BOG-MYRTLE AND PEAT
TALES CHIEFLY OF GALLOWAY
GATHERED FROM THE YEARS 1889 TO 1895, BY
S.R. CROCKETT
LONDON
BLISS, SANDS AND FOSTER
15 CRAVEN STREET, STRAND
MDCCCXCV
_Inscribed with the Name of
George Milner of Manchester,
a Man most Generous, Brave, True,
to whom, because he freely gave me That of His
which I the most desired--
I, having Nothing worthier to give,
Give This_.
KENMURE
1715
"The heather's in a blaze, Willie,
The White Rose decks the tree,
The Fiery-Cross is on the braes,
And the King is on the sea.
"Remember great Montrose, Willie,
Remember fair Dundee,
And strike one stroke at the foreign foes
Of the King that's on the sea.
"There's Gordons in the North, Willie,
Are rising frank and free,
Shall a Kenmure Gordon not go forth
For the King that's on the sea?
"A trusty sword to draw, Willie,
A comely weird to dree,
For the royal Rose that's like the snaw,
And the King that's on the sea!"
He cast ae look upon his lands,
Looked over loch and lea,
He took his fortune in his hands,
For the King was on the sea.
Kenmures have fought in Galloway
For Kirk and Presbyt'rie,
This Kenmure faced his dying day,
For King James across the sea.
It little skills what faith men vaunt,
If loyal men they be
To Christ's ain Kirk and Covenant,
Or the King that's o'er the sea.
ANDREW LANG.
CONTENTS
BOOK FIRST. ADVENTURES
I. THE MINISTER OF DOUR
II. A CRY ACROSS THE BLACK WATER
III. SAINT LUCY OF THE EYES
IV. UNDER THE RED TERROR
V. THE CASE OF JOHN ARNISTON'S CONSCIENCE
VI. THE GLISTERING BEACHES
BOOK SECOND. INTIMACIES
I. THE LAST ANDERSON OF DEESIDE
II. A SCOTTISH SABBATH DAY
III. THE COURTSHIP OF TAMMOCK THAKANRAIP, AYRSHIREMAN
IV. THE OLD TORY
V. THE GREAT RIGHT-OF-WAY CASE
VI. DOMINIE GRIER
VII. THE PRODIGAL DAUGHTER
BOOK THIRD. HISTORIES
I. FENWICK MAJOR'S LITTLE 'UN
II. MAC'S ENTERIC FEVER
III. THE COLLEGING OF SIMEON GLEG
IV. KIT KENNEDY, NE'ER-DO-WELL
V. THE BACK O' BEYONT
VI. NORTH TO THE ARCTIC
BOOK FOURTH. IDYLLS
I. ACROSS THE MARCH DYKE
II. A FINISHED YOUNG LADY
III. THE LITTLE LAME ANGEL
BOOK FIFTH. TALES OF THE KIRK
I. THE MINISTER-EMERITUS
II. A MINISTER'S DAY
III. THE MINISTER'S LOON
IV. THE BIOGRAPHY OF AN INEFFICIENT
V. JOHN
VI. EUROCLYDON OF THE RED HEAD
VII. THE CAIRN EDWARD KIRK MILITANT
EPILOGUE: IN PRAISE OF GALLOWAY
NIGHT IN THE GALLOWAY WOODS
BIRDS AT NIGHT
THE COMING OF THE DAWN
FLOOD-TIDE OF NIGHT
WAY FOR THE SUN
THE EARLY BIRD
FULL CHORUS
THE BUTCHER'S BOY OF THE WOODS
THE DUST OF BATTLE
COMES THE DAY
_PREFACE_
_There is a certain book of mine which no publisher has paid royalty
upon, which has never yet been confined in spidery lines upon any paper,
a book that is nevertheless the Book of my Youth, of my Love, and of my
Heart_.
_There never was such a book, and in the chill of type certainly there
never will be. It has, so far as I know, no title, this unpublished book
of mine. For it would need the blood of rubies and the life of diamonds
crusted on ivory to set the title of this book_.
_Mostly I see it in the late night watches, when the twilight verges to
the cock-crowing and the universe is silent, stirless, windless, for
about the space of one hour. Then the pages of the book are opened a
little; and, as one that reads hungrily, hastily, at the bookstall of an
impatient vendor a book he cannot buy, so I scan the idylls, the epics,
the dramas of the life of man written in words which thrill me as I
read. Some are fiercely tender, some yearning and unsatisfying, some
bitter in the mouth but afterward sweet in the belly. All are expressed
in words so fit and chaste and noble, that each is an immortal poem
which would give me deathless fame--could I, alas! but remember_.
_Then the morning comes, and with the first red I awake to a sense of
utter loss and bottomless despair. Once more I have clutched and missed
and forgotten. It is gone from me. The imagination of my heart is left
unto me desolate. Sometimes indeed when a waking bird--by preference a
mavis--sings outside my window, for a little while after I swim upward
out of the ocean of sleep, it seems that I might possibly remember one
stanza of the deathless words; or even by chance recapture, like the
brown speckled thrush, that "first fine careless rapture" of the
adorable refrain_.
_Even when I arise and walk out in the dawn, as is my custom winter and
summer, still I have visions of this book of mine, of which I now
remember that the mystic name is "The Book Sealed." Sometimes in these
dreams of the morning, as I walk abroad, I find my hands upon the
clasps. I touch the binding wax of the seals. When the first rosy
fingers of the dawn point upward to the zenith with the sunlight behind
them, sanguine like a maid's hand held before a lamp, I catch a farewell
glimpse of the hidden pages_.
_Tales, not poems, are written upon them now. I hear the voices of "Them
Ones," as Irish folk impressively say of the Little People, telling me
tales out of the Book Sealed, tales which in the very hearing make a man
blush hotly and thrill with hopes mysterious. Such stories as they are!
The romances of high young blood, of maidens' winsome purity and frank
disdain, of strong men who take their lives in hand and hurl themselves
upon the push of pikes. And though I cannot grasp more than a hint of
the plot, yet as my feet swish through the dewy swathes of the hyacinths
or crisp along the frost-bitten snow, a wild thought quickens within me
into a belief, that one day I shall hear them all, and tell these tales
for my very own so that the world must listen_.
_But as the rosy fingers of the morn melt and the broad day fares forth,
the vision fades, and I who saw and heard must go and sit down to my
plain saltless tale. Once I wrote a book, every word of it, in the open
air. It was full of the sweet things of the country, so at least as they
seemed to me. I saw the hens nestle sleepily in the holes of the
bank-side where the dry dust is, and so I wrote it down. I heard the
rain drum on the broad leaves over my head, and I wrote that down also.
Day after day I rose and wrote in the dawn, and sometimes I seemed to
recapture a leaf or a passing glance of a chapter-heading out of the
Book Sealed. It came back to me how the girls were kissed and love was
made in the days when the Book Sealed was the Book Open, and when I
cared not a jot for anything that was written therein. So as well as I
could I wrote these things down in the red dawn. And so till the book
was done_.
_Then the day comes when the book is printed and bound, and when the
critics write of it after their kind, things good and things evil. But I
that have gathered the fairy gold dare not for my life look again
within, lest it should be even as they say, and I should find but
withered leaves therein. For the sake of the vision of the breaking day
and the incommunicable hope, I shall look no more upon it. But ever with
the eternal human expectation, I rise and wait the morning and the final
opening of the "Book Sealed_."
S.R. CROCKETT.
_NOTE_.
_I am deeply in the debt of my friend, Mr. Andrew Lang, for the ballad
of 'Kenmure' which he has written to grace my bare boards and spice the
plain fare here set out in honour of the ancient Free Province_.
BOOK FIRST
ADVENTURES
_Lo, in the dance the wine-drenched coronal
From shoulder white and golden hair doth fall!
A-nigh his breast each youth doth hold an head,
Twin flushing cheeks and locks unfilleted;
Swifter and swifter doth the revel move
Athwart the dim recesses of the grove ...
Where Aphrodite reigneth in her prime,
And laughter ringeth all the summer time_.
_There hemlock branches make a languorous gloom,
And heavy-headed poppies drip perfume
In secret arbours set in garden close;
And all the air, one glorious breath of rose,
Shakes not a dainty petal from the trees.
Nor stirs a ripple on the Cyprian seas_.
"_The Choice of Herakles_."
I
THE MINISTER OF DOUR
_This window looketh towards the west,
And o'er the meadows grey
Glimmer the snows that coldly crest
The hills of Galloway_.
_The winter broods on all between--
In every furrow lies;
Nor is there aught of summer green,
Nor blue of summer skies_.
_Athwart the dark grey rain-clouds flash
The seabird's sweeping wings,
And through the stark and ghostly ash
The wind of winter sings_.
_The purple woods are dim with rain,
The cornfields dank and bare;
And eyes that look for golden grain
Find only stubble there_.
_And while I write, behold the night
Comes slowly blotting all,
And o'er grey waste and meadow bright
The gloaming shadows fall_.
"_From Two Windows_."
The wide frith lay under the manse windows of the parish of Dour. The
village of Dour straggled, a score of white-washed cottages, along four
hundred yards of rocky shore. There was a little port, to attempt which
in a south-west wind was to risk an abrupt change of condition. This was
what made half of the men in the parish of Dour God-fearing men. The
other half feared the minister.
Abraham Ligartwood was the minister. He also feared God exceedingly, but
he made up for it by not regarding man in the slightest. The manse of
Dour was conspicuously set like a watch-tower on a hill--or like a
baron's castle above the huts of his retainers. The fishermen out on the
water made it their lighthouse. The lamp burned in the minister's study
half the night, and was alight long ere the winter sun had reached the
horizon.
Abraham Ligartwood would have been a better man had he been less
painfully good. When he came to the parish of Dour he found that he had
to succeed a man who had allowed his people to run wild. Dour was a
garden filled with the degenerate fruit of a strange vine.
The minister said so in the pulpit. Dour smiled complacently, and
considered that its hoary wickednesses would beat the minister in the
long-run. But Dour did not at that time know the minister. It was the
day of the free-traders. The traffic with the Isle of Man, whence the
hardy fishermen ran their cargoes of Holland gin and ankers of French
brandy, put good gear on the back of many a burgher's wife, and porridge
into the belly of many a fisherman's bairn.
The new minister found all this out when he came. He did not greatly
object. It was, he said, no part of his business to collect King
George's dues. But he did object when the running of a vessel's cargo
became the signal for half his parishioners settling themselves to a
fortnight of black, solemn, evil-hearted drinking. He said that he would
break up these colloguings. He would not have half the wives in the
parish coming to his kirk with black eyes upon the Lord's Sabbath day.
The parish of Dour laughed. But the parish of Dour was to get news of
the minister, for Abraham Ligartwood was not a man to trifle with.
One night there was a fine cargo cleanly run at Port Saint Johnston, the
village next to Dour. It was got as safely off. The "lingtowmen" went
out, and there was the jangling of hooked chains along all the shores;
then the troll of the smugglers' song as the cavalcade struck inwards
through the low shore-hills for the main free-trade route to Edinburgh
and Glasgow. The king's preventive men had notice, and came down as
usual three hours late. Then they seized ten casks of the best Bordeaux,
which had been left for the purpose on the sand. They were able and
intelligent officers--in especial the latter. And they had an acute
perception of the fact that if their bread was to be buttered on both
sides, it were indeed well not to let it fall.
This cargo-running and seizures were all according to rule, and the
minister of Dour had nothing to say. But at night seventeen of his kirk
members in good standing and fourteen adherents met at the Back Spital
of Port Dour to drink prosperity to the cargo which had been safely run.
There was an elder in the chair, and six unbroached casks on a board in
the corner.
There was among those who assembled some word of scoffing merriment at
the expense of the minister. Abraham Ligartwood had preached a sermon on
the Sabbath before, which each man, as the custom was, took home and
applied to his neighbour.
"Ay man, Mains, did ye hear what the minister said aboot ye? O man, he
was sair on ye!"
"Hoot na, Portmark, it was yersel' he was hittin' at, and the black e'e
ye gied Kirsty six weeks syne."
But when the first keg was on the table, and the men, each with his
pint-stoup before him, had seated themselves round, there came a
knocking at the door--loud, insistent, imperious. Each man ran his hand
down his side to the loaded whip or jockteleg (the smuggler's
sheath-knife) which he carried with him.
But no man was in haste to open the door. The red coats of King George's
troopers might be on the other side. For no mere gauger or preventive
man would have the assurance to come chapping on Portmark's door in that
fashion.
"Open the door in the name of Most High God!" cried a loud, solemn voice
they all knew. The seventeen men and an elder quaked through all their
inches; but none moved. Writs from the authority mentioned did not run
in the parish of Dour.
The fourteen adherents fled underneath the table like chickens in a
storm.
"Then will I open it in my own name!" Whereon followed a crash, and the
two halves of the kitchen door sprang asunder with great and sudden
noise. Abraham Ligartwood came in.
The men sat awed, each man wishful to creep behind his neighbour.
The minister's breadth of shoulder filled up the doorway completely, so
that there was not room for a child to pass. He carried a mighty staff
in his hand, and his dark hair shone through the powder which was upon
it. His glance swept the gathering. His eye glowed with a sparkle of
such fiery wrath that not a man of all the seventeen and an elder, was
unafraid. Yet not of his violence, but rather of the lightnings of his
words. And above all, of his power to loose and to bind. It is a
mistaken belief that priestdom died when they spelled it Presbytery.
The comprehensive nature of the anathema that followed--spoken from the
advantage of the doorway, with personal applications to the seventeen
individuals and the elder--cannot now be recalled; but scraps of that
address are circulated to this day, mostly spoken under the breath of
the narrator.
"And you, Portmark," the minister is reported to have said, "with your
face like the moon in harvest and your girth like a tun of Rhenish, gin
ye turn not from your evil ways, within four year ye shall sup with the
devil whom ye serve. Have ye never a word to say, ye scorners of the
halesome word, ye blaspheming despisers of doctrine? Your children shall
yet stand and rebuke you in the gate. Heard ye not my word on the
Sabbath in the kirk? Dumb dogs are ye every one! Have ye not a word to
say? There was a brave gabble of tongues enough when I came in. Are ye
silent before a man? How, then, shall ye stand in That Day?"
The minister paused for a reply. But no answer came.
"And you, Alexander Kippen, puir windlestrae, the Lord shall thresh ye
like ill-grown corn in the day of His wrath. Ye are hardly worth the
word of rebuke; but for mine office I wad let ye slip quick to hell! The
devil takes no care of you, for he is sure of ye!"
The minister advanced, and with the iron-pointed shod of his staff drove
in the bung of the first keg. Then there arose a groan from the
seventeen men who sat about. Some of them stood up on their feet. But
the minister turned on them with such fearsome words, laying the ban of
anathema on them, that their hearts became as water and they sat down.
The good spirit gurgled and ran, and deep within them the seventeen men
groaned for the pity of it.
Thus the minister broke up the black drinkings. And the opinion of the
parish was with him in all, except as to the spilling of the liquor.
Rebuke and threatening were within his right, but to pour out the spirit
was a waste even in a minister.
"It is the destruction of God's good creature!" said the parish of Dour.
But the minister held on his way. The communion followed after, and
Abraham Ligartwood had, as was usual, three days of humiliation and
prayer beforehand. Then he set himself to "fence the tables." He stated
clearly who had a right to come forward to the table of the Lord, and
who were to be debarred. He explained personally and exactly why it was
that each defaulter had no right there. As he went on, the congregation,
one after another, rose astonished and terrified and went out, till
Abraham Ligartwood was left alone with the elements of communion. Every
elder and member had left the building, so effective had been the
minister's rebuke.
At this the parish of Dour seethed with rebellion. Secret cabals in
corners arose, to be scattered like smoke-drift by the whisper that the
minister was coming. Deputations were chosen, and started for the manse
full of courage and hardihood. Portmark, as the man who smarted sorest,
generally headed them; and by the aid of square wide-mouthed bottles of
Hollands, it was possible to get the members as far as the foot of the
manse loaning. But beyond that they would not follow Portmark's leading,
nor indeed that of any man. The footfall of the minister of Dour as he
paced alone in his study chilled them to the bone.
They told one another on the way home how Ganger Patie, of the black
blood of the gypsy Marshalls, finding his occupation gone, cursed the
minister on Glen Morrison brae; but broke neck-bone by the sudden fright
of his horse and his own drunkenness at the foot of the same brae on his
home-coming. They said that the minister had prophesied that in the spot
where Ganger Patie had cursed the messenger of God, even there God would
enter into judgment with him. And they told how the fair whitethorn
hedge was blasted for ten yards about the spot where the Death Angel had
waited for the blasphemer. There were four men who were willing to give
warrandice that their horses had turned with them and refused to pass
the place.
So the parish was exceedingly careful of its words to the minister. It
left him severely alone. He even made his own porridge in the
wide-sounding kitchen of the gabled manse, on the hill above the
harbour. He rang with his own hands the kirk-bell on the Sabbath morn.
But none came near the preachings. There was no child baptized in the
parish of Dour; and no wholesome diets of catechising, where old and
young might learn the Way more perfectly.
Mr. Ligartwood's brethren spoke to him and pled with him to use milder
courses; but all in vain. In those days the Pope was not so autocratic
in Rome as a minister in his own parish.
"They left me of their own accord, and of their own accord shall they
return," said Abraham Ligartwood.
But in the fall of the year the White Death came to Dour. They say that
it came from the blasted town of Kirk Oswald, where the plague had been
all the summer. The men of the landward parishes set a watch on all that
came out of the accursed streets. But in the night-time men with laden
horses ran the blockade, for the prices to be obtained within were like
those in a besieged city.
Some said that it was the farmer of Portmark who had done this thing
once too often. At least it is sure that it was to his house that the
Death first came in the parish of Dour. At the sound of the shrill
crying, of which they every one knew the meaning, men dropped their
tools in the field and fled to the hills. It was like the Day of
Judgment. The household servants disappeared. Hired men and
field-workers dispersed like the wave from a stone in a pool, carrying
infection with them. Men fell over at their own doors with the rattle in
their throats, and there lay, none daring to touch them. In Kirk Oswald
town the grass grew in the vennels and along the High Street. In Dour
the horses starved in the stables, the cattle in the byres.
Then came Abraham Ligartwood out of the manse of Dour. He went down to
the farm towns and into the village huts and lifted the dead. He
harnessed the horse in the cart, and swathed the body in sheets. He dug
the graves, and laid the corpse in the kindly soil. He nursed the sick.
He organised help everywhere. He went from house to stricken house with
the high assured words of a messenger fresh from God.
He let out the horses to the pasture. He milked the kine, that bellowed
after him with the plague of their milk. He had thought and hands for
all. His courage shamed the cowards. He quickened the laggards. He
stilled the agony of fear that killed three for every one who died of
the White Death.
For the first time since the minister came to Dour, the kirk-bell did
not ring on Sabbath, for the minister was at the other end of the parish
setting a house in order whence three children had been carried. In the
kirkyard there was the dull rattle of sods. The burying-party consisted
of the roughest rogues in the parish, whom the minister had fetched from
their hiding-holes in the hills.
Up the long roads that led to the kirk on its windy height the scanty
funerals wended their way. For three weeks they say that in the
kirkyard, from dawn to dusk, there was always a grave uncovered or a
funeral in sight. There was no burial service in the kirkyard save the
rattle of the clods; for now the minister had set the carpenters to
work and coffins were being made. But the minister had prayer in all the
houses ere the dead was lifted.
Then he went off to lay hot stones to the feet of another, and to get a
nurse for yet another. For twenty days he never slept and seldom ate,
till the plague was stayed.
The last case was on the 27th of September. Then Abraham Ligartwood
himself was stricken in one of the village hovels, and fell forward
across a sick man's bed. They carried him to the manse of Dour, and wept
as they went. The next day all the men that were alive in the parish of
Dour stood about the minister's grave in the kirkyard on the hill. There
was none there that could pray. But as they were about to separate, some
one, it was never known who, raised the tune of the first Psalm. And the
wind wafted to the weeping wives in the cottages of the stricken parish
of Dour the sound of the hoarse and broken singing of men. In three
weeks the minister had brought the evil parish of Dour into the presence
of God.
And these were the words of their singing, while the gravediggers stood
with the red earth ready on their spades, but before a clod fell on the
minister's grave:--
"That man hath perfect blessedness
Who walketh not astray
In counsel of ungodly men,
Nor stands in sinners' way,
Nor sitteth in the scorner's chair;
But placeth his delight
Upon God's law, and meditates
On his law day and night."
The new minister who succeeded had an easy time and a willing people.
But he can never be to them what Abraham Ligartwood was. They graved on
his tomb, and that with good cause, the words, "Here lyes a Man who
never feared the face of Man."
_The lovers are whispering under thy shade,
Grey Tower of Dalmeny!
I leave them and wander alone in the glade
Beneath thee, Dalmeny.
Their thoughts are of all the bright years coming on,
But mine are of days and of dreams that are gone;
They see the fair flowers Spring has thrown on the grass,
And the clouds in the blue light their eyes as they pass;
But my feet are deep dawn in a drift of dead leaves,
And I hear what they hear not--a lone bird that grieves.
What matter? the end is not far for us all,
And spring, through the summer, to winter must fall,
And the lovers' light hearts, e'en as mine, will be laid,
At last, and for ever, low under thy shade,
Grey Tower of Dalmeny_.
GEORGE MILNER.
II
A CRY ACROSS THE BLACK WATER
_With Rosemary for remembrance,
And Rue, sweet Rue, for you_.
It was at the waterfoot of the Ken, and the time of the year was June.
"Boat ahoy!"
The loud, bold cry carried far through the still morning air. The rain
had washed down all that was in the sky during the night, so that the
hail echoed through a world blue and empty.
Gregory Jeffray, a noble figure of a youth, stood leaning on the arch of
his mare's neck, quieting the nervous tremors of Eulalie, that very
dainty lady. His tall, alert figure, tight-reined and manly, was brought
out by his riding-dress. His pose against the neck of the beautiful
beast, from which a moment before he had swung himself, was that of
Hadrian's young Antinous.
"Boat ahoy!"
Gregory Jeffray, growing a little impatient, made a trumpet of his
hands, and sent the powerful voice, with which one day he meant to
thrill listening senates, sounding athwart the dancing ripples of the
loch.
On the farther shore was a flat white ferry-boat, looking, as it lay
motionless in the river, like a white table chained in the water with
its legs in the air. The chain along which it moved plunged into the
shallows beside him, and he could see it descending till he lost it in
the dusky pool across which the ferry plied. To the north, Loch Ken ran
in glistening levels and island-studded reaches to the base of
Cairnsmuir.
"Boat ahoy!"
A figure, like a white mark of exclamation moving over green paper, came
out of the little low whitewashed cottage opposite, and stood a moment
looking across the ferry, with one hand resting on its side and the
other held level with the eyes. Then the observer disappeared behind a
hedge, to be seen immediately coming down the narrow, deep-rutted lane
towards the ferry-boat. When the figure came again in sight of Gregory
Jeffray, he had no difficulty in distinguishing a slim girl, clad in
white, who came sedately towards him.
When she arrived at the white boat which floated so stilly on the
morning glitter of the water, only just stirred by a breeze from the
south, she stepped at once on board. Gregory could see her as she took
from the corner of the flat, where it stood erect along with other
boating gear, something which looked like a short iron hoe. With this
she walked to the end of the boat nearest him. She laid the hoe end of
the instrument against a chain that ran breast-high along one side of
the boat and at the stern plunged diagonally into the water. His mare
lifted her feet impatiently, as though the shoreward end of the chain
had brought a thrill across the loch from the moving ferry-boat. Turning
her back to him, the girl bent her slim young body without an effort;
and, as though by the gentlest magic, the ferry-boat drew nearer to him.
It did not seem to move; yet gradually the space of blue water between
it and the shore on which the whitewashed cottage stood spread and
widened. He could hear the gentle clatter of the wavelets against the
lip of the landing-drop as the boat came nearer. His mare tossed her
head and snuffed at this strange four-footed thing that glided towards
them.
Gregory, who loved all women, watched with natural interest the sway and
poise of the girlish figure. He heard the click and rattle of the chain
as she deftly disengaged her gripper-iron at the farther end, and,
turning, walked the deck's length towards him.
She seemed but a young thing to move so large a boat. He forgot to be
angry at being kept so long waiting, for of all women, he told himself,
he most admired tall girls in simple dresses. His exceptional interest
arose from the fact that he had never before seen one manage a
ferry-boat.
As he stood on the shore, and the great flat boat moved towards him, he
saw that the end of it nearest him was pulled up a couple of feet clear
of the water. Still the boat moved noiselessly forward, till he heard it
first grate and then ground gently, as the graceful pilot bore her
weight upon the iron bar to stay its progress. Gregory specially admired
the flex of her arms bent outwardly as she did so. Then she went to the
end of the boat, and let down the tilted gangway upon the pebbles at his
feet.
Gregory Jeffray instinctively took off his hat as he said to this girl,
"Good-morning! Can I get to the village of Dullarg by this ferry?"
"This is the way to the Dullarg," said the girl, simply and naturally,
leaning as she spoke upon her dripping gripper-iron.
Her eyes did not refuse to take in the goodliness of the youth while his
attention was for the moment given to his mare.
"Gently, gently, lass!" he said, patting the neck which arched
impatiently as she felt the boards hollow beneath her feet. Yet she
came obediently enough on deck, arching her fore-feet high and throwing
them out in an uncertain and tentative manner.
Then the girl, with a quiet and matter-of-fact acceptance of her duties,
placed her iron once more upon the chain, and bent herself to the task
with well-accustomed effort of her slender body.
The heart of the young man was stirred within him. True, he might have
beheld fifty field-wenches breaking their backs among the harvest
sheaves without a pang. This, however, was very different.
"Let me help you," he said.
"It is better that you stand by your horse," she said.
Gregory Jeffray looked disappointed.
"Is it not too hard work for you?" he queried, humbly and with abased
eyes.
"No," said the girl. "Ye see, sir, I live with my mother's two sisters
at the boathouse. They are very kind to me. They brought me up, though I
had neither father nor mother. And what signifies bringing the boat
across the Water a time or two?"
Her ready and easy movements told the tale for her. She needed no pity.
She asked for none, for which Gregory was rather sorry. He liked to pity
people, and then to right their grievances, if it were not very
difficult. Of what use otherwise was it to be, what he was called in
Galloway, the "Boy Sheriff"? Besides, he was taking a morning ride from
the Great House of the Barr, and upon his return to breakfast he desired
to have a tale to tell which would rivet attention upon himself.
"And do you do nothing all day, but only take the boat to and fro across
the loch?" he asked.
He saw the way clear now, he thought, to matter for an interesting
episode--the basis of which should be the delight of a beautiful girl
in spending her life in the carrying of desirable young men, riding upon
horses, over the shining morning waters of the Ken. They should all look
with eyes of wonder upon her; but she, the cold Dian of the lochside,
would never return look for look to any of them, save perhaps to Gregory
Jeffray. Gregory went about the world finding pictures and making
romances for himself. He meant to be a statesman; and, with this purpose
in view, it was wholly necessary for him to study the people, and
especially, he might have added, the young women of the people. Hitherto
he had done this chiefly in his imagination, but here certainly was
material attractive to his hand.
"Do you work at nothing else?" he repeated, for the girl was
uncomplimentarily intent upon her gripper-iron. How deftly she lifted it
just at the right moment, when it was in danger of being caught upon the
revolving wheel! How exactly she exerted just the right amount of
strength to keep the chain running sweetly upon its cogs! How daintily
she stepped back, avoiding the dripping of the water from the linked
iron which rose from the bed of the loch, passed under her hand, and
dipped diagonally down again into the deeps! Gregory had never seen
anything like it, so he told himself.
It was not until he had put his question the third time that the girl
answered, "Whiles I take the boat over to the waterfoot when there's a
cry across the Black Water."
The young man was mystified.
"'A cry across the Black Water!' What may that be?" he said.
The girl looked at him directly almost for the first time. Was he making
fun of her? She wondered. His face seemed earnest enough, and handsome.
It was not possible, she concluded.
"Ye'll be a stranger in these parts?" she answered interrogatively,
because she was a Scottish girl, and one question for another is good
national barter and exchange.
Gregory Jeffray was about to declare his names, titles, and
expectations; but he looked at the girl again, and saw something that
withheld him.
"Yes," he said, "I am staying for a week or two over at Barr."
The boat grounded on the pebbles, and the girl went to let down the
hinged end. It had seemed a very brief passage to Gregory Jeffray. He
stood still by his mare, as though he had much more to say.
The girl placed her cleek in the corner, and moved to leave the boat. It
piqued the young man to find her so unresponsive. "Tell me what you mean
by 'a cry across the Black Water,'" he said.
The girl pointed to the strip of sullen blackness that lay under the
willows upon the southern shore.
"That is the Black Water of Dee," she said simply, "and the green point
among the trees is the Rhonefoot. Whiles there's a cry from there. Then
I go over in the boat, and set them across."
"Not in this boat?" he said, looking at the upturned deal table swinging
upon its iron chain.
She smiled at his ignorance.
"That is the boat that goes across the Black Water of Dee," she said,
pointing to a small boat which lay under the bank on the left.
"And do you never go anywhere else?" he asked, wondering how she came by
her beauty and her manners.
"Only to the kirk on the Sabbaths," she said, "when I can get some one
to watch the boat for me."
"I will watch the boat for you!" he said impulsively.
The girl looked distressed. This gay gentleman was making fun of her,
assuredly. She did not answer. Would he never go away?
"That is your way," she said, pointing along the track in front. Indeed,
there was but one way, and the information was superfluous.
The end of the white, rose-smothered boathouse was towards them. A tall,
bowed woman's figure passed quickly round the gable.
"Is that your aunt?" he asked.
"That is my aunt Annie," said the girl; "my aunt Barbara is confined to
her bed."
"And what is your name, if I may ask?"
The girl glanced at him. He was certainly not making fun of her now.
"My name is Grace Allen," she said.
They paced together up the path. The bridle rein slipped from his arm,
but his hand instinctively caught it, and Eulalie cropped crisply at the
grasses on the bank, unregarded of her master.
They did not shake hands when they parted, but their eyes followed each
other a long way.
"Where is the money?" said Aunt Barbara from her bed as Grace Allen came
in at the open door.
"Dear me!" said the girl, frightened: "I have forgotten to ask him for
it!"
"Did I ever see sic a lassie! Rin after him an' get it; haste ye fast."
But Gregory was far out of reach by the time Grace got to the door. The
sound of hoofs came from high up the wooded heights.
Gregory Jeffray reached the Barr in time for late breakfast. There was a
large house company. The men were prowling discontentedly about, looking
under covers or cutting slices from dishes on the sideboard; but the
ladies were brightly curious, and eagerly welcomed Gregory. He at least
did not rise with a headache and a bad temper every morning. They
desired an account of his morning's ride. But on the way home he had
changed his mind about telling of his adventure. He said that he had had
a pleasant ride. It had been a beautiful morning.
"But have you nothing whatever to tell us?" they asked; for, indeed,
they had a right to expect something.
Gregory said nothing. This was not usual, for at other times when he had
nothing to tell, it did not cost him much to invent something
interesting.
"You are very dull this morning, Sheriff," said the youngest daughter of
the house, who, being the baby and pretty, had grown pettishly
privileged in speech.
But deep within him Gregory was saying, "What a blessing that I forgot
to pay the ferry!"
When he got outside he said to his host, "Is there such a place
hereabouts as the Rhonefoot?"
"Why, yes, there is," said Laird Cunningham of Barr. "But why do you
ask? I thought a Sheriff would know everything without asking--even an
ornamental one on his way to the Premiership."
"Oh, I heard the name," said Gregory. "It struck me as a curious one."
So that evening there came over the river from the Waterfoot of the
Rhone the sound of a voice calling. Grace Allen sat thoughtfully looking
out of the rose-hung window of the boathouse. Her face was an oval of
perfect curve, crowned with a mass of light brown hair, in which were
red lights when the sun shone directly upon it. Her skin was clear, pale
as ivory, and even exertion hardly brought the latent under-flush of red
to the surface.
"There's somebody at the waterfit. Gang, lassie, an' dinna be lettin'
them aff withoot their siller this time!" said her aunt Barbara from
her bed. Annie Allen was accustomed to say nothing, and she did it now.
The boat to the Rhonefoot was seldom needed, and the oars were not kept
in it. They leaned against the end of the cottage, and Grace Allen took
them on her shoulder as she went down. She carried them as easily as
another girl might carry a parasol.
Again there came the cry from the Rhonefoot, echoing joyously across the
river.
Standing well back in the boat, so as to throw up the bow, she pushed
off. The water was deep where the boat lay, and it had been drawn half
up on the bank. Where Grace dipped her oars into the silent water, the
pool was so black that the blade of the oar was lost in the gloom before
it got half-way down. Above there was a light wind moaning and rustling
in the trees, but it did not stir even a ripple on the dark surface of
the pool where the Black Water of Dee meets the brighter Ken.
Grace bent to her oars with a springing _verve_ and force which made the
tubby little boat draw towards the shore, the whispering lapse of water
gliding under its sides all the while. Three lines of wake were marked
behind--a vague white turbulence in the middle and two lines of bubbles
on either side where the oars had dipped, which flashed a moment and
then winked themselves out.
When she reached the Waterfoot, and the boat touched the shore, Grace
Allen looked up to see Gregory Jeffray standing alone on the little
copse-enclosed triangle of grass. He smiled pleasantly. She had not time
to be surprised.
"What did you think of me this morning, running away without paying my
fare?" he asked.
It seemed very natural now that he should come. She was glad that he had
not brought his horse.
"I thought you would come by again," said Grace Allen, standing up,
with one oar over the side ready to pull in or push off.
Gregory extended his hand as though to ask for hers to steady him as he
came into the boat. Grace was surprised. No one ever did that at the
Rhonefoot, but she thought it might be that he was a stranger and did
not understand about boats. She held out her hand. Gregory leapt in
beside her in a moment, but did not at once release the hand. She tried
to pull it away.
"It is too little a hand to do so much hard work," he said.
Instantly Grace became conscious that it was rough and hard with rowing.
She had not thought of this before. He stooped and kissed it.
"Now," he said, "let me row across for you, and sit in front of me where
I can see you. You made me forget all about everything else this
morning, and now I must make up for it."
It was a long way across, and evidently Gregory Jeffray was not a good
oarsman, for it was dark when Grace Allen went indoors to her aunts. Her
heart was bounding within her. Her bosom rose and fell as she breathed
quickly and silently through her parted red lips. There was a new thing
in her eye.
Every evening thereafter, through all that glorious height of midsummer,
there came a crying at the Waterfoot; and every evening Grace Allen went
over to the edge of the Rhone wood to answer it. There the boat lay
moored to a stone upon the turf, while Gregory and she walked upon the
flowery forest carpet, and the dry leaves watched and clashed and
muttered above them as the gloaming fell. These were days of rapture,
each a doorway into yet fuller and more perfect joy.
Over at the Waterfoot the copses grew close. The green turf was velvet
underfoot. The blackbirds fluted in the hazels there. None of them
listened to the voice of Gregory Jeffray, or cared for what he said to
Grace Allen when she went nightly to meet him over the Black Water.
She rowed back alone, the simple soul that was in her forwandered and
mazed with excess of joy. As she set the boat to the shore and came up
the bank bearing the oars which were her wings into the world of love
under the green alders, the light in the west, lingering clear and pure
and cold, shone upon her and added radiances to her eyes.
But Aunt Annie watched her with silent pain. Barbara from her bed spoke
sharp and cruel words which Grace Allen listened to not at all.
For as soon as the morning shone bright over the hills and ran on
tip-toe up the sparkling ripples of the loch, she looked across the
Black Water to the hidden ways where in the evening her love should meet
her.
As she went her daily rounds, and the gripper-iron slipped on the wet
chain or grew hot in the sun, as she heard the clack of the wheel and
the soft slow grind of the boat's broad lip on the pebbles, Grace Allen
said over and over to herself, "It is so long, only so long, till he
will come."
So all the days she waited in a sweet content. Barbara reproached her;
Aunt Annie perilled her soul by lying to shield her; but Grace herself
was shut out from shame or fear, from things past or things to come, by
faith and joy that at last she had found one whom her soul loved.
And overhead the dry poplar leaves clashed and rustled, telling out to
one another that love was a vain thing, and the thrush cried thrice,
"Beware." But Grace Allen would not have believed had one risen to her
from the dead.
So the great wasteful summer days went by, the glory of the passionate
nights of July, the crisper blonde luxuriance of August. Every night
there was the calling from the green plot across the Black Water. Every
night Aunt Annie wandered, a withered grey ghost, along the hither side
of the inky pool, looking for what she could not see and listening for
that which she could not hear. Then she would go in to lie gratuitously
to Barbara, who told her to her face that she did not believe her.
But in the first chill of mid-September, swift as the dividing of the
blue-black thunder-cloud by the winking flame, fell the sword of God,
smiting and shattering. It seemed hard that it should fall on the weaker
and the more innocent. But then God has plenty of time.
One chilly gloaming there was no calling at the Rhonefoot. Nevertheless
Grace rowed over and waited, imagining that all evil had befallen her
lover. Within, her aunt Barbara fretted and murmured at her absence,
driving her silent sister into involved refuges of lies to shield young
Grace Allen, whom her soul loved.
The next day went by as the night had passed, with an awful constriction
about her heart, a numbness over all her body; yet Grace did her work as
one who dares not stop.
Two serving-men crossed in the ferry-boat, unconcernedly talking over
the country news as men do when they meet.
"Did ye hear aboot young Jeffray?" asked the herd from the Mains.
"Whatna Jeffray?" asked, without much show of interest, the ploughman
from Drumglass.
"Wi' man, the young lad that the daft folk in Enbra sent here for
Sheriff."
"I didna ken he was hereawa'," said the Mains, with a purely perfunctory
surprise.
"Ou ay, he has been a feck ower by at the Barr. They say he's gaun to
get marriet to the youngest dochter. She's hae a gye fat stockin'-fit,
I'se warrant."
"Ye may say sae, or a lawyer wadna come speerin' her," returned him from
Drumglass as the boat reached the farther side.
"Guid-e'en to ye, Grace," said they both as they put their pennies down
on the little tin plate in the corner.
"She's an awesome still lassie, that," said the Mains, as he took the
road down to Parton Raw, where he had trysted with a maid of another
sort. "Did ye notice she never said a word to us, neyther 'Thank ye,'
nor yet 'Guid-day'? Her een were fair stelled in her head."
"Na, I didna observe," said Drumglass cotman indifferently.
"Some fowk are like swine. They notice nocht that's no pitten intil the
trough afore them!" said the Mains indignantly.
So they parted, each to his own errand.
Day swayed and swirled into a strange night of shooting stars and
intensest darkness. The soul of Grace Allen wandered in blackest night.
Sometimes the earth appeared ready to open and swallow her up. Sometimes
she seemed to be wandering by the side of the great pool of the Black
Water with her hands full of flowers. There were roses blush-red, like
what he had said her cheeks were sometimes. There were velvety pansies,
and flowers of strange intoxicating perfume, the like of which she had
never seen. But at every few yards she felt that she must fling them all
into the black water and fare forth into the darkness to gather more.
Then in her bed she would start up, hearing the hail of a dear voice
calling to her from the Rhonefoot. Once she put on her clothes in haste
and would have gone forth; but her aunt Annie, waking and startled, a
tall, gaunt apparition, came to her.
"Grace Allen," she said, "where are you gangin' at this time o' the
nicht?"
"There's somebody at the boat," she said, "waiting. Let me gang, Aunt
Annie: they want me; I hear them cry. O Annie, I hear them crying as a
bairn cries!"
"Lie doon on yer bed like a clever lass," said her aunt gently. "There's
naebody there."
"Or gin there be," said Aunt Barbara from her bed, "e'en let them cry.
Is this a time for decent fowk to be gaun play-actin' aboot?"
So the daylight came, and the evening and the morning were the second
day. And Grace Allen went about her work with clack of gripper-iron and
dip of oar.
Late on in the gloaming of the third day following, Aunt Annie went down
to the broad flat boat that lay so still at the water's edge. Something
black was knocking dully against it.
Grace had been gone four hours, and it was weary work watching along the
shore or going within out of the chill wind to endure Barbara's bitter
tongue.
The black thing that knocked was the small boat, broken loose from her
moorings and floating helplessly. Annie Allen took a boathook and pulled
it to the shore. Except that the boat was half full of flowers, there
was nothing and no one inside.
But the world span round and the stars went out when the finder saw the
flowers.
When Aunt Annie Allen came to herself, she found the water was rising
rapidly. It was up to her ankles. She went indoors and asked for Grace.
"Save us, Ann!" said Barbara; "I thocht she was wi' you. Where hae ye
been till this time o' nicht? An' your feet's dreepin' wat. Haud aff the
clean floor!"
"But Gracie! Oor lassie Grade! What's come o' Gracie?" wailed the elder
woman.
At that instant there came so thrilling a cry from over the dark waters
out of the night that the women turned to one another and instinctively
caught at each other's hands.
"Leave me, I maun gang," said Aunt Annie. "That's surely Grace."
Her sister gripped her tight.
"Let me gang--let me gang. She's my ain lassie, no yours!" Annie said
fiercely, endeavouring to thrust off Barbara's hands as they clutched
her like birds' talons from the bed.
"Help me to get up," said Barbara; "I canna be left here. I'll come wi'
ye."
So she that had been sick for twelve years arose, like a ghost from the
tomb, and with her sister went out to seek for the girl they had lost.
They found their way to the boat, reeling together like drunken men.
Annie almost lifted her sister in, and then fell herself among the
drenched and waterlogged flowers.
With the instinct of old habitude they fell to the oars, Barbara rowing
the better and the stronger. They felt the oily swirl of the Dee rising
beneath them, and knew that there had been a mighty rain upon the hills.
"The Lord save us!" cried Barbara suddenly. "Look!"
She pointed up the long pool of the Black Water. What she saw no man
knows, for Aunt Annie had fainted, and Barbara was never herself after
that hour.
Aunt Annie lay like a log across her thwart. But, with the strength of
another world, Barbara unshipped the oar of her sister and slipped it
upon the thole-pin opposite to her own. Then she turned the head of the
boat up the pool of the Black Watery Something white floated dancingly
alongside, upborne for a moment on the boiling swirls of the rising
water. Barbara dropped her oars, and snatched at it. She held on to some
light wet fabric by one hand; with the other she shook her sister.
"Here's oor wee Gracie," she said: "Ann, help me hame wi' her!"
So they brought her home, and laid her all in dripping white upon her
white bed. Barbara sat at the bed-head and crooned, having lost her
wits. Aunt Annie moved all in a piece, as though she were about to fall
headlong.
"White floo'ers for the angels, where Gracie's ga'en to! Annie, woman,
dinna ye see them by her body--four great angels, at ilka corner yin?"
Barbara's voice rose and fell, wayward and querulous. There was no other
sound in the house, only the water sobbing against the edge of the
ferry-boat.
"And the first is like a lion," she went on, in a more even recitative,
"and the second is like an ox, and the third has a face like a man, and
the fourth is like a flying eagle. An' they're sittin' on ilka bedpost;
and they hae sax wings, that meet owre my Gracie, an' they cry withoot
ceasing, 'Holy! holy! holy! Woe unto him that causeth one of these
little ones to perish! It were better for him that a millstone were
hanged about his neck and he were cast into the deeps o' the Black
Water!'"
But the neighbours paid no attention to her--for, of course, she was
mad.
Then the wise folk came and explained how it had all happened. Here she
had been gathering flowers; here she had slipped; and here, again, she
had fallen. Nothing could be clearer. There were the flowers. There was
the dangerous pool on the Black Water. And there was the body of Grace
Allen, a young thing dead in the flower of her days.
"I see them! I see them!" cried Barbara, fixing her eyes on the bed,
her voice like a shriek; "they are full of eyes, behind and before, and
they see into the heart of man. Their faces are full of anger, and their
mouths are open to devour--"
"Wheesh, wheesh, woman! Here's the young Sheriff come doon frae the Barr
wi' the Fiscal to tak' evidence."
And Barbara Allen was silent as Gregory Jeffray came in.
To do him justice, when he wrote her the letter that killed--concerning
the necessities of his position and career--he had tried to break the
parting gently. How should he know all that she knew? It was clearly an
ill turn that fate had played him. Indeed, he felt ill-used. So he
listened to the Fiscal taking evidence, and in due course departed.
But within an inner pocket he had a letter that was not filed with the
documents, but which might have shed clearer light upon when and how
Grace Allen slipped and fell, gathering flowers at night above the great
pool of the Black Water.
"There is set up a throne in the heavens," chanted mad Barbara Allen as
Gregory went out; "and One sits upon it--and my Gracie's there, clothed
in white robes, an' a palm in her hand. And you'll be there, young man,"
she cried after him, "and I'll be there. There's a cry comin' owre the
Black Water for you, like the cry that raised me oot o' my bed yestreen.
An' ye'll hear it--ye'll hear it, braw young man; ay--and rise up and
answer, too!"
But they paid no heed to her--for, of course, she was mad. Neither did
Gregory Jeffray hear aught as he went out, but the water lapping against
the little boat that was still half full of flowers.
The days went by, and being added together one at a time, they made the
years. And the years grew into one decade, and lengthened out towards
another.
Aunt Annie was long dead, a white stone over her; but there was no stone
over Grace Allen--only a green mound where daisies grew.
Sir Gregory Jeffray came that way. He was a great law-officer of the
Crown, and first heir to the next vacant judgeship. This, however, he
was thinking of refusing because of the greatness of his private
practice.
He had come to shoot at the Barr, and his baggage was at Barmark
station. How strange it would be to see the old places again in the
gloom of a September evening!
Gregory still loved a new sensation. All was so long past--the
bitterness clean gone out of it. The old boathouse had fallen into other
hands, and railways had come to carry the traffic beyond the ferry.
As Sir Gregory Jeffray walked from the late train which set him down at
the station, he felt curiously at peace. The times of the Long Ago came
back not ungratefully to his mind. There had been much pleasure in them.
He even thought kindly of the girl with whom he had walked in the glory
of a forgotten summer along the hidden ways of the woods. Her last
letter, long since destroyed, was not disagreeable to him when he
thought of the secret which had been laid to rest so quietly in the pool
of the Black Water.
He came to the water's edge. He sent his voice, stronger now than of
yore, but without the old ring of boyish hopefulness, across the loch. A
moment's silence, the whisper of the night wind, and then from the gloom
of the farther side an answering hail--low, clear, and penetrating.
"I am in luck to find them out of bed," said Gregory Jeffray to himself.
He waited and listened. The wind blew chill from the south athwart the
ferry. He shivered, and drew his fur-lined travelling-coat about him. He
could hear the water lapping against the mighty piers of the railway
viaduct above, which, with its gaunt iron spans, like bows bent to send
arrows into the heavens, dimly towered between him and the skies.
Now, this is all that men definitely know of the fate of Sir Gregory
Jeffray. A surfaceman who lived in the new houses above the
landing-place saw him standing there, heard him hailing the Waterfoot of
the Dee, to which no boat had plied for years. Maliciously he let the
stranger call, and abode to see what should happen.
Yet astonishment held him dumb when again across the dark stream came
the crying, thrilling him with an unknown terror, till he clutched the
door to make sure of his retreat within. Mastering his fear, he stole
nearer till he could hear the oars planted in the iron pins, the push
off the shore, and then the measured dip of oars coming towards the
stranger across the pool of the Black Water.
"How do they know, I wonder, that I want to be taken to the Rhonefoot?
They are bringing the small boat," he heard him say.
A skiff shot out of the gloom. It was a woman who was rowing. The boat
grounded stern on. The watcher saw the man step in and settle himself on
the seat.
"What rubbish is this?" Gregory Jeffray cried angrily as he cleared a
great armful of flowers off the seat and threw them among his feet.
The oars dipped, and without sound the boat glided out upon the waves of
the loch towards the Black Water, into whose oily depths the blades fall
silently, and where the water does not lap about the prow. The night
grew suddenly very cold. Somewhere in the darkness over the Black Water
the watching surfaceman heard some one call three times the name of
Gregory Jeffray. It sounded like a young child's voice. And for very
fear he ran in and shut the door, well knowing that for twenty years no
boat had plied there.
It was noted as a strange thing that, on the same night on which Sir
Gregory Jeffray was lost, the last of the Allens of the old ferry-house
died in the Crichton Asylum. Barbara Allen was, without doubt, mad to
the end, for the burden of her latest cry was, "He kens noo! he kens
noo! The Lord our God is a jealous God! Now let Thy servant depart in
peace!"
But Gregory Jeffray was never seen again by water or on shore. He had
heard the cry across the Black Water.
III
SAINT LUCY OF THE EYES
[_Taken from the Journals of Travel written by Stephen Douglas, sometime
of Culsharg in Galloway_.]
I.
_O mellow rain upon the clover tops;
O breath of morning blown o'er meadow-sweet;
Lush apple-blooms from which the wild bee drops
Inebriate; O hayfield scents, my feet_
_Scatter abroad some morning in July;
O wildwood odours of the birch and pine,
And heather breaths from great red hill-tops nigh,
Than olive sweeter or Sicilian vine_;--
_Not all of you, nor summer lands of balm--
Not blest Arabia,
Nor coral isles in seas of tropic calm.
Such heart's desire into my heart can draw_.
II.
_O scent of sea on dreaming April morn
Borne landward on a steady-blowing wind;
O August breeze, o'er leagues of rustling corn,
Wafts of clear air from uplands left behind_,
_And outbreathed sweetness of wet wallflower bed,
O set in mid-May depth of orchard close,
Tender germander blue, geranium red;
O expressed sweetness of sweet briar-rose_;
_Too gross, corporeal, absolute are ye,
Ye help not to define
That subtle fragrance, delicate and free,
Which like a vesture clothes this Love of mine_.
"_Heart's Delight_."
CHAPTER I
THE WOMAN OF THE RED EYELIDS
It was by Lago d'Istria that I found my pupil. I had come without halt
from Scotland to seek him. For the first time I had crossed the Alps,
and from the snow-flecked mountain-side, where the dull yellow-white
patches remained longest, I saw beneath me the waveless plain of
Lombardy.
The land of Lombardy--how the words had run in my dreams! Surely some
ancestor of mine had wandered northwards from that gracious plain. On
one side of me, at least, I was sib to the vineyards and the chestnut
groves. For strange yearnings thrilled me as I beheld white-garlanded
cities strung across the plain, the blue lakes grey in the haze, like
eyes that look through tears.
Yet hitherto a hill-farm on the moors of Minnigaff had been my
abiding-place. There I had played with the collies and the grey rabbits.
There I had listened to the whaup and the peewits crying in the night;
and save the cold, grey, resonant spaces of Edinburgh, whither I had
gone to study, this was all my eyes had yet known. But when Giovanni
Turazza, exile from the city of Verona, paused in his reading of the
sonorous Italian to rebuke my Scots accent, and continued softly to give
me illustrations of the dialects of north and south, something moved
within me that sickened me to think of the Lombard plain sleeping in the
gracious sunshine--which I might never see.
Yet I saw it. I trod its ways and stood by its still waters. And already
they are become my life and my home.
Now, I who write am Stephen Douglas, of the moorland stock of the
northern Douglases--kin to Douglaswater, and on the wrong side of the
blanket to Drumdarroch himself. It has been the custom that one of the
Douglases should in every generation be sent to the college to rear for
the kirk.
For the hand of the Douglas has ever been kind to kin; and since
patronage came back--in law or out law, the Douglases have managed to
put their man into Drumdarroch parish and to have a Douglas in the white
manse by the Waterside. And so it is like to be when, as they say, the
rights of patron shall again pass away.
Now, I was in process or manufacture for this purpose, though
threatening to turn out somewhat over tardy in development to profit by
the act of patronage. But the Douglas dourness stood me in good stead,
as it has done all the Douglases that ever lived since the greatest of
the race charged to the death, with the point of his spear dropped low
and the heart of his lord thrown before him, among the Paynim hordes.
The lad to undertake whose tutelage I went abroad was a Fenwick of
Allerton in the Border country--the scion of a reputable stock, sometime
impoverished by gambling in the times of the Regent, and before that
with whistling "Owre the water to Charlie"; but now, by the opening-up
of the sea-coal pits, again gathering in the canny siller as none of the
Fenwicks had done in the palmiest days of the moss-trooping.
Well I knew when I set out that I had my work before me, and that I
should earn my two hundred pounds a year or all were done. For I had but
a couple of years more than my pupil to boast myself upon; and he,
having grown up on the Continent, chiefly in Latin cities and German
watering-places, was vastly superior to me in the knowledge which comes
not easily to the lads from the moors, who at all times know better how
to loup a moss-hag than how to make a courtly bow.
Yet for all that I did not mean to be far behind any Border Fenwick when
it came to making bows. Nor, as it happened, was I when all was done.
This confidence was partly owing to full feeding on fine porridge and
braxy, but more to that inbred belief of Galloway in itself which the
ill-affected and envious nominate its conceit.
Henry Fenwick was abiding in this city of Vico Averso, as I had been
informed by his uncle and guardian, for the baths. He had been advised
of my coming, and, like the kindly lad that he proved to be, I found him
waiting for me when the diligence arrived.
We met with few words on either side, but I think with instant hearty
liking. My pupil was tall and dark, his hair a little long, yet not
falling to his shoulders--somewhat feminine in type of feature and
Italianate in complexion. But the mouth shewed breeding, the eyes
kindliness; and, after all, these are the main features. I was
especially glad to find myself taller than he by a span of inches.
He took me to the hotel where a room had been ordered for me--not one of
the common Italian inns, but a hotel built for the accommodation of
foreigners. As we went up the steps, we passed a lady sitting in the
shade with a book. She was a large fair woman, with sleepy eyes and a
mane of bronzed gold hair. She had been looking at us as we came, I will
be bound; but when we passed she became absorbed and unconscious upon
her book.
As Henry raised his hat she bowed slightly to him, lifting at the same
time her heavy eyelids and glancing at me. I had once seen that look
before--in a spectacle of wild beasts when I happened to stand close to
a drowsing tigress that twitched an eyelid and flashed a yellow eye at
me. In that eye-shot on the verandah of the hotel in Vico Averso, the
crossing of glances was like a challenge, and thrilled me as when one is
called to fight. I think we hated one another on the spot; yet for the
life of me I could not tell why, save that the woman of the tiger's
glance had a red edge to her heavy eyelids, and no eyelashes that I
could see--which things are not the marks of a good woman, as I take it.
Yet there was no real cause for the bitter and sudden dislike, for, as
it chanced, she came but little into our adventures. For youth, for the
sake of change, turns as readily away from evil as from good.
So eager was I to be down and out of doors, that I had hardly time to
make disposition of my goods in the room which had been reserved for me.
I threw open the casement. I hung half out of the window, and satisfied
myself with looking upon the still, calm blue of Lago d'Orta beneath,
flecked with heavy-bodied craft with deep yellow sails. My heart all the
while was crying out hungrily, "At last! at last!"
The precipices of hills, coloured like amethysts, fronted us, where the
southern Alps threw themselves downwards to the lake-shore. Half-a-dozen
hotels with white walls and green blinds clung about the outside of the
little town, and specially about the baths, which ever since the time of
the Romans had given the place its reputation. Few English people went
there, but many Italians, some Austrians, especially women--German men,
and cosmopolitan Russians, to whom all outside their native country was
a Fatherland.
"Come," said Henry as soon as we had become a little familiar, "let us
go to the baths."
Entering a low stone door, we ran up a flight of steps and found
ourselves in a circular building of ancient marble. It was to me the
strangest sight. We looked down on a great number of people up to their
necks in a kind of thick, coffee-coloured fluid, which steamed and gave
off strange odours. Men and women were there, old and young. All were
clad in full suits of light material, and comported themselves towards
each other as in a drawing-room. The sight of so many heads all bobbing
about on the coffee-coloured mud, like a hundred John the Baptists on
one large charger, was to me exceedingly diverting.
Little tables were floating about on the muddy water, and some pairs in
quiet corners played chess and even cards. But there was a constant
circulation among the throng. Introductions were effected in form, save
that no one shook hands, at least above the water; only the detached
heads bowed ceremoniously. It was a new canto of the _Inferno_--the
condemned playing dully at human society in the bubbling caldrons of the
place of evil shades. Henry proposed to go down and take a bath, but my
stomach rose against the fumes and the slimy brown stuff.
"It is not nearly so bad when you are once in!" he said, for he had
tried it. But though I had reason to believe that to be true, I had no
heart to make the test for myself.
As we came out, Henry made me an introduction to the Lady of the Red
Eyelids.
"Madame von Eisenhagen!" So that is your name, thought I; and I wonder
what may be your intentions! I had never seen the breed before, but the
side of me that was sib to the South seemed to leap to a comprehension.
As Madame and I crossed our glances again, I am sure we both knew that
it was to the knife. For Henry Fenwick, being a lad, had laid his boy's
heart in her hands. Yet not seriously, but as a boy will when a woman
twice his age thinks it worth her while to spread a net for him,
flattering him with her eyes.
So for a while we sat on the terrace, and a kind of scentless, spineless
whitethorn wept sprays of flowers upon us. We spoke French, in which my
pupil, as I found, had greatly the advantage of me, and thought
extremely well of himself in consequence. But within me I said, "My
friend, wait till I have you a week at Greek!"
And this indeed came to pass, for over the intricacies of that language
I made him presently to sweat consumedly.
Of the matter of our talk there is not much to say. Henry spoke freely
and well, Madame interjecting leading questions, and holding him with
her eyes. I, on the contrary, spoke little, being occupied with the
scenes going on beneath me--the men in the piazza piling the fine grain
for the making of macaroni--the changing and chaffering groups about the
kerchiefed market-women--the dark-faced, gypsy-like men with beady eyes.
The murmur of the conversation came to me only at intervals, like voices
in a dream; and sometimes for whole sentences together I lost its
meaning completely.
Indeed, I had more pleasure in looking at the houses in Vico Averso,
which were tangled together without the semblance of a plan. Each house,
or part of a house, struggled upward to occupy its own patch of
sky-line, in a hundred different heights and breadths. Each had a scrap
of garden clinging to it along the lake-side, in which the green of the
magnolias contrasted with the grey aspens and the warmer oleanders.
There was a bright and laughing charm about the whole which drew my
heart, and I longed to spend a lifetime in these white and
foliage-fringed places.
But I found very soon that the face of Vico Averso was her fortune. For
the side of our hostel which was turned to a dark and narrow Street of
Smells took away my desire to dwell there. There came out clear in my
mind the thought and sight of our hill-farm of Culsharg, set on the edge
of its miles of heather, the free airs blowing about it, and all the
wild birds crying. My mother would be coming to the door to look for my
grandfather as he came off the hill from the sheep. A disgust at the
bubbling devil's-caldron, a horror of the smiling, monosyllabic Woman of
the Red Eyelids, filled my heart. I resolved to battle it out with Henry
that very night, and to leave Vico Averso at once. If he would not do so
much for me, I knew that I might take the diligence back again the way I
came, and report my failure. But, for all that, I did not mean thus
lamely to fail or go home with my finger in my mouth.
That night I drew from the lad his heart. He had been here for two
months--indeed, ever since his Swiss tutor, Herr Gunther, had departed
for Zurich suddenly, having been ignominiously thrashed by his own
pupil. I gathered from him that he had intended to perform the like for
me, but had given up the idea after seeing me leap from the top of the
diligence.
Yet he was not unwilling to be taught that there are better things out
under the free sunshine than to dream away good days with a woman like
Madame Von Eisenhagen, who after all had perhaps done nothing worse than
encourage the lad to philander and to waste his time. Then I cunningly
painted the joys of a walking tour. We should take our packs on our
backs, only a few pounds' weight; and, our staves in our hands, like
student lads of clerkly learning in the ancient times, we should go
forth to seek our adventures--a new one every hour, a new roof to sleep
under every night, and maids fairer than dreams waving hands to us over
every vineyard wall. Thus cunningly I baited my trap.
So had I gone many a time in mine own country, and so I meant to lead my
pupil now. Henry Fenwick rose joyously at the thought. Madame had made
his service a little hard, and, what is worse, a little monotonous. He
was but a boy, and needed not, she thought, the binding distractions
which usually accompany such allegiances.