.
“Ay, that it is, sir. It is all very well and very gay on a fine night
when only a gentle breeze is blowing, and the fish seem verily eager to
be caught. But ah! when a storm arises, when nets are rent in twain,
when the fleet is scattered--all that can’t get speedily into
harbour--and driven out to sea, then the danger is indeed great and the
sufferings too.
“After a storm like this many a widow and many a fatherless bairn are
left to mourn for those they will never, never see again.
“Even at the herring fishery my nephew, I am proud to say, makes himself
a general favourite. He is the life and soul of his own crew; but
curiously enough, the ‘young minister,’ as he is always called,
assembles a crowd around him every evening on the beach, and gives a
lecture that causes all hands to laugh, so that sometimes he has to wait
for over a minute before he can be heard again.
“But on Sunday afternoon you would not know him to be the same man; for
now he gives a sermon, and a most truthful and earnest one it is.
“Just before he left this season, an old Skyeman sent round a bag and
collected a little over seven pounds for the ‘young minister.’”
“How exceedingly kind!” I said.
“Yes, and he dared not offend them by refusing.
“He just made them a little speech in gratitude, and he assures me that
all the time he was speaking the tears were chasing each other adown
his cheeks.”
“I cannot wonder,” I said.
“And now,” I added, “where is he off to?”
“Ah! there you have another example of his pluck and his pride,” said
Captain Reeves. “He has taken a harvest; with his wages from that, and
with what he made at the herring fishery, he says he will be quite
opulent all winter.”
“Poor young fellow!” I remarked, “he seems hardly strong enough to wield
a scythe.”
“True; but Miguel is wonderfully wiry. It is the nerve and the heart
that keep young men like him up.”
“Certainly,” I said; “and luckily, as it seems, he is not ashamed of
honest labour.”
“No true-hearted, no real man is ever ashamed of hard work or poverty
either. It is young men like Miguel that keep this great world of ours
for ever moving onward, to better things I hope and pray.”
Instead of going directly home to the manse to-night, I went to The
Cañon with Captain Reeves.
There was no one here this evening save little Mina, and she and I
became greater friends than ever. She even told me how old she was,
seeming rather proud than otherwise that she had reached the patriarchal
age of fifteen. The illuminations in the grounds on the night of my
first appearance were in celebration of her birthday.
She took me quite into her confidence, as children often do, and went so
far as to tell me that when Cousin Miguel got a beautiful parish and a
nice church he was going to get married.
“Marry you, Mina?”
She hung her head a moment, and her pretty face was suffused with
blushes. But she looked up frankly enough next minute, and said
naïvely,--
“Oh, I don’t know at all, you know. Only if he marries some one else, I
shall see him nearly always just the same, and be his sister like.”
I laughed a little. I knew more of the world than poor Mina.
* * * * *
That six weeks spent at the manse and on the hills formed, I think, one
of the most pleasant holidays ever I have spent in life.
It was such a change from the intense and toilsome drudgery of the pen;
but little did I know what it was going to lead up to.
That troubled me little just then at all events.
We boated and fished one day; we went to the hills another.
Mina went with us on almost every occasion. She was a strong and wiry
little Highland maiden, as well as beautiful. I must say that she could
fish as well as either Captain Reeves or I, and had a neat little gun
with which she could bring down her bird on sight.
The birds were now getting wild and scarce, however, but the scenery and
the delightful fresh air were worth a king’s ransom. I felt getting
stronger every day, and I was now sun-browned as to knees and face. And
only healthy men do tan.
Well, on these shooting excursions there was invariably a good
lunch-basket to fall back upon. This was carried by the pony, which we
made Mina mount and ride whenever she looked in the least degree tired.
The pony was led by a bare-legged, ragged-kilted ghillie. I used to
wonder how he escaped sunstroke or the bite of an adder; for he wore no
cap, and I have seen him crossing a piece of withered grass in which the
snakes were wriggling and racing in every direction.
But Kennie had no fear.
When I had been little over a month in the strath, seeing the captain
almost every day, both at the manse and at his own house, he told me a
story that made me stare in astonishment, and believe myself back once
more in the old, old days of romance, and of wild adventure by sea and
land.