CHAPTER XIV

AN ERROR IN JUDGMENT

I had expected that Lucia would have come to greet me, and that some of

the other guests would be moving about the halls. But though the rooms

were brightly lit, and servants moving here and there, there abode a

hush upon the place strangely out of keeping with my expectation.

In my own room I arrayed me in clothes more fitted to the palace in

which I found myself, though, after all was done, their plainness made a

poor contrast to the mailed warriors on the pedestals and the scarlet

senators in the frames.

There was a rose, fresh as the white briar-blossom in my mother's

garden, upon my table. I took it as Lucia's gage, and set it in my coat.

"My lady waits," said the major-domo at the door.

I went down-stairs, conscious by the hearing of the ear that a heart was

beating somewhere loudly, mine or another's I could not tell.

A door opened. A rush of warm and gracious air, a benediction of subdued

light, and I found myself bending over the hand of the Countess. I had

been talking some time before I came to the knowledge that I was saying

anything.

Then we went to dinner through the long lit passages, the walls giving

back the merry sound of our voices. Still, strangely enough, no other

guests appeared. But my wonder was hushed by the gladness on the face of

the Countess. We dined in an alcove, screened from the vast dining-room.

The table was set for three. As we came in, the Countess murmured a

name. An old lady bowed to me, and moved stiffly to a seat without a

word. Lucia continued her conversation without a pause, and paid no

further heed to the ancient dame, who took her meal with a single-eyed

absorption upon her plate.

My wonder increased. Could it be that Lucia and I were alone in this

great castle! I cannot tell whether the thought brought me more

happiness or discontent. Clearly, I was the only guest. Was I to remain

so, or would others join us after dinner? My heart beat faint and

tumultuously. At random I answered to Lucia's questionings about my

journey. My slow-moving Northern intelligence began to form questions

which I must ask. Through the laughing charm of my lady's face and the

burning radiance of her eyes, there grew into plainness against the

tapestry the sad, pale face of my mother and her clear, consistent eyes.

I talked--I answered--I listened--all through a humming chaos. For the

teaching of the moorland farm, the ethic of the Sabbath nights lit by a

single candle and sanctified by the chanted psalm and the open Book,

possessed me. It was the domination of the Puritan base, and most

bitterly I resented, while I could not prevent, its hold upon me.

Dinner was over. We took our way into a drawing-room, divided into two

parts by a screen which was drawn half-way. In the other half of the

great room stood an ancient piano, and to this our ancient lady betook

herself.

The Countess sat down in a luxurious chair, and motioned me to sit close

by her in another, but one smaller and lower. We talked of many things,

circling ever about ourselves. Yet I could not keep the old farm out of

my mind--its simple manners, its severe code of morals, its labour and

its pain. Also there came another thought, the sense that all this had

happened before--the devil's fear that I was not the first who had so

sat alone beside the Countess and seen the obsequious movement of these

well-trained servants.

"Tell me, Douglas," at last the Countess said, glancing down kindly at

me, "why you are so silent and _distrait_. This is our first evening

here, and yet you are sad and forgetful, even of me."

What a blind fool I was not to see the innocence and love in her eyes!

"Countess--" I began, and paused uncertain.

"Sir to you!" she returned, making me a little bow in acknowledgment of

the title.

"Lucia," I went on, taking no notice of her frivolity, "I thought--I

thought--that is, I imagined--that your brother--that others would be

here as well as I--"

I got no further. I saw something sweep across her face. Her eyes

darkened. Her face paled. The thin curved nostrils whitened at the

edges. I paused, astonished at the tempest I had aroused by my faltering

stupidities. Why could I not take what the gods gave?

"I see," she said bitterly: "you reproach me with bringing you here as

my guest, alone. You think I am bold and abandoned because I dreamed of

an Eden here with friendship and truth as dwellers in it. I saw a new

and perfect life; and with a word, here in my own house, and before you

have been an hour my guest, you insult me--"

"Lucia, Lucia," I pleaded, "I would not insult you for the world--I

would not think a thought--speak a word--dishonouring to you for my

life--"

"You have--you have--it is all ended--broken!" she said, standing

up--"all broken and thrown down!"

She made with her hands the bitter gesture of breaking.

"Listen," she said, while I stood amazed and silent. "I am no girl. I am

older than you, and know the world. It is because I dreamed I saw that

which I thought truer and purer in you than the conventions of life that

I asked you to come here--"

"Lucia, Lucia, my lady, listen to me," I pleaded, trying to take her

hand. She put me aside with the single swift, imperious movement which

women use when their pride is deeply wounded.

"That lady"--she pointed within to where the silent dame of years was

tinkling unconcernedly on the keys--"is my dead husband's mother. Surely

she abundantly supplies the proprieties. And now you--you whom I thought

I could trust, spoil my year--spoil my life, slay in a moment my love

with reproach and scorn!"

She walked to the door, turned and said--"You, whom I trusted, have done

this!" Then she threw out her hands in an attitude of despair and scorn,

and disappeared.

I sat long with my head on my hands, thinking--the world about me in

ruins, never to be built up. Then I went up to my room, paused at the

wardrobe, changed my black coat to that in which I had arrived, and went

softly down-stairs again. The waning moon had just risen late, and threw

a weird light over the ranges of buildings, the gateways and towers.

I walked swiftly to the outer gate, and, there leaping a hedge of

flowering plants, I fled down the mountain through the vineyards. I

went swiftly, eager to escape from Castel del Monte, but in the tangle

of walls and fences it was not easy to advance. At the parting of three

ways I paused, uncertain in which direction to proceed. Suddenly,

without warning, a dark figure stepped from some hidden place. I saw the

gleam of something bright. I knew that I was smitten. Waves of white-hot

metal ran suddenly in upon my brain, and I knew no more.

When I awoke, my first thought was that I was back again in the room

where Lucia and I had talked together. I felt something perfumed and

soft like a caress. It seemed like the filmy lace that the Countess wore

upon her shoulder. My head lay against it. I heard a voice say, as it

had been in my ear, through the murmuring floods of many waters--"My

boy! my boy! And I, wicked one that I was, sent you to this!"

All the time she who spoke was busy binding something to the place on my

side where the pain burned like white metal. And as she did so she

crooned softly over me, saying as before--"My poor boy! my poor boy!" It

was like the murmuring of a dove over its nestling. Again and again I

was borne away from her and from myself on the floods of great waters.

The universe alternately opened out to infinite horrors of vastness, and

shrank to pinpoint dimensions to crush me. Through it all I heard my

love's voice, and was content to let my head bide just where it lay.

Ever and anon I came to the surface, as a diver does lest he die. I

heard myself say--"It was an error in judgment!" ... Then after a

pause--"nothing but an error in judgment."

And I felt that on which my head rested shake with a little earthquake

of hysterical laughter. The strain had been too great, yet I had said

the right word.

"Yes," she said softly, "my poor boy, it has been indeed an error in

judgment for both of us!"

"But a blessed error, Lucia," I said, answering her when she least

expected it.

A dark shape flitted before my dazzled eyes.

The Countess looked up. "Leonardi!" she called, "tell me, has one of

your people done this?"

"Nay," said the man, "none of the servants of the Bond nor yet of the

Mafia. Pietro the muleteer hath done it of his own evil heart for

robbery. Here are the watch and purse!"

"And the murderer--where is he?" said again Lucia. "Let him be brought!"

"He has had an accident, Excellency. He is dead," said Leonardi simply.

Then they took me up very softly, and bore me to the door from which I

had fled forth. Lucia walked with me. In the dusk of the leaves, while

the bearers were fumbling with the inner doors, which would swing in

their faces, Lucia put her hot lips to my hand, which she had held

kindly in hers all the way.

"Pardon me, Douglas," she said, and there was a break in her voice. I

felt the ocean of tears rising about me, and feared that I could not

find the words fittingly to answer. For the pain had made me weak.

"Nay," I said at last, just over my breath, "it was my folly. Forgive

me, little Saint Lucy of the Eyes! It was--it was--what was it that it

was?--I have forgotten--"

"An error in judgment!" said Saint Lucy of the Eyes, and forgave me,

though I cannot remember more about it.

I suppose I could take the title if I chose, for these things are easily

arranged in Italy; but Lucia and I think it will keep for the second

Stephen Douglas.

IV

UNDER THE RED TERROR

_What of the night, O Antwerp bells,

Over the city swinging,

Plaintive and sad, O kingly bells,

In the winter midnight ringing?_

_And the winds in the belfry moan

From the sand-dunes waste and lone,

And these are the words they say,

The turreted bells and they--_

_"Calamtout, Krabbendyk, Calloo,"

Say the noisy, turbulent crew;

"Jabbeké, Chaam, Waterloo;

Hoggerhaed, Sandvaet, Lilloo,

We are weary, a-weary of you!

We sigh for the hills of snow,

For the hills where the hunters go,

For the Matterhorn, Wetterhorn, Dom,

For the Dom! Dom! Dom!

For the summer sun and the rustling corn,

And the pleasant vales of the Rhineland valley_."

"_The Bells of Antwerp_."

I am writing this for my friend in Scotland, whose strange name I cannot

spell. He wishes to, put it in the story-book he is writing. But his

book is mostly lies. This is truth. I saw these things, and I write them

down now because of the love I have for him, the young Herr who saved my

brother's life among the black men in Egypt. Did I tell how our Fritz

went away to be Gordon's man in the Soudan of Africa, and how he wrote

to our father and the mother at home in the village--"I am a great man

and the intendant of a military station, and have soldiers under me, and

he who is our general is hardly a man. He has no fear, and death is to

him as life"? So this young Herr, whom I love the same as my own

brother, met Fritz when there was not the thickness of a Wurst-skin

between him and the torture that makes men blanch for thinking on, and I

will now tell you the story of how he saved him. It was--

But the Herr has come in, and says that I am a "dumbhead," also

condemned, and many other things, because, he says, I can never tell

anything that I begin to tell straightforwardly like a street in Berlin.

He says my talk is crooked like the "Philosophers' Way" after one passes

the red sawdust of the Hirsch-Gasse, where the youngsters "drum" and

"drum" all the Tuesdays and the Fridays, like the donkeys that they are.

I am to talk (he says violently) about Paris and the terrible time I saw

there in the war of Seventy.

Ah! the time when there was a death at every door, the time which

Heidelberg and mine own Thurm village will not forget--that made grey

the hairs of Jacob Oertler, the head-waiter, those sixty days he was in

Paris, when men's blood was spilt like water, when the women and the

children fell and were burned in the burning houses, or died shrieking

on the bayonet point. There is no hell that the Pfaffs tell of, like the

streets of Paris in the early summer of Seventy-one. But it is necessary

that I make a beginning, else I shall never make an ending, as Madame

Hegelmann Wittwe, of the Prinz Karl, says when there are many guests,

and we have to rise after two hours' sleep as if we were still on

campaign. But again I am interrupted and turned aside.

Comes now the young Herr, and he has his supper, for ever since he came

to the Prinz Karl he takes his dinner in the midst of the day as a man

should.

"Ouch," he says, "it makes one too gross to eat in the evening."

So the Herr takes his dinner at midday like a good German; and when

there is supper he will always have old Jacob to tell him tales, in

which he says that there is no beginning, no era, nor Hegira, no Anno

Domini, but only the war of Seventy. But he is a hard-hearted young

Kerl, and will of necessity have his jesting. Only yesterday he said--

"Jacob, Jacob, this duck he must have been in the war of Siebenzig; for,

begomme, he is tough enough. Ah, yes, Jacob, he is certainly a veteran.

I have broken my teeth over his Iron Cross." But if he had been where I

have been, he would know that it is not good jesting about the Iron

Cross.

Last night the young Herr, he did not come home for supper at all. But

instead of him there came an Officier clanging spurs and twisting at

seven hairs upon his upper lip. The bracing-board on his back was tight

as a drum. The corners stretched the cloth of his uniform till they

nearly cut through.

He was but a boy, and his shoulder-straps were not ten days old; but old

Jacob Oertler's heels came together with a click that would have been

loud, but that he wore waiter's slippers instead of the field-shoes of

the soldier.

The Officier looked at me, for I stood at attention.

"Soldier?" said he. And he spoke sharply, as all the babe-officers

strive to do.

I bowed, but my bow was not that of the Oberkellner of the Prinz Karl

that I am now.

"Of the war?" he asked again.

"Of three wars!" I answered, standing up straight that he might see the

Iron Cross I wear under my dress-coat, which the Emperor set there.

"Name and regiment?" he said quickly, for he had learned the way of it,

and was pleased that I called him Hauptmann.

"Jacob Oertler, formerly of the Berlin Husaren, and after of the

Intelligence Department."

"So," he said, "you speak French, then?"

"Sir," said I, "I was twenty years in France. I was born in Elsass. I

was also in Paris during the siege."

Thus we might have talked for long enough, but suddenly his face

darkened and he lifted his eyes from the Cross. He had remembered his

message.

"Does the tall English Herr live here, who goes to Professor Müller's

each day in the Anlage? Is he at this time within? I have a cartel for

him."

Then I told him that the English Herr was no Schläger-player, though

like the lion for bravery in fighting, as my brother had been witness.

"But what is the cause of quarrel?" I asked.

"The cause," he said, "is only that particular great donkey, Hellmuth.

He came swaggering to-night along the New Neckar-Bridge as full of beer

as the Heidelberg tun is empty of it. He met your Herr under the lamps

where there were many students of the corps. Now, Hellmuth is a beast of

the Rhine corps, so he thought he might gain some cheap glory by pushing

rudely against the tall Englander as he passed.

"'Pardon!' said the Englishman, lifting his hat, for he is a gentleman,

and of his manner, when insulted, noble. Hellmuth is but a Rhine

brute--though my cousin, for my sins.

"So Hellmuth went to the end of the Bridge, and, turning with his

corps-brothers to back him, he pushed the second time against your

Herr, and stepped back so that all might laugh as he took off his cap to

mock the Englishman's bow and curious way of saying 'Pardon!'

"But the Englander took him momently by the collar, and by some art of

the light hand turned him over his foot into the gutter, which ran

brimming full of half-melted snow. The light was bright, for, as I tell

you, it was underneath the lamps at the bridge-end. The moon also

happened to come out from behind a wrack of cloud, and all the men on

the bridge saw--and the girls with them also--so that you could hear the

laughing at the Molkenkur, till the burghers put their red night-caps

out of their windows to know what had happened to the wild Kerls of the

_cafés_."

"But surely that is no cause for a challenge, Excellenz?" said I. "How

can an officer of the Kaiser bring such a challenge?"

"Ach!" he said, shrugging his shoulders, "is not a fight a fight, cause

or no cause? Moreover, is not Hellmuth after all the son of my mother's

sister, though but a Rhineland donkey, and void of sense?"

So I showed him up to the room of the English Herr, and went away again,

though not so far but that I could hear their voices.

It was the officer whom I heard speaking first. He spoke loudly, and as

I say, having been of the Intelligence Department, I did not go too far

away.

"You have my friend insulted, and you must immediately satisfaction

make!" said the young Officier.

"That will I gladly do, if your friend will deign to come up here. There

are more ways of fighting than getting into a feather-bed and cutting at

the corners." So our young Englander spoke, with his high voice, piping

and clipping his words as all the English do.

"Sir," said the officer, with some heat, "I bring you a cartel, and I am

an officer of the Kaiser. What is your answer?"

"Then, Herr Hauptmann," said the Englishman, "since you are a soldier,

you and I know what fighting is, and that snipping and snicking at noses

is no fighting. Tell your friend to come up here and have a turn with

the two-ounce gloves, and I shall be happy to give him all the

satisfaction he wants. Otherwise I will only fight him with pistols, and

to the death also. If he will not fight in my way, I shall beat him with

a cane for having insulted me, whenever I meet him."

With that the officer came down to me, and he said, "It is as you

thought. The Englishman will not fight with the Schläger, but he has

more steel in his veins than a dozen of Hellmuths. Thunderweather, I

shall fight Hellmuth myself to-morrow morning, if it be that he burns so

greatly to be led away. Once before I gave him a scar of heavenly

beauty!"

So he clanked off in the ten days' glory of his spurs. I have seen many

such as he stiff on the slope of Spichern and in the woods beneath St.

Germain. Yet he was a Kerl of mettle, and will make a brave soldier and

upstanding officer.

But the Herr has again come in and he says that all this is a particular

kind of nonsense which, because I write also for ladies, I shall not

mention. I am not sure, also, what English words it is proper to put on

paper. The Herr says that he will tear every word up that I have

written, which would be a sad waste of the Frau Wittwe's paper and ink.

He says, this hot Junker, that in all my writing there is yet no word of

Paris or the days of the Commune, which is true. He also says that my

head is the head of a calf, and, indeed, of several other animals that

are but ill-considered in England.

So I will be brief.

In Seventy, therefore, I fought in the field and scouted with the

Uhlans. Ah, I could tell the stories! Those were the days. It is a

mistake to think that the country-people hated us, or tried to kill us.

On the contrary, if I might tell it, many of the young maids--

Ach, bitte, Herr--of a surety I will proceed and tell of Paris. I am

aware that it is not to be expected that the English should care to hear

of the doings of the Reiters of the black-and-white pennon in the matter

of the maids.

But in Seventy-one, during the siege and the terrible days of the

Commune, I was in Paris, what you call a spy. It was the order of the

Chancellor--our man of blood-and-iron. Therefore it was right and not

ignoble that I should be a spy.

For I have served my country in more terrible places than the field of

Weissenburg or the hill of Spichern.

Ja wohl! there were few Prussians who could be taken for Frenchmen, in

Paris during those months when suspicion was everywhere. Yet in Paris I

was, all through the days of the investiture. More, I was chief of

domestic service at the Hôtel de Ville, and my letters went through the

balloon-post to England, and thence back to Versailles, where my

brothers were and the Kaiser whom in three wars I have served. For I am

Prussian in heart and by begetting, though born in Elsass.

So daily I waited on Trochu, as I had also waited on Jules Favre when he

dined, and all the while the mob shouted for the blood of spies without.

But I was Jules Lemaire from the Midi, a stupid provincial with the

rolling accent, come to Paris to earn money and see the life. Not for

nothing had I gone to school at Clermont-Ferrand.

But once I was nearly discovered and torn to pieces. The sweat breaks

cold even now to think upon it. It was a March morning very early, soon

after the light came stealing up the river from behind Notre-Dame. A

bitter wind was sweeping the bare, barked, hacked trees on the Champs

Élysées. It happened that I went every morning to the Halles to make the

market for the day--such as was to be had. And, of course, we at the

Hôtel de Ville had our pick of the best before any other was permitted

to buy. So I went daily as Monsieur Jules Lemaire from the Hôtel de

Ville. And please to take off your _képis, canaille_ of the markets.

Suddenly I saw riding towards me a Prussian hussar of my old regiment.

He rode alone, but presently I spied two others behind him. The first

was that same sergeant Strauss who had knocked me about so grievously

when first I joined the colours. At that time I hated the sight of him,

but now it was the best I could do to keep down the German "Hoch!" which

rose to the top of my throat and stopped there all of a lump.

Listen! The _gamins_ and _vauriens_ of the quarters--louts and cruel

rabble--were running after him--yes, screaming all about him. There were

groups of National Guards looking for their regiments, or marauding to

pick up what they could lay their hands on, for it was a great time for

patriotism. But Strauss of the Blaue Husaren, he sat his horse stiff and

steady as at parade, and looked out under his eyebrows while the mob

howled and surged. Himmel! It made me proud. Ach, Gott! but the old

badger-grey Strauss sat steady, and rode his horse at a walk--easy, cool

as if he were going up Unter den Linden on Mayday under the eyes of the

pretty girls. Not that ever old Strauss cared as much for maids' eyes as

I would have done--ah me, in Siebenzig!

Then came two men behind him, looking quickly up the side-streets, with

carbines ready across their saddles. And so they rode, these three,

like true Prussians every one. And I swear it took Jacob Oertler, that

was Jules of the Midi, all his possible to keep from crying out; but he

could not for his life keep down the sobs. However, the Frenchmen

thought that he wept to see the disgrace of Paris. So that, and nothing

else, saved him.

When Strauss and his two stayed a moment to consult as to the way, the

crowd of noisy whelps pressed upon them, snarling and showing their

teeth. Then Strauss and his men grimly fitted a cartridge into each

carbine. Seeing which, it was enough for these very faint-heart

patriots. They turned and ran, and with them ran Jules of the Midi that

waited at the Hôtel de Ville. He ran as fast as the best of them; and so

no man took me for a German that day or any other day that I was in

Paris.

Then, after this deliverance, I went on to the Halles. The streets were

more ploughed with shells than a German field when the teams go to and

fro in the spring.

There were two men with me in the uniform of the Hôtel de Ville, to

carry the provisions. For already the new marketings were beginning to

come in by the Porte Maillot at Neuilly.

As ever, when we came to the market-stalls, it was "Give place to the

Hôtel de Ville!" While I made my purchases, an old man came up to the

butcher-fellow who was serving, and asked him civilly for a piece of the

indifferent beef he was cutting for me. The rascal, a beast of Burgundy,

dazed with absinthe and pig by nature, answered foully after his kind.

The old man was very old, but his face was that of a man of war. He

lifted his stick as though to strike, for he had a beautiful young girl

on his arm. But I saw the lip of the Burgundian butcher draw up over his

teeth like a snarling dog, and his hand shorten on his knife.

"Have politeness," I said sharply to the rascal, "or I will on my return

report you to the General, and have you fusiladed!"

This made him afraid, for indeed the thing was commonly done at that

time.

The old man smiled and held out his hand to me. He said--

"My friend, some day I may be able to repay you, but not now."

Yet I had interfered as much for the sake of the lady's eyes as for the

sake of the old man's grey hairs. Besides, the butcher was but a pig of

a Burgundian who daily maligned the Prussians with words like pig's

offal.

Then we went back along the shell-battered streets, empty of carriages,

for all the horses had been eaten, some as beef and some as plain horse.

"Monsieur the Commissary," said one of the porters, "do you know that

the old man to whom you spoke, with the young lady, is le Père Félix,

whom all the patriots of Paris call the 'Deliverer of Forty-eight'?"

I knew it not, nor cared. I am a Prussian, though born in Elsass.

So in Paris the days passed on. In our Hôtel de Ville the officials of

the Provisional Government became more and more uneasy. The gentlemen of

the National Guard took matters in their own hands, and would neither

disband nor work. They sulked about the brows of Montmartre, where they

had taken their cannon. My word, they were dirty patriots! I saw them

every day as I went by to the Halles, lounging against the

walls--linesmen among them, too, absent from duty without leave. They

sat on the kerb-stone leaning their guns against the placard-studded

wall. Some of them had loaves stuck on the points of their

bayonets--dirty scoundrels all!

Then came the flight of one set of masters and the entry of another. But

even the Commune and the unknown young men who came to the Hôtel de

Ville made no change to Jules, the head waiter from the Midi. He made

ready the _déjeuner_ as usual, and the gentlemen of the red sash were

just as fond of the calves' flesh and the red wine as the brutal

_bourgeoisie_ of Thiers' Republic or the aristocrats of the _règime_ of

Buonaparte. It was quite equal.

It was only a little easier to send my weekly report to my Prince and

Chancellor out at Saint Denis. That was all. For if the gentlemen who

went talked little and lined their pockets exceedingly well, these new

masters of mine both talked much and drank much. It was no longer the

Commune, but the Proscription. I knew what the end of these things would

be, but I gave no offence to any, for that was not my business. Indeed,

what mattered it if all these Frenchmen cut each other's throats? There

were just so many the fewer to breed soldiers to fight against the

Fatherland, in the war of revenge of which they are always talking.

So the days went on, and there were ever more days behind

them--east-windy, bleak days, such as we have in Pomerania and in

Prussia, but seldom in Paris. The city was even then, with the red flag

floating overhead, beautiful for situation--the sky clear save for the

little puffs of smoke from the bombs when they shelled the forts, and

Valerien growled in reply.

The constant rattle of musketry came from the direction of Versailles.

It was late one afternoon that I went towards the Halles, and as I went

I saw a company of the Guard National, tramping northward to the Buttes

Montmartre where the cannons were. In their midst was a man with white

hair at whom I looked--the same whom we had seen at the market-stalls.

He marched bareheaded, and a pair of the scoundrels held him, one at

either sleeve.

Behind him came his daughter, weeping bitterly but silently, and with

the salt water fairly dripping upon her plain black dress.

"What is this?" I asked, thinking that the cordon of the Public Safety

would pass me, and that I might perhaps benefit my friend of the white

locks.

"Who may you be that asks so boldly?" said one of the soldiers

sneeringly.

They were ill-conditioned, white-livered hounds.

"Jules the garçon--Jules of the white apron!" cried one who knew me.

"Know you not that he is now Dictator? _Vive_ the Dictator Jules,

Emperor-of 'Encore-un-Bock'!"

So they mocked me, and I dared not try them further, for we came upon

another crowd of them with a poor frightened man in the centre. He was

crying out--"For me, I am a man of peace--gentlemen, I am no spy. I have

lived all my life in the Rue Scribe." But one after another struck at

him, some with the butt-end of their rifles, some with their bayonets,

those behind with the heels of their boots--till that which had been a

man when I stood on one side of the street, was something which would

not bear looking upon by the time that I had passed to the other. For

these horrors were the commonest things done under the rule of

Hell--which was the rule of the Commune. Then I desired greatly to have

done my commission and to be rid of Paris.

In a little the Nationals were thirsty. Ho, a wine-shop! There was one

with the shutters up, probably a beast of a German--or a Jew. It is the

same thing. So with the still bloody butts of their _chassepots_ they

made an entrance. They found nothing, however, but a few empty bottles

and stove-in barrels. This so annoyed them that they wrought wholesale

destruction, breaking with their guns and with their feet everything

that was breakable.

So in time we came to the Prison of Mazas, which in ordinary times would

have been strongly guarded; but now, save for a few National Guards

loafing about, it was deserted--the criminals all being liberated and

set plundering and fighting--the hostages all fusiladed.

When we arrived at the gate, there came out a finely dressed, personable

man in a frock-coat, with a red ribbon in his button-hole. The officer

in charge of the motley crew reported that he held a prisoner, the

citizen commonly called Père Félix.

"Père Félix?" said the man in the frock-coat, "and who might he be?"

"A member of the Revolutionary Government of Forty-eight," said the old

man with dignity, speaking from the midst of his captors; "a

revolutionary and Republican before you were born, M. Raoul Regnault!"

"Ah, good father, but this is not Forty-eight! It is Seventy-one!" said

the man on the steps, with a supercilious air. "I tell you as a matter

of information!"

"You had better shoot him and have the matter over!" he added, turning

away with his cane swinging in his hand.

Then, with a swirl of his sword, the officer marshalled us all into the

courtyard--for I had followed to see the end. I could not help myself.

It was a great, bare, barren quadrangle of brick, the yard of Mazas

where the prisoners exercise. The walls rose sheer for twenty feet. The

doorway stood open into it, and every moment or two another company of

Communists would arrive with a gang of prisoners. These were rudely

pushed to the upper end, where, unbound, free to move in every

direction, they were fired at promiscuously by all the ragged

battalions--men, women, and even children shooting guns and pistols at

them, as at the puppet-shows of Asnières and Neuilly.

The prisoners were some of them running to and fro, pitifully trying

between the grim brick walls to find a way of escape. Some set their

bare feet in the niches of the brick and strove to climb over. Some lay

prone on their faces, either shot dead or waiting for the guards to come

round (as they did every five or ten minutes) to finish the wounded by

blowing in the back of their heads with a charge held so close that it

singed the scalp.

As I stood and looked at this horrible shooting match, a human shambles,

suddenly I was seized and pushed along, with the young girl beside me,

towards the wall. Horror took possession of me. "I am Chief Servitor at

the Hôtel de Ville," I cried. "Let me go! It will be the worse for you!"

"There is no more any Hôtel de Ville!" cried one. "See it blaze."

"Accompany gladly the house wherein thou hast eaten many good dinners!

Go to the Fire, ingrate!" cried another of my captors.

So for very shame, and because the young maid was silent, I had to cease

my crying. They erected us like targets against the brick wall, and I

set to my prayers. But when they had retired from us and were preparing

themselves to fire, I had the grace to put the young girl behind me. For

I said, if I must die, there is no need that the young maid should also

die--at least, not till I am dead. I heard the bullets spit against the

wall, fired by those farthest away; but those in front were only

preparing.

Then at that moment something seemed to retard them, for instead of

making an end to us, they turned about and listened uncertainly.

Outside on the street, there came a great flurry of cheering people,

crying like folk that weep for joy--"Vive la ligne! Vive la ligne! The

soldiers of the Line! The soldiers of the Line!"

The door was burst from its hinges. The wide outer gate was filled with

soldiers in dusty uniforms. The Versaillists were in the city.

"Vive la ligne!" cried the watchers on the house-tops. "Vive la ligne!"

cried we, that were set like human targets against the wall. "Vive la

ligne!" cried the poor wounded, staggering up on an elbow to wave a hand

to the men that came to Mazas in the nick of time.

Then there was a slaughter indeed. The Communists fought like tigers,

asking no quarter. They were shot down by squads, regularly and with

ceremony. And we in our turn snatched their own rifles and revolvers and

shot them down also.... "_Coming, Frau Wittwe! So fort!_" ...

* * * * *

And the rest--well, the rest is, that I have a wife and seven beautiful

children. Yes, "The girl I left behind me," as your song sings. Ah, a

joke. But the seven children are no joke, young Kerl, as you may one day

find.

And why am I Oberkellner at the Prinz Karl in Heidelberg? Ah, gentlemen,

I see you do not know. In the winter it is as you see it; but all the

summer and autumn--what with Americans and English, it is better to be

Oberkellner to Madame the Frau Wittwe than to be Prince of

Kennenlippeschönberghartenau!

V

THE CASE OF JOHN ARNISTON'S CONSCIENCE

_Hail, World adored! to thee three times all hail!

We at thy mighty shrine--profane, obscure

With clenchèd hands beat at thy cruel door,

O hear, awake, and let us in, O Baal!_

_Low at thy brazen gates ourselves we fling--

Hear us, even us, thy bondmen firm and sure,

Our kin, our souls, our very God abjure!

Art thou asleep, or dead, or journeying?_

_Bear us, O Ashtoreth, O Baal, that we

In mystic mazes may a moment gleam,

May touch and twine with hot hearts pulsing free

Among thy groves by the Orontes stream_.

_Open and make us, ere our sick hearts fail,

Hewers of wood within thy courts, O Baal!_

"_Pro Fano_."

John Arniston's heart beat fast and high as he went homeward through the

London streets. It had come at last. The blossom of love's

passion-flower had been laid within his grasp. The eyes in whose light

he had sunned himself for months had leaped suddenly into a sweet and

passionate flame. He had seen the sun of a woman's wondrous beauty, and

long followed it afar. Miriam Gale was the success of the season. It was

understood that she had the entire unattached British peerage at her

feet. Nevertheless, her head had touched John Arniston's shoulder

to-night. He had kissed her hair. "A queen's crown of yellow gold," was

what he said to himself as he walked along, the evening traffic of the

Strand humming and surging about him. Because her lips had rested a

moment on his, he walked light-headed as one who for the first time

"tastes love's thrice-repured nectar."

He tried to remember how it happened, and in what order--so much within

an hour.

He had gone in the short and dark London afternoon into her

drawing-room. Something had detained him--a look, the pressure of a

hand, a moment's lingering in a glance--he could not remember which.

Then the crowd of gilded youth ebbed reluctantly away. There was long

silence after they had gone, as Miriam Gale and he sat looking at each

other in the ruddy firelight. Nor did their eyes sever till with sudden

unanimous impulse they clave to one another. Then the fountains of the

deep were broken up, and the deluge overwhelmed their souls.

What happened after that? Something Miriam was saying about some one

named Reginald. Her voice was low and earnest, thrillingly sweet. How

full of charm the infantile tremble that came into it as she looked

entreatingly at him! He listened to its tones, and it was long before he

troubled to follow the meaning. She was telling him something of an

early and foolish marriage--of a life of pain and cruelty, of a new life

and sphere of action, all leading up to the true and only love of her

life. Well, what of that? He had always understood she had been married

before. Enwoven in the mesh-net of her scented hair, her soft cheek warm

and wet against his, all this talk seemed infinitely detached--the

insignificant problems of a former existence, long solved, prehistoric,

without interest. Then he spoke. He remembered well what he had said. It

was that to-morrow they twain, drawing apart from all the evil tongues

of the world, were to begin the old walk along the Sure Way of

Happiness. The world was not for them. A better life was to be theirs.

They would wander through noble and high-set cities. Italy, beloved of

lovers, waited for them. Her stone-pines beckoned to them. There he

would tell her about great histories, and of the lives of the knights

and ladies who dwelt in the cities set on the hills.

"I am so ignorant," Miriam Gale had said, pushing his head back that she

might look at his whole face at once. "I am almost afraid of you--but I

love you, and I shall learn all these things."

It was all inconceivable and strange. The glamour of love mingled with

the soft, fitful firelight reflected in Miriam's eyes, till they twain

seemed the only realities. So that when she began to speak of her

husband, it seemed at first no more to John Arniston than if she had

told him that her shoeblack was yet alive. He and she had no past; only

a future, instant and immediate, waiting for them to-morrow.

How many times did they not move apart after a last farewell? John

Arniston could not tell, though to content himself he tried to count.

Then, their eyes drawing them together again, they had stood silent in

the long pause when the life throbs to and fro and the heart thunders in

the ears. At last, with "To-morrow!" for an iterated watchword between

them, they parted, and John Arniston found himself in the street. It was

the full rush of the traffic of London; but to him it was all strangely

silent. Everything ran noiselessly to-night. Newsboys mouthed the latest

horror, and John Arniston never heard them. Mechanically he avoided the

passers-by, but it was with no belief in their reality. To him they

were but phantom shapes walking in a dream. His world was behind

him--and before. The fragrance of the bliss of dreams was on his lips.

His heart bounded with the thought of that "To-morrow" which they had

promised to one another. The white Italian cities which he had visited

alone gleamed whiter than ever before him. Was it possible that he

should sit in the great square of St. Mark's with Miriam Gale by his

side, the sun making a patchwork of gold and blue among the pinnacles of

the Church of the Evangelist? There, too, he saw, as he walked, the Lido

shore, and the long sickle sweep of the beach. The Adriatic slumbrously

tossed up its toy surges, and lo! a tall girl in white walked

hand-in-hand with him. He caught his breath. He had just realised that

it was all to begin to-morrow. Then again he saw that glimmering white

figure throw itself down in an agony of parting into the low chair,

kneeling beside which his life began.

But stop--what was it after all that Miriam had been saying? Something

about her husband? Had he heard aright--that he was still alive, only

dead to her?--"Dead for many years," was her word. After all, it was no

matter. Nothing mattered any more. His goddess had stepped down to him

with open arms. He had heard the beating of her heart. She was a

breathing, loving woman.

"To-morrow and to-morrow and to-morrow." It seemed so far away. And were

there indeed other skies, blue and clear, in Italy, in which the sun

shone? It seemed hard to believe with the fog of London, yellow and

thick like bad pea-soup, taking him stringently in the throat.

How he found his way back to his room, walking thus in a maze, he never

could recall. As the door clicked and he turned towards the fireplace,

his eye fell upon a brown-paper parcel lying on the table. John

Arniston opened it out in an absent way, his mind and fancy still

abiding by the low chair in Miriam's room. What he saw smote him

suddenly pale. He laid his hand on the mantelpiece to keep from falling.

It was nothing more than a plain, thick quarto volume, covered with a

worn overcoat of undressed calf-skin. At the angle of the back and on

one side the rough hair was worn thin, and the skin showed through. His

mother had done that, reaching it down for his father to "take the

book"[2] in the old house at home. John Arniston sat down on the

easy-chair with the half-unwrapped parcel on his knee. His eye read the

pages without a letter printing itself on his retina. It was a book

within a book, and without also, which he read. He read the tale of the

smooth places on the side. No one in the world but himself could know

what he read. He saw this book, his father's great house Bible, lying

above a certain grey head, in the white square hole in the wall. Beneath

it was a copy of the _Drumfern Standard_, and on the top a psalm-book in

which were his mother's spectacles, put there when she took them off

after reading her afternoon portion.

[Footnote 2: Engage in family worship.]

He opened the book at random: "_And God spake all these words saying_

... THOU SHALT NOT--" The tremendous sentence smote him fairly on the

face. He threw his head violently back so that he might not read any

further. The book slipped between his knees and fell heavily on the

floor.

But the words which had caught his eye, "THOU SHALT NOT--" were printed

in fire on the ceiling, or on his brain--he did not know which. He got

up quickly, put on his hat, and went out again into the bitter night.

He turned down to the left and paced the Thames Embankment. The fog was

thicker than ever. Unseen watercraft with horns and steam-roarers

grunted like hogs in the river. But in John Arniston's brain there was a

conflict of terrible passion.

After all, it was but folklore, he said to himself. Nothing more than

that. Every one knew it. All intelligent people were nowadays of one

religion. The thing was manifestly absurd--the Hebrew fetich was

dead--dead as Mumbo Jumbo. "Thank God!" he added inconsequently. He

walked faster and faster, and on more than one occasion he brushed

hurriedly against some of the brutal frequenters of that part of the

world on foggy evenings. A rough lout growled belligerently at him, but

shrank from the gladsome light of battle which leaped instantly into

John Arniston's eye. To strike some one would have been a comfort to him

at that moment.

Well, it was done with. The effete morality of a printed book was no tie

upon him. The New Freedom was his--the freedom to do as he would and

possess what he desired. Yet after all it was an old religion, this of

John's. It has had many names; but it has never wanted priests to preach

and devotees to practise its very agreeable tenets.

John Arniston stamped with his foot as he came to this decision. The fog

was clearing off the river. It was no more than a mere scum on the

water. There was a rift above, straight up to the stars.

"AND GOD SPAKE ALL THESE WORDS--."

"No," he said, over and over, "I shall not give her up. It is

preposterous. Yet my father believed it. He died with his hand on the

old Bible, his finger in the leaves--my mother--"

"AND GOD SPAKE ALL THESE WORDS--." The sentence seemed to flash through

the rift over the shot-tower--to tingle down from the stars.

There are no true perverts. When man strips him to the bare buff, he is

of the complexion his mother bestowed upon him. When his life's

card-castle, laboriously piled, tumbles ignominious, he is again of his

mother's religion.

"AND GOD--."

John Arniston stepped to the edge of the parapet. He looked over into

the slow, swirling black water. It was a quick way that--but no--it was

not to be his way. He looked at his watch. It was time to go to the

office. He had an article to do. As well do that as anything. But first

he would write a letter to her.

Shut in his room, his hand flying swiftly lest it should turn back in

spite of him, John Arniston wrote a letter to Miriam Gale--a letter that

was all one lie. He could not tell her the true reason why he would not

go on the morrow. Who was he, that he should put himself in the attitude

of being holier than Miriam Gale? It was certainly not because he did

not wish to go--or that he thought it wrong. Simply, his father's

calf-skin Bible barred the way, and he could no more pass over it than

he could have trampled over his mother's body to his desire.

It was done. The letter was written. What was the particular excuse,

invented fiercely at the moment, there is no use writing down here to

cumber the page. John Arniston cheerfully gave himself over to the

recording angel. Yet the ninth commandment is of equal interpretation,

though it may be somewhat less clearly and tersely expressed than the

seventh.

He went out and posted his note at a pillar-box in a quiet street with

his own hand. The postman had just finished clearing when John came to

thrust in the letter to Miriam Gale. The envelope slid into an empty

receiver as the postman clicked the key. He turned to John with a look

which said--"Too late that time, sir!" But John never so much as noticed

that there was a postman by his side, who shouldered his bags with an

air of official detachment. John Arniston went back to his room, and

while he waited for a book of reference (for articles must be written so

long as the pillars of the firmament stand) he lifted an evening paper

which lay on the table. He ran his eye by instinct over the displayed

cross headings. His eye caught a name. "Found Drowned at Battersea

Bridge--Reginald Gale."

"Reginald Gale," said John to himself--"where did I hear that name?"

Like a flash, every word that Miriam had told him about her worthless

husband--his treatment of her, his desertion within a few days of her

marriage--stood plain before him as if he had been reading the thing in

proof.... Miriam Gale was a free woman.

And his pitiable lying letter? It was posted--lurking in the pillar-box

round the corner, waiting to speed on its way to break the heart of the

girl, who had been willing to risk all, and count the world well lost

for the sake of him.

He seized his hat and ran down-stairs, taking the steps half a dozen at

a time. He met the boy coming up with the book. He passed as if he had

stepped over the top of him. The boy turned and gazed open-mouthed. The

gentlemen at the office were all of them funny upon occasion, but John

Arniston had never had the symptoms before.

"He's got a crisis!" said the boy to himself, clutching at an

explanation he had heard once given in the sub-editor's room.

For an hour John Arniston paced to and fro before that pillar-box,

timing the passing policeman, praying that the postman who came to clear

it might prove corruptible.

Would he never come? It appeared upon the white enamelled plate that the

box was to be cleared in an hour. But he seemed to have waited seven

hours in hell already. The policeman gazed at him suspiciously. A long

row of jewellers' shops was just round the corner, and he might be a

professional man of standing--in spite of the fur-collar of his

coat--with an immediate interest in jewellery.

The postman came at last. He was a young, alert, beardless man, who

whistled as he came. John Arniston was instantly beside him as he

stooped to unlock the little iron door.

"See here," he said eagerly, in a low voice, "I have made a mistake in

posting a letter. Two lives depend on it. I'll give you twenty pounds in

notes into your hand now, if you let me take back the letter at the

bottom of that pillar!"

"Sorry--can't do it, sir--more than my place is worth. Besides, how do I

know that you put in that letter? It may be a jewel letter from one of

them coves over there!"

And he jerked his thumb over his shoulder.

John Arniston could meet that argument.

"You can feel it," he said; "try if there is anything in it, coin or

jewels--you could tell, couldn't you?"

The man laughed.

"Might be notes, sir, like them in your hand--couldn't do it, indeed,

sir."

The devil leaped in the hot Scots blood of John Arniston.

He caught the kneeling servant of Her Majesty's noblest monopoly by the

throat, as he paused smiling with the door of the pillar-box open and

the light of the street-lamp falling on the single letter which lay

within. The clutch was no light one, and the man's life gurgled in his

throat.

John Arniston snatched the letter, glanced once at the address. It was

his own. There was, indeed, no other. Hurriedly he thrust the four notes

into the hand of the half-choked postman. Then he turned and ran, for

the windows of many tall houses were spying upon him. He dived here and

there among archways and passages, manoeuvred through the purlieus of

the market, and so back into the offices of his paper.

"And where is that _Dictionary of National Biography_?" asked John

Arniston of the boy. The precious letter for which he had risked penal

servitude and the cat in the prisons of his country for robbery of the

Imperial mails (accompanied with violence), was blazing on the fire.

Then, with professional readiness, John Arniston wrote a column and a

half upon the modern lessons to be drawn from the fact that Queen Anne

was dead. It was off-day at the paper, Parliament was not sitting, and

the columns opposite the publishers' advertisements needed filling, or

these gentlemen would grumble. The paper had a genuine, if somewhat

spasmodic, attachment to letters. And from this John Arniston derived a

considerable part of his income.

When he went back to his room he found that his landlady had been in

attending to the fire. She had also lifted the fallen Bible, on which he

could now look with some complacency--so strange a thing is the

conscience.

On the worn hair covering of the old Bible lay a letter. It was from

Miriam--a letter written as hastily as his own had been, with pitiful

tremblings, and watered with tears. It told him, through a maze of

burning love, among other things that she had been a wicked woman to

listen to his words--and that while her husband lived she must never

see him again. In time, doubtless, he would find some one worthier, some

one who would not wreck his life, as for one mad half-hour his

despairing Miriam had been willing to do. Finally, he would forgive her

and forget her. But she was his own--he was to remember that.

In half an hour John Arniston was at the mortuary. Of course, he found a

pressman there with a notebook before him. With him he arranged what

should be said the next morning, and how the inquest should be reported.

There was no doubt about the identity, and John Arniston soon possessed

the proofs of it. But, after all, there was no need that the British

public should know more than it already knew, or that the name of Miriam

Gale should be connected with the drowned wretch, whose soddenly

friendly leer struck John Arniston cold, as though he also had been in

the Thames water that night.

So all through the darkness he paced in front of the house of the

Beloved. His letter to her, written on leaves of his notebook, in place

of that which he had destroyed, went in with the morning's milk. In half

an hour after he was with her. And when he came out again he had seen a

wonderful thing--a beautiful woman to whom emotion was life, and the

expression of it second nature, running through the gamut of twenty

moods in a quarter of an hour. At the end, John departed in search of a

licence and a church. And Miriam Gale put her considering finger to her

lip, and said, "Let me see--which dresses shall I take?"

The highway robbery was never heard of. The excellent plaster which John

Arniston left in the hand of the official had salved effectively the

rude constriction of his throat, where John's right hand had closed upon

it.

* * * * *

It was even better to sit with Miriam Arniston in reality in the great

sun-lit square of St. Mark's than it had been in fantasy with Miriam

Gale.

The only disappointment was, that the pigeons of the Square were

certainly fatter and greedier than the pictured cloud of doves, which in

his day-dream he had seen flash the under-side of their wings at his

love as they checked themselves to alight at her feet.

But on Lido side there was no such rift in the lute's perfection. The

sands, the wheeling sea-birds, the tall girl in white whose hand he

held--all these were even as he had imagined them. Thither they came

every day, passing along the straight dusty avenue, and then wandering

for hours picking shells. They talked only when the mood took them, and

in the pauses they listened idly to the slumbrous pulsations of Adria.

John Arniston had lied at large in the letter he had written to his

love. He had assaulted a man who righteously withstood him in the

discharge of his duty, in order to steal that letter back again. Yet his

conscience was wholly void of offence in the matter. The heavens smiled

upon his bride and himself. There was now no stern voice to break

through upon his blissful self-approval.

Why there should be this favouritism among the commandments, was not

clear to John. Indeed, the thing did not trouble him. He was no casuist.

He only knew that the way was clear to Miriam Gale, and he went to her

the swiftest way.

But there were, for all that, the elements of a very pretty dilemma in

the psychology of morals in the case of Miriam Gale and John Arniston.

True, the calf-skin Bible said when it was consulted, "The letter

killeth, but the spirit maketh alive."

But, after all, that might prove upon examination to have nothing to do

with the matter.

VI

THE GLISTERING BEACHES

_For wafts of unforgotten music come,

All unawares, into my lonely room,

To thrill me with the memories of the past--

Sometimes a tender voice from out the gloom,

A light hand on the keys, a shadow cast

Upon a learned tome

That blurs somewhat Alpha and Omega,

A touch upon my shoulder, a pale face,

Upon whose perfect curves the firelight plays,

Or love-lit eyes, the sweetest e'er I saw_.

"_Memory Harvest_."

It was clear morning upon Suliscanna. That lonely rock ran hundreds of

feet up into the heavens, and pointed downwards also to the deepest part

of the blue. Simeon and Anna were content.

Or, rather, I ought to say Anna and Simeon, and that for a reason which

will appear. Simeon was the son of the keeper of the temporary light

upon Suliscanna, Anna the daughter of the contractor for the new

lighthouse, which had already begun to grow like a tall-shafted tree on

its rock foundation at Easdaile Point. Suliscanna was not a large

island--in fact, only a mile across the top; but it was quite six or

eight in circumference when one followed the ins and outs of the rocky

shore. Tremendous cliffs rose to the south and west facing the Atlantic,

pierced with caves into which the surf thundered or grumbled, according

as the uneasy giant at the bottom of the sea was having a quiet night of

it or the contrary. Grassy and bare was the top of the island. There was

not a single tree upon it; and, besides the men's construction huts,

only a house or two, so white that each shone as far by day as the

lighthouse by night.

There was often enough little to do on Suliscanna. At such times, after

standing a long time with hands in their pockets, the inhabitants used

to have a happy inspiration: "Ha, let us go and whitewash the cottages!"

So this peculiarity gave the island an undeniably cheerful appearance,

and the passing ships justly envied the residents.

Simeon and Anna were playmates. That is, Anna played with Simeon when

she wanted him.

"Go and knit your sampler, girl!" Simeon was saying to-day. "What do

girls know about boats or birds?"

He was in a bad humour, for Anna had been unbearable in her exactions.

"Very well," replied Anna, tossing her hair; "I can get the key of the

boat and you can't. I shall take Donald out with me."

Now, Donald was the second lighthouse-keeper, detested of Simeon. He was

grown-up and contemptuous. Also he had whiskers--horrid ugly things,

doubtless, but whiskers. So he surrendered at discretion.

"Go and get the key, then, and we will go round to the white beaches.

I'll bring the provisions."

He would have died any moderately painless death rather than say, "The

oatcake and water-keg."

So in a little they met again at the Boat Cove which Providence had

placed at the single inlet upon the practicable side of Suliscanna,

which could not be seen from either the Laggan Light or the construction

cottages. Only the lighter that brought the hewn granite could spy upon

it.

"Mind you sneak past your father, Anna!" cried Simeon, afar off.

His voice carried clear and lively. But yet higher and clearer rose the

reply, spoken slowly to let each word sink well in.

"Teach-your-grandmother-to-suck-eggs--ducks' eggs!"

What the private sting of the discriminative, only Simeon knew. And

evidently he did know very well, for he kicked viciously at a dog

belonging to Donald the second keeper--a brute of a dog it was; but,

missing the too-well-accustomed cur, he stubbed his toe. He then

repeated the multiplication table. For he was an admirable boy and

careful of his language.

But, nevertheless, he got the provision out with care and promptitude.

"Where are you taking all that cake?" said his mother, who came from

Ayrshire and wanted a reason for everything. In the north there is no

need for reasons. There everything is either a judgment or a

dispensation, according to whether it happens to your neighbour or

yourself.

"I am no' coming hame for ony dinner," said Simeon, who adopted a

modified dialect to suit his mother. With his father he spoke English

only, in a curious sing-song tone but excellent of accent.

Mrs. Lauder--Simeon's mother, that is--accepted the explanation without

remark, and Simeon passed out of her department.

"Mind ye are no' to gang intil the boat!" she cried after him; but

Simeon was apparently too far away to hear.

He looked cautiously up the side of the Laggan Light to see that his

father was still polishing at his morning brasses and reflectors along

with Donald. Then he ran very swiftly through a little storehouse, and

took down a musket from the wall. A powder-flask and some shot completed

his outfit; and with a prayer that his father might not see him, Simeon

sped to the trysting-stone. As it happened, his father was oblivious and

the pilfered gun unseen.

Anna's experience had been quite different. Her procedure was much

simpler. She found her father sitting in his office, constructed of

rough boards. He frowned continuously at plans of dovetailed stones, and

rubbed his head at the side till he was rapidly rubbing it bare.

Anna came in and looked about her.

"Give me the key of the boat," she said without preface. She used from

habit, even to her father, the imperative mood affirmative.

Mr. Warburton looked up, smoothed his brow, and began to ask, "What are

you going to do--?" But in the midst of his question he thought better

of it, acknowledging its uselessness; and, reaching into a little press

by his side, he took down a key and handed it to Anna without comment.

Anna said only, "Thank you, father." For we should be polite to our

parents when they do as we wish them.

She stood a moment looking back at the bowed figure, which, upon her

departure, had resumed the perplexed frown as though it had been a mask.

Then she walked briskly down to the boathouse.

Upon the eastern side of Suliscanna there is a beach. It is a rough

beach, but landing is just possible. There are cunning little spits of

sand in the angles of the stone reaches, and by good steering between

the boulders it is just possible to make boat's-way ashore.

"Row!" said Anna, after they had pushed the boat off, and began to feel

the hoist of the swell. "I will steer."

Simeon obediently took the oars and fell to it. So close in did Anna

steer to one point, that, raising her hand, she pulled a few heads of

pale sea-pink from a dry cleft as they drew past into the open water and

began to climb green and hissing mountains.

Then Anna opened her plans to Simeon.

"Listen!" she said. "I have been reading in a book of my father's about

this place, and there was a strange great bird once on Suliscanna. It

has been lost for years, so the book says; and if we could get it, it

would be worth a hundred pounds. We are going to seek it."

"That is nonsense," said Simeon, "for you can get a goose here for

sixpence, and there is no bird so big that it would be worth the half of

a hundred pounds."

"Goose yourself, boy," said Anna tauntingly. "I did not mean to eat,

great stupid thing!"

"What did you mean, then?" returned Simeon.

"You island boy, I mean to put in wise folks' museums--where they put

all sorts of strange things. I have seen one in London."

"Seen a bird worth a hundred pounds?" Simeon was not taking Anna's

statements on trust any more.

"No, silly--not the bird, but the museum."

"Um--you can tell that to Donald; I know better than to believe."

"Ah, but this is true," said Anna, without anger at the aspersion on her

habitual truthfulness. "I tell you it is true. You would not believe

about the machine-boat that runs by steam, with the smoke coming from it

like the spout of our kettle, till I showed you the picture of it in

father's book."

"I have seen the lion and the unicorn fighting for the crown. There are

lies in pictures as well as in books!" said Simeon, stating a great

truth.

"But this bird is called the Great Auk--did you never hear your father

tell about that?"

Simeon's face still expressed no small doubt of Anna's good faith. The

words conveyed to him no more meaning than if she had said the Great

Mogul.

Then Anna remembered.

"It is called in Scotland the Gare Fowl!"

Simeon was on fire in a moment. He stopped rowing and started up.

"I have heard of it," he said. "I know all that there is to know. It was

chased somewhere on the northern islands and shot at, and one of them

was killed. But did it ever come here?"

"I have father's book with me, and you shall see!" Being prepared for

scepticism, Anna did not come empty-handed. She pulled a finely bound

book out of a satchel-pocket that swung at her side. "See here," she

said; and then she read: "'After their ill-usage at the islands of

Orkney, the Gare Fowl were seen several times by fishermen in the

neighbourhood of the Glistering Beaches on the lonely and uninhabited

island of Suliscanna. It is supposed that a stray bird may occasionally

visit that rock to this day.'"

Simeon's eyes almost started from his head.

"Worth a hundred pounds!" he said over and over as if to himself.

Anna, who knew the ways of this most doubting of Thomases, pulled a

piece of paper from her satchel and passed it to him to read. It related

at some length the sale in a London auction-room of a stuffed Great Auk

in imperfect condition for one hundred and fifty pounds.

"That would be pounds sterling!" said Simeon, who was thinking. He had a

suspicion that there might be some quirk about pounds "Scots," and was

trying to explain things clearly to himself.

"Now, we are going to the Glistering Beaches to look for the Great Auk!"

said Anna as a climax to the great announcement.

The water lappered pleasantly beneath the boat as Simeon deftly drew it

over the sea. There is hardly any pleasure like good oarsmanship. In

rowing, the human machine works more cleanly and completely than at any

other work. Before the children rose two rocky islands, with an opening

between, like a birthday cake that has been badly cut in the centre and

has had the halves moved a little way apart. This was Stack Canna.

"Do you think that there would be any chance here?" said Anna. The

splendour of the adventure was taking possession of her mind.

"Of course there would; but the best chance of all will be at the caves

of Rona Wester, for that is near the Glistering Beaches, and the birds

would be sure to go there if the people went to seek them at the

Beaches."

"Has any one been there?" asked Anna.

"Fishers have looked into them from the sea. No one has been in!" said

Simeon briefly.

The tops of the Stack of Canna were curiously white, and Simeon watched

the effect over his shoulder as he rowed.

"Look at the Stack," he said, and the eyes of his companion followed

his.

"Is it snow?" she asked.

"No; birds--thousands of them. They are nesting. Let us land and get a

boat-load to take back."

But Anna declared that it must not be so. They had come out to hunt the

Great Auk, and no meaner bird would they pursue that day.

Nevertheless, they landed, and made spectacles of themselves by groping

in the clay soil on the top of the Stack for Petrels' eggs. But they

could not dig far enough without spades to get many, and when they did

get to the nest, it was hardly worth taking for the sake of the one

white egg and the little splattering, oily inmate.

Yet on the wild sea-cinctured Stack, and in that young fresh morning,

the children tasted the joy of life; and only the fascinating vision of

the unknown habitant of the Glistering Beaches had power to wile them

away.

But there before them, a mile and a half round the point of Stack, lay

the Beaches. On either side of the smooth sweep of the sands rose mighty

cliffs, black as the eye of the midnight and scarred with clefts like

battered fortresses. Then at the Beaches themselves, the cliff wall fell

back a hundred yards and left room for the daintiest edging of white

sand, shining like coral, crumbled down from the pure granite--which at

this point had not been overflowed like the rest of the island of

Suliscanna by the black lava.

Such a place for play there was not anywhere--neither on Suliscanna nor

on any other of the outer Atlantic isles. Low down, by the surf's edge,

the wet sands of the Glistering Beaches were delicious for the bare feet

to run and be brave and cool upon. The sickle sweep of the bay cut off

the Western rollers, and it was almost always calm in there. Only the

sea-birds clashed and clanged overhead, and made the eye dizzy to watch

their twinkling gyrations.

Then on the greensward there was the smoothest turf, a band of it

only--not coarse grass with stalks far apart, as it is on most

sea-beaches; but smooth and short as though it had been cropped by a

thousand woolly generations. "Such a place!" they both cried. And Anna,

who had never been here before, clapped her hands in delight.

"This is like heaven!" she sighed, as the prow of the boat grated

refreshingly on the sand, and Simeon sprang over with a splash, standing

to his mid-thigh in the salt water to pull the boat ashore.

Then Simeon and Anna ran races on the smooth turf. They examined

carefully the heaped mounds of shells, mostly broken, for the "legs of

mutton" that meant to them love and long life and prosperity. They chose

out for luck also the smooth little rose-tinted valves, more exquisite

than the fairest lady's finger-nails.

Next they found the spring welling up from an over-flow mound which it

had built for itself in the ages it had run untended. Little throbbing

grains of sand dimpled in it, and the mound was green to the top; so

that Simeon and Anna could sit, one on one side and the other upon the

other, and with a farle of cake eat and drink, passing from hand to hand

alternate, talking all the time.

It was a divine meal.

"This is better than having to go to church!" said Anna.

Simeon stared at her. This was not the Sabbath or a Fast-day. What a

day, then, to be speaking about church-going! It was bad enough to have

to face the matter when it came.

"I wonder what we should do if the Great Auk were suddenly to fly out of

the rocks up there, and fall splash into the sea," he said, to change

the subject.

"The Great Auk does not fly," said positive Anna, who had been reading

up.

"What does it do, then?" said Simeon. "No wonder it got killed!"

"It could only waddle and swim," replied Anna.

"Then I could shoot it easy! I always can when the things can't fly, or

will stand still enough.--It is not often they will," he added after due

consideration.

Many things in creation are exceedingly thoughtless.

Thereupon Simeon took to loading his gun ostentatiously, and Anna moved

away. Guns were uncertain things, especially in Simeon's hands, and Anna

preferred to examine some of the caves. But when she went to the opening

of the nearest, there was something so uncanny, so drippy, so clammy

about it, with the little pools of water dimpled with drops from above,

and the spume-balls rolled by the wind into the crevices, that she was

glad to turn again and fall to gathering the aromatic, hay-scented

fennel which nodded on the edges of the grassy slopes.

There was no possibility of getting up or down the cliffs that rose

three hundred feet above the Glistering Beaches, for the ledges were

hardly enough for the dense population of gannets which squabbled and

babbled and elbowed one another on the slippery shelves.

Now and then there would be a fight up there, and white eggs would roll

over the edge and splash yellow upon the turf. Wherever the rocks became

a little less precipitous, they were fairly lined with the birds and

hoary with their whitewash.

After Simeon had charged his gun, the children proceeded to explore the

caves, innocently taking each other's hands, and advancing by the light

of a candle--which, with flint and steel, they had found in the locker

of their boat.

First they had to cross a pool, not deep, but splashy and unpleasant.

Then more perilously they made their way along the edges of the water,

walking carefully upon the slippery stones, wet with the clammy,

contracted breath of the cave. Soon, however, the cavern opened out into

a wider and drier place, till they seemed to be fairly under the mass of

the island; for the cliffs, rising in three hundred feet of solid rock

above their heads, stretched away before them black and grim to the

earth's very centre.

Anna cried out, "Oh, I cannot breathe! Let us go back!"

But the undaunted Simeon, determined to establish his masculine

superiority once for all, denied her plumply.

"We shall go back none," he said, "till we have finished this candle."

So, clasping more tightly her knight-errant's hand, Anna sighed, and

resigned herself for once to the unaccustomed pleasure of doing as she

was bid.

Deeper and deeper they went into the cleft of the rocks, stopping

sometimes to listen, and hearing nothing but the beating of their own

hearts when they did so.

There came sometimes, however, mysterious noises, as though the fairy

folks were playing pipes in the stony knolls, of which they had both

heard often enough. And also by whiles they heard a thing far more

awful--a plunge as of a great sea-beast sinking suddenly into deep

water.

"Suppose that it is some sea-monster," said Anna with eyes on fire; for

the unwonted darkness had changed her, so that she took readily enough

her orders from the less imaginative boy--whereas, under the broad light

of day, she never dreamed of doing other than giving them.

Once they had a narrow escape. It happened that Simeon was leading and

holding Anna by the hand, for they had been steadily climbing upwards

for some time. The footing of the cave was of smooth sand, very restful

and pleasing to the feet. Simeon was holding up the candle and looking

before him, when suddenly his foot went down into nothing. He would have

fallen forward, but that Anna, putting all her force into the pull, drew

him back. The candle, however, fell from his hand and rolled unharmed

to the edge of a well, where it lay still burning.

Simeon seized it, and the two children, kneeling upon the rocky side,

looked over into a deep hole, which seemed, so far as the taper would

throw its feeble rays downwards, to be quite fathomless.

But at the bottom something rose and fell with a deep roaring sound, as

regular as a beast breathing. It had a most terrifying effect to hear

that measured roaring deep in the bowels of the earth, and at each

respiration to see the suck of the air blow the candle-flame about.

Anna would willingly have gone back, but stout Simeon was resolved and

not to be spoken to.

They circled cautiously about the well, and immediately began to

descend. The way now lay over rock, fine and regular to the feet as

though it had been built and polished by the pyramid-builders of Egypt.

There was more air, also, and the cave seemed to be opening out.

At last they came to a glimmer of daylight and a deep and solemn pool.

There was a path high above it, and the pool lay beneath black like ink.

But they were evidently approaching the sea, for the roar of the

breaking swell could distinctly be heard. The pool narrowed till there

appeared to be only a round basin of rock, full of the purest water, and

beyond a narrow bank of gravel. Then they saw the eye of the sea shining

in, and the edge of a white breaker lashing into the mouth of the cave.

But as they ran down heedlessly, all unawares they came upon a sight

which made them shrink back with astonishment. It was something antique

and wrinkled that sat or stood, it was difficult to tell which, in the

pool of crystal water. It was like a little old man with enormous white

eyebrows, wearing a stupendous mask shaped like a beak. The thing

turned its head and looked intently at them without moving. Then they

saw it was a bird, very large in size, but so forlorn, old, and broken

that it could only flutter piteously its little flippers of wings and

patiently and pathetically waggle that strange head.

"It is the Great Auk itself--we have found it!" said Anna in a hushed

whisper.

"Hold the candle till I kill it with a stone--or, see! with this bit of

timber."

"Wait!" said Anna. "It looks so old and feeble!"

"Our hundred pounds," said Simeon.

"It looks exactly like your grandfather," said Anna; "look at his

eyebrows! You would not kill your grandfather!"

"Wouldn't I just--for a hundred pounds!" said Simeon briskly, looking

for a larger stone.

"Don't let us kill him at all. We have seen the last Great Auk! That is

enough. None shall be so great as we."

The grey and ancient fowl seemed to wake to a sense of his danger, just

at the time when in fact the danger was over. He hitched himself out of

the pool like an ungainly old man using a stick, and solemnly waddled

over the little bank of sand till he came to his jumping-off place.

Then, without a pause, he went souse into the water.

Simeon and Anna ran round the pool to the shingle-bank and looked after

him.

The Great Auk was there, swimming with wonderful agility. He was heading

right for the North and the Iceland skerries--where, it may be, he

abides in peace to this day, happier than he lived in the cave of the

island of Suliscanna.

The children reached home very late that night, and were received with

varying gladness; but neither of them told the ignorant grown-up people

of Suliscanna that theirs were the eyes that had seen the last Great Auk

swim out into the bleak North to find, like Moses, an unknown grave.

BOOK SECOND

INTIMACIES

I

_Take cedar, take the creamy card,

With regal head at angle dight;

And though to snatch the time be hard,

To all our loves at home we'll write_.

II

_Strange group! in Bowness' street we stand--

Nine swains enamoured of our wives,

Each quaintly writing on his hand,

In haste, as 'twere to save our lives_.

III

_O wondrous messenger, to fly

All through the night from post to post!

Thou bearest home a kiss, a sigh--

And but a halfpenny the cost_!

IV

_To-morrow when they crack their eggs,

They'll say beside each matin urn--

"These men are still upon their legs;

Heaven bless 'em--may they soon return_!"

GEORGE MILNER.

I

THE LAST ANDERSON OF DEESIDE

_Pleasant is sunshine after rain,

Pleasant the sun;

To cheer the parchèd land again,

Pleasant the rain_.

_Sweetest is joyance after pain,

Sweetest is joy;

Yet sorest sorrow worketh gain,

Sorrow is gain_.

"_As in the Days of Old_."

"Weel, he's won awa'!"

"Ay, ay, he is that!"

The minister's funeral was winding slowly out of the little manse

loaning. The window-blinds were all down, and their bald whiteness, like

sightless eyes looking out of the white-washed walls and the trampled

snow, made the Free Church manse of Deeside no cheerful picture that

wild New Year's Day. The green gate which had so long hung on one hinge,

periodically mended ever since the minister's son broke the other

swinging on it the summer of the dry year before he went to college, now

swayed forward with a miserably forlorn lurch, as though it too had

tried to follow the funeral procession of the man who had shut it

carefully the last thing before he went to bed every night for forty

years.

Andrew Malcolm, the Glencairn joiner, who was conducting the

funeral--if, indeed, Scots funerals can ever be said to be

conducted--had given it a too successful push to let the rickety hearse

have plenty of sea-room between the granite pillars. It was a long and

straggling funeral, silent save for the words that stand at the opening

of this tale, which ran up and down the long black files like the

irregular fire of skirmishers.

"Ay, man, he's won awa'!"

"Ay, ay, he is that!"

This is the Scottish Lowland "coronach," characteristic and expressive

as the wailing of the pipes to the Gael or the keening of women among

the wild Eirionach.

"We are layin' the last o' the auld Andersons o' Deeside amang the mools

the day," said Saunders M'Quhirr, the farmer of Drumquhat, to his friend

Rob Adair of the Mains of Deeside, as they walked sedately together,

neither swinging his arms as he would have done on an ordinary day.

Saunders had come all the way over Dee Water to follow the far-noted man

of God to his rest.

"There's no siccan men noo as the Andersons o' Deeside," said Rob Adair,

with a kind of pride and pleasure in his voice. "I'm a dale aulder than

you, Saunders, an' I mind weel o' the faither o' him that's gane." (Rob

had in full measure the curious South-country disinclination to speak

directly of the dead.)

"Ay, an angry man he was that day in the '43 when him that's a cauld

corp the day, left the kirk an' manse that his faither had pitten him

intil only the year afore. For, of coorse, the lairds o' Deeside were

the pawtrons o' the pairish; an' when the auld laird's yae son took it

intil his head to be a minister, it was in the nature o' things that he

should get the pairish.

"Weel, the laird didna speak to his son for the better part o' twa year;

though mony a time he drave by to the Pairish Kirk when his son was

haudin' an ootdoor service at the Auld Wa's where the three roads meet.

For nae _sicht_ could they get on a' Deeside for kirk or manse, because

frae the Dullarg to Craig Ronald a' belanged to the laird. The minister

sent the wife an' bairns to a sma' hoose in Cairn Edward, an' lodged

himsel' amang sic o' the farmers as werena feared for his faither's

factor. Na, an' speak to his son the auld man wadna, for the very

dourness o' him. Ay, even though the minister wad say to his faither,

'Faither, wull ye no' speak to yer ain son?' no' ae word wad he answer,

but pass him as though he hadna seen him, as muckle as to say--'Nae son

o' mine!'

"But a week or twa after the minister had lost yon twa nice bairns wi'

the scarlet fever, his faither an' him forgathered at the fishin'--whaur

he had gane, thinkin' to jook the sair thochts that he carried aboot wi'

him, puir man. They were baith keen fishers an' graun' at it. The

minister was for liftin' his hat to his faither an' gaun by, but the

auld man stood still in the middle o' the fit-pad wi' a gey queer look

in his face. 'Wattie!' he said, an' for ae blink the minister thocht

that his faither was gaun to greet, a thing that he had never seen him

do in a' his life. But the auld man didna greet. 'Wattie,' says he to

his son, 'hae ye a huik?'

"Ay, Saunders, that was a' he said, an' the minister juist gied him the

huik and some half-dizzen fine flees forbye, an' the twa o' them never

said _Disruption_ mair as lang as they leeved.

"'Ye had better see the factor aboot pittin' up a meetin'-hoose and a

decent dwallin', gin ye hae left kirk and manse!' That was a' that the

auld laird ever said, as his son gaed up stream and he down.

"Ay, he's been a sair-tried man in his time, your minister, but he's a'

by wi't the day," continued Saunders M'Quhirr, as they trudged behind

the hearse.

"Did I ever tell ye, Rob, aboot seem' young Walter--his boy that gaed

wrang, ye ken--when I was up in London the year afore last? Na? 'Deed, I

telled naebody binna the mistress. It was nae guid story to tell on

Deeside!

"Weel, I was up, as ye ken, at Barnet Fair wi' some winter beasts, so I

bade a day or twa in London, doin' what sma' business I had, an' seein'

the sichts as weel, for it's no' ilka day that a Deeside body finds

themsel's i' London.

"Ae nicht wha should come in but a Cairn Edward callant that served his

time wi' Maxwell in the _Advertiser_ office. He had spoken to me at the

show, pleased to see a Gallawa' face, nae doot. And he telled me he was

married an' workin' on the _Times_. An' amang ither things back an'

forrit, he telled me that the minister o' Deeside's son was here. 'But,'

says he, 'I'm feared that he's comin' to nae guid.' I kenned that the

laddie hadna been hame to his faither an' his mither for a maitter o'

maybe ten year, so I thocht that I wad like to see the lad for his

faither's sake. So in a day or twa I got his address frae the reporter

lad, an' fand him after a lang seek doon in a gey queer place no' far

frae where Tammas Carlyle leeves, near the water-side. I thocht that

there was nae ill bits i' London but i' the East-end; but I learned

different.

"I gaed up the stair o' a wee brick hoose nearly tumlin' doon wi' its

ain wecht--a perfect rickle o' brick--an' chappit. A lass opened the

door after a wee, no' that ill-lookin', but toosy aboot the heid an'

unco shilpit aboot the face.

"'What do you want?' says she, verra sharp an' clippit in her mainner o'

speech.

"'Does Walter Anderson o' Deeside bide here?' I asked, gey an' plain, as

ye ken a body has to speak to thae Englishers that barely can

understand their ain language.

"'What may you want with him?' says she.

"'I come frae Deeside,' says I--no' that I meaned to lichtly my ain

pairish, but I thocht that the lassie micht no' be acquant wi' the name

o' Whunnyliggate. 'I come frae Deeside, an' I ken Walter Anderson's

faither.'

"'That's no recommend,' says she. 'The mair's the peety,' says I, 'for

he's a daicent man.'

"So she took ben my name, that I had nae cause to be ashamed o', an'

syne she brocht word that I was to step in. So ben I gaed, an' it wasna

a far step, eyther, for it was juist ae bit garret room; an' there on a

bed in the corner was the minister's laddie, lookin' nae aulder than

when he used to swing on the yett an' chase the hens. At the verra first

glint I gat o' him I saw that Death had come to him, and come to bide.

His countenance was barely o' this earth--sair disjaskit an' no' manlike

ava'--mair like a lassie far gane in a decline; but raised-like too, an'

wi' a kind o' defiance in it, as if he was darin' the Almichty to His

face. O man, Rob, I hope I may never see the like again."

"Ay, man, Saunders, ay, ay!" said Rob Adair, who, being a more

demonstrative man than his friend, had been groping in the tail of his

"blacks" for the handkerchief that was in his hat. Then Rob forgot, in

the pathos of the story, what he was searching for, and walked for a

considerable distance with his hand deep in the pocket of his tail-coat.

The farmer of Drumquhat proceeded on his even way.

"The lassie that I took to be his wife (but I asked nae questions) was

awfu' different ben the room wi' him frae what she was wi' me at the

door--fleechin' like wi' him to tak' a sup o' soup. An' when I gaed

forrit to speak to him on the puir bit bed, she cam' by me like stour,

wi' the water happin' off her cheeks, like hail in a simmer

thunder-shoo'er."

"Puir bit lassockie!" muttered Rob Adair, who had three daughters of his

own at home, as he made another absent-minded and unsuccessful search

for his handkerchief. "There's a smurr o' rain beginnin' to fa', I

think," he said, apologetically.

"'An' ye're Sandy MacWhurr frae Drumquhat,' says the puir lad on the

bed. 'Are your sugar-plums as guid as ever?'

"What a quastion to speer on a dying bed, Saunders!" said Rob.

"'Deed, ye may say it. Weel, frae that he gaed on talkin' aboot hoo Fred

Robson an' him stole the hale o' the Drumquhat plooms ae back-end, an'

hoo they gat as far as the horse waterin'-place wi' them when the dogs

gat after them. He threepit that it was me that set the dogs on, but I

never did that, though I didna conter him. He said that Fred an' him

made for the seven-fit march dike, but hadna time to mak' ower it. So

there they had to sit on the tap o' a thorn-bush in the meadow on their

hunkers, wi' the dogs fair loupin' an' yowlin' to get haud o' them. Then

I cam' doon mysel' an' garred them turn every pooch inside oot. He

minded, too, that I was for hingin' them baith up by the heels, till

what they had etten followed what had been in their pooches. A' this he

telled juist as he did when he used to come ower to hae a bar wi' the

lassies, in the forenichts after he cam' hame frae the college the first

year. But the lad was laughin' a' the time in a way I didna like. It

wasna natural--something hard an' frae the teeth oot, as ye micht

say--maist peetifu' in a callant like him, wi' the deid-licht shinin'

already in the blue een o' him."

"D'ye no' mind, Saunders, o' him comin' hame frae the college wi' a

hantle o' medals an' prizes?" said Rob Adair, breaking in as if he felt

that he must contribute his share to the memories which shortened, if

they did not cheer, their road. "His faither was rael prood o' him,

though it wasna his way to say muckle. But his mither could talk aboot

naething else, an' carriet his picture aboot wi' her a' ower the pairish

in her wee black retical basket. Fegs, a gipsy wife gat a saxpence juist

for speerin' for a sicht o' it, and cryin', 'Blessings on the laddie's

bonny face!'"

"Weel," continued Saunders, imperturbably taking up the thread of his

narrative amid the blattering of the snow, "I let the lad rin on i' this

way for a while, an' then says I, 'Walter, ye dinna ask after yer

faither!'

"'No, I don't,' says he, verra short. 'Nell, gie me the draught.' So wi'

that the lassie gied her een a bit quick dab, syne cam' forrit, an'

pittin' her airm aneath his heid she gied him a drink. Whatever it was,

it quaitened him, an' he lay back tired-like.

"'Weel,' said I, after a wee, 'Walter, gin ye'll no' speer for yer

faither, maybe ye'll speer for yer ain mither?'

"Walter Anderson turned his heid to the wa'. 'Oh, my mither! my ain

mither!' he said, but I could hardly hear him sayin' it. Then more

fiercely than he had yet spoken he turned on me an' said, 'Wha sent ye

here to torment me before my time?'

* * * * *

"I saw young Walter juist yince mair in life. I stepped doon to see him

the next mornin' when the end was near. He was catchin' and twitchin' at

the coverlet, liftin' up his hand an' lookin' at it as though it was

somebody else's. It was a black fog outside, an' even in the garret it

took him in his throat till he couldna get breath.

"He motioned for me to sit doon beside him. There was nae chair, so I

e'en gat doon on my knees. The lass stood white an' quaite at the far

side o' the bed. He turned his een on me, blue an' bonnie as a bairn's;

but wi' a licht in them that telled he had eaten o' the tree o'

knowledge, and that no' seldom.

"'O Sandy,' he whispered, 'what a mess I've made o't, haven't I? You'll

see my mither when ye gang back to Deeside. Tell her it's no' been so

bad as it has whiles lookit. Tell her I've aye loved her, even at the

warst--an'--an' my faither too!' he said, with a kind o' grip in his

words.

"'Walter,' says I, 'I'll pit up a prayer, as I'm on my knees onyway.'

I'm no' giftit like some, I ken; but, Robert, I prayed for that laddie

gaun afore his Maker as I never prayed afore or since. And when I spak'

aboot the forgiein' o' sin, the laddie juist steekit his een an' said

'Amen!'

"That nicht as the clock was chappin' twal' the lassie cam' to my door

(an' the landlady wasna that weel pleased at bein' raised, eyther), an'

she askit me to come an' see Walter, for there was naebody else that had

kenned him in his guid days. So I took my stave an' my plaid an' gaed my

ways wi' her intil the nicht--a' lichtit up wi' lang raws o' gas-lamps,

an' awa' doon by the water-side whaur the tide sweels black aneath the

brigs. Man, a big lichtit toun at nicht is far mair lanesome than the

Dullarg muir when it's black as pit-mirk. When we got to the puir bit

hoosie, we fand that the doctor was there afore us. I had gotten him

brocht to Walter the nicht afore. But the lassie was nae sooner within

the door than she gied an unco-like cry, an' flang hersel' distrackit on

the bed. An' there I saw, atween her white airms and her tangled yellow

hair, the face o' Walter Anderson, the son o' the manse o' Deeside,

lyin' on the pillow wi' the chin tied up in a napkin!

"Never a sermon like that, Robert Adair!" said Saunders M'Quhirr

solemnly, after he had paused a moment.

Saunders and Robert were now turning off the wind-swept muir-road into

the sheltered little avenue which led up to the kirk above the white and

icebound Dee Water. The aged gravedigger, bent nearly double, met them

where the roads parted. A little farther up the newly elected minister

of the parish kirk stood at the manse door, in which Walter Anderson had

turned the key forty years ago for conscience' sake.

Very black and sombre looked the silent company of mourners who now drew

together about the open grave--a fearsome gash on the white spread of

the new-fallen snow. There was no religious service at the minister's

grave save that of the deepest silence. Ranked round the coffin, which

lay on black bars over the grave-mouth, stood the elders, but no one of

them ventured to take the posts of honour at the head and the foot. The

minister had left not one of his blood with a right to these positions.

He was the last Anderson of Deeside.

"Preserve us! wha's yon they're pittin' at the fit o' the grave? Wha can

it be ava?" was whispered here and there back in the crowd. "It's Jean

Grier's boy, I declare--him that the minister took oot o' the puirhoose,

and schuled and colleged baith. Weel, that cowes a'! Saw ye ever the

like o' that?"

It was to Rob Adair that this good and worthy thought had come. In him

more than in any of his fellow-elders the dead man's spirit lived. He

had sat under him all his life, and was sappy with his teaching. Some

would have murmured had they had time to complain, but no one ventured

to say nay to Rob Adair as he pushed the modest, clear-faced youth into

the vacant place.

Still the space at the head of the grave was vacant, and for a long

moment the ceremony halted as if waiting for a manifestation. With a

swift, sudden startle the coil of black cord, always reserved for the

chief mourner, slipped off the coffin-lid and fell heavily into the

grave.

"He's there afore his faither," said Saunders M'Quhirr.

So sudden and unexpected was the movement, that, though the fall of the

cord was the simplest thing in the world, a visible quiver passed

through the bowed ranks of the bearers. "It was his ain boy Wattie come

to lay his faither's heid i' the grave!" cried Daft Jess, the parish

"natural," in a loud sudden voice from the "thruch" stone near the

kirkyaird wall where she stood at gaze.

And there were many there who did not think it impossible.

As the mourners "skailed" slowly away from the kirkyaird in twos and

threes, there was wonderment as to who should have the property, for

which the late laird and minister had cared so little. There were very

various opinions; but one thing was quite universally admitted, that

there would be no such easy terms in the matter of rent and arrears as

there had been in the time of "him that's awa'." The snow swept down

with a biting swirl as the groups scattered and the mourners vanished

from each other's sight, diving singly into the eddying drifts as into a

great tent of many flapping folds. Grave and quiet is the Scottish

funeral, with a kind of simple manfulness as of men in the presence of

the King of Terrors, but yet possessing that within them which enables

every man of them to await without unworthy fear the Messenger who comes

but once. On the whole, not so sad as many things that are called

mirthful.

So the last Anderson of Deeside, and the best of all their ancient line,

was gathered to his fathers in an equal sleep that snowy January

morning. There were two inches of snow in the grave when they laid the

coffin in. As Saunders said, "Afore auld Elec could get him happit, his

Maister had hidden him like Moses in a windin'-sheet o' His ain." In the

morning, when Elec went hirpling into the kirkyaird, he found at the

grave-head a bare place which the snow had not covered. Then some

remembered that, hurrying by in the rapidly darkening gloaming of the

night after the funeral, they had seen some one standing immovable by

the minister's grave in the thickly drifting snow. They had wondered why

he should stand there on such a bitter night.

There were those who said that it was just the lad Archibald Grier, gone

to stand a while by his benefactor's grave.

But Daft Jess was of another opinion.

II

A SCOTTISH SABBATH DAY

"_On this day

Men consecrate their souls,

As did their fathers_."

* * * * *

_And ah! the sacred morns that crowned the week--

The path betwixt the mountains and the sea,

The Sannox water and the wooden bridge,

The little church, the narrow seats--and we

That through the open window saw the ridge

Of Fergus, and the peak

Of utmost Cior Mohr--nor held it wrong,

When vext with platitude and stirless air,

To watch the mist-wreaths clothe the rock-scarps bare

And in the pauses hear the blackbird's song_.

"_Memory Harvest_."

I. THE BUIK

Walter Carmichael often says in these latter days that his life owed

much of its bent to his first days of the week at Drumquhat.

The Sabbath morning broke over the farm like a benediction. It was a

time of great stillness and exceeding peace. It was, indeed, generally

believed in the parish that Mrs. M'Quhirr had trained her cocks to crow

in a fittingly subdued way upon that day. To the boy the Sabbath light

seemed brighter. The necessary duties were earlier gone about, in order

that perfect quiet might surround the farm during all the hours of the

day. As Walter is of opinion that his youthful Sabbaths were so

important, it may be well to describe one of them accurately. It will

then be obvious that his memory has been playing him tricks, and that he

has remembered only those parts of it which tell somewhat to his

credit--a common eccentricity of memories.

It is a thousand pities if in this brief chronicle Walter should be

represented as a good boy. He was seldom so called by the authorities

about Drumquhat. There he was usually referred to as "that loon," "the

_hyule_" "Wattie, ye mischéevious boy." For he was a stirring lad, and

his restlessness frequently brought him into trouble. He remembers his

mother's Bible lessons on the green turn of the loaning by the road, and

he is of opinion now that they did him a great deal of good. It is not

for an outside historian to contradict him; but it is certain that his

mother had to exercise a good deal of patience to induce him to give due

attention, and a species of suasion that could hardly be called moral to

make him learn his verses and his psalm.

Indeed, to bribe the boy with the promise of a book was the only way of

inspiring in him the love of scriptural learning. There was a

book-packman who came from Balmathrapple once a month, and by the

promise of a new missionary map of the world (with the Protestants in

red, floating like cream on the top, and the pagans sunk in hopeless

black at the bottom) Wattie could be induced to learn nearly anything.

Walter was, however, of opinion that the map was a most imperfect

production. He thought that the portion of the world occupied by the

Cameronians ought to have been much more prominently charted. This

omission he blamed on Ned Kenna the bookman, who was a U.P.

Walter looked for the time when all the world, from great blank

Australia to the upper Icy Pole, should become Cameronian. He

anticipated an era when the black savages would have to quit eating one

another and learn the Shorter Catechism. He chuckled when he thought of

them attacking _Effectual Calling_.

But he knew his duty to his fellows very well, and he did it to the best

of his ability. It was, when he met a Free Kirk or Established boy, to

throw a stone at him; or alternatively, if the heathen chanced to be a

girl, to put out his tongue at her. This he did, not from any special

sense of superiority, but for the good of their souls.

When Walter awoke, the sun had long been up, and already all sounds of

labour, usually so loud, were hushed about the farm. There was a

breathless silence, and the boy knew even in his sleep that it was the

Sabbath morning. He arose, and unassisted arrayed himself for the day.

Then he stole forth, hoping that he would get his porridge before the

"buik" came on. Through the little end window he could see his

grandfather moving up and down outside, leaning on his staff--his tall,

stooped figure very clear against the background of beeches. As he went

he looked upward often in self-communion, and sometimes groaned aloud in

the instancy of his unspoken prayer. His brow rose like the wall of a

fortress. A stray white lock on his bare head stirred in the crisp air.

Wattie was about to omit his prayers in his eagerness for his porridge,

but the sight of his grandfather induced him to change his mind. He

knelt reverently down, and was so found when his mother came in. She

stood for a moment on the threshold, and silently beckoned the good

mistress of the house forward to share in the sight. But neither of the

women knew how near the boy's prayers came to being entirely omitted

that morning. And what is more, they would not have believed it had they

been informed of it by the angel Gabriel. For this is the manner of

women--the way that mothers are made. The God of faith bless them for

it! The man has indeed been driven out of Paradise, but the woman, for

whose expulsion we have no direct scriptural authority, certainly

carries with her materials for constructing one out of her own generous

faith and belief. Often men hammer out a poor best, not because they are

anxious to do the good for its own sake, but because they know that some

woman expects it of them.

The dwelling-house of Drumquhat was a low one-storied house of a common

enough pattern. It stood at one angle of the white fortalice of

buildings which surrounded the "yard." Over the kitchen and the "ben the

hoose" there was a "laft," where the "boys"[3] slept. The roof of this

upper floor was unceiled, and through the crevices the winter snows

sifted down upon the sleepers. Yet were there no finer lads, no more

sturdy and well set-up men, than the sons of the farmhouse of Drumquhat.

Many a morning, ere the eldest son of the house rose from his bed in the

black dark to look to the sheep, before lighting his candle he brushed

off from the coverlet a full arm-sweep of powdery snow. It was a sign of

Walter's emancipation from boyhood when he insisted on leaving his

mother's cosy little wall-chamber and climbing up the ladder with the

boys to their "laft" under the eaves. Nevertheless, it went with a

sudden pang to the mother's heart to think that never more should she go

to sleep with her boy clasped in her arms. Such times will come to

mothers, and they must abide them in silence. A yet more bitter tragedy

is when she realises that another woman is before her in her son's

heart.

[Footnote 3: As in Ireland, all the sons of the house are "boys" so long

as they remain under the roof-tree, even though they may carry grey

heads on their shoulders.]

The whole family of Saunders M'Quhirr was collected every Sabbath

morning at the "buik." It was a solemn time. No one was absent, or

could be absent for any purpose whatever. The great Bible, clad

rough-coated in the hairy hide of a calf, was brought down from the

press and laid at the table-end. Saunders sat down before it and bowed

his head. In all the house there was a silence that could be felt. It

was at this time every Sabbath morning that Walter resolved to be a good

boy for the whole week. The psalm was reverently given out, two lines at

a time--

"They in the Lord that firmly trust,

Shall be like Zion hill"--

and sung to the high quavering strains of "Coleshill," garnished with

endless quavers and grace-notes.

The chapter was then read with a simple trust and manfulness like that

of an ancient patriarch. Once at this portion of the service the most

terrible thing that ever happened at Drumquhat took place. Walter had

gone to school during the past year, and had been placed in the

"sixpenny"; but he had promptly "trapped" his way to the head of the

class, and so into the more noble "tenpenny," which he entered before he

was six. The operation of "trapping" was simply performed. When a

mistake was made in pronunciation, repetition, or spelling, any pupil

further down the class held out his hand, snapping the finger and thumb

like a pop-gun Nordenfeldt. The master's pointer skimmed rapidly down

the line, and if no one in higher position answered, the "trapper,"

providing always that his emendation was accepted, was instantly

promoted to the place of the "trapped." The master's "taws" were a

wholesome deterrent of persistent or mistaken trapping; and, in

addition, the trapped boys sometimes rectified matters at the back of

the school at the play-hour, when fists became a high court of appeal

and review.

Walter had many fights--"Can ye fecht?" being the recognised greeting

to the new comer at Whinnyliggate school. When this was asked of Walter,

he replied modestly that he did not know, whereupon his enemy, without

provocation, smote him incontinently on the nose. Him our

boy-from-the-heather promptly charged, literally with tooth and nail,

overbore to the dust, and, when he held him there, proceeded summarily

to disable him for further conflict, as he had often seen Royal do when

that mild dog went forth to war. Walter could not at all understand why

he was dragged off his assailant by the assembled school, and soundly

cuffed for a young savage who fought like the beasts. Wattie knew in his

heart that this objection was unreasonable, for whom else had he seen

fight besides the beasts? But in due time he learned to fight

legitimately enough, and to take his share of the honours of war.

Moreover, the reputation of a reserve of savagery did him no harm, and

induced many an elder boy who had been "trapped" to forego the pleasure

of "warming him after the schule comes oot," which was the formal

challenge of Whinnyliggate chivalry.

But this Sabbath morning at the "buik," when the solemnity of the week

had culminated, and the portion was being read, Walter detected a quaint

antiquity in the pronunciation of a Bible name. His hand shot out,

cracking like a pistol, and, while the family waited for the heavens to

fall, Walter boldly "trapped" the priest of the household at his own

family altar!

Saunders M'Quhirr stopped, and darted one sharp, severe glance at the

boy's eager face. But even as he looked, his face mellowed into what his

son Alec to this day thinks may have been the ghost of a smile. But this

he mentions to no one, for, after all, Saunders is his father.

The book was closed. "Let us pray," Saunders said.

The prayer was not one to be forgotten. There was a yearning refrain in

it, a cry for more worthiness in those whom God had so highly favoured.

Saunders was allowed to be highly gifted in intercession. But he was

also considered to have some strange notions for a God-fearing man.

For instance, he would not permit any of his children to be taught by

heart any prayer besides the Lord's Prayer. After repeating that, they

were encouraged to ask from God whatever they wanted, and were never

reproved, however strange or incongruous their supplications might be.

Saunders simply told them that if what they asked was not for their good

they would not get it--a fact which, he said, "they had as lief learn

sune as syne."

This excellent theory of prayer was certainly productive of curious

results. For instance, Alec is recorded in the family archives to have

interjected the following petition into his devotions. While saying his

own prayers, he had been keeping a keen fraternal eye upon sundry

delinquencies of his younger brother. These having become too

outrageous, Alec continued without break in his supplications--"And now,

Lord, will you please excuse me till I gang an' kick that loon Rab, for

he'll no' behave himsel'!" So the spiritual exercises were interrupted,

and in Alec's belief the universe waited till discipline allowed the

petitionary thread to be taken up.

The "buik" being over, the red farm-cart rattled to the door to convey

such of the churchgoers as were not able to walk all the weary miles to

the Cameronian kirk in Cairn Edward. The stalwart, long-legged sons cut

across a shorter way by the Big Hoose and the Deeside kirk. Both the

cart and the walkers passed on the way a good many churches, both

Established and Free; but they never so much as looked the road they

were on.

This hardly applied to Alec, whose sweetheart (for the time-being)

attended the Free kirk at Whinnyliggate. He knew within his own heart

that he would have liked to turn in there, and the consciousness of his

iniquity gave him an acute sense of the fallen nature of man--at least,

till he got out of sight of the spireless rigging of the kirk, and out

of hearing of the jow of its bell. Then his spirits rose to think that

he had resisted temptation. Also, he dared not for his life have done

anything else, for his father's discipline, though kindly, was strict

and patriarchal.

And, moreover, there was a lass at the Cameronian kirk, a daughter of

the Arkland grieve, whose curls he rather liked to see in the seat

before him. He had known her when he went to the neighbouring farm to

harvest--for in that lowland district the corn was all cut and led,

before it was time to begin it on the scanty upland crop which was

gathered into the barns of Drumquhat. Luckily, she sat in a line with

the minister; and when she was there, two sermons on end were not too

long.

II. THE ROAD TO THE KIRK

The clean red farm-cart rattled into the town of Cairn Edward at five

minutes past eleven. The burghers looked up and said, "Hoo is the

clock?" Some of them went so far as to correct any discrepancy in their

time-keepers, for all the world knew that the Drumquhat cart was not a

moment too soon or too late, so long as Saunders had the driving of it.

Times had not been too good of late; and for some years--indeed, ever

since the imposition of the tax on light-wheeled vehicles--the

"tax-cart" had slumbered wheelless in the back of the peat-shed, and the

Drumquhat folk had driven a well-cleaned, heavy-wheeled red cart both to

kirk and market. But they were respected in spite of their want of that

admirable local certificate of character, "He is a respectable man. He

keeps a gig." One good man in Whinnyliggate says to this day that he

had an excellent upbringing. He was brought up by his parents to fear

God and respect the Drumquhat folks!

Walter generally went to church now, ever since his granny had tired of

conveying him to the back field overlooking the valley of the Black

Water of the Dee, while his mother made herself ready. He was fond of

going there to see the tents of the invading army of navvies who were

carrying the granite rock-cuttings and heavy embankments of the

Portpatrick Railway through the wilds of the Galloway moors. But Mary

M'Quhirr struck work one day when the "infant," being hungry for a

piece, said calmly, "D'ye no think that we can gang hame? My mither will

be awa' to the kirk by noo!"

On the long journey to church, Walter nominally accompanied the cart.

Occasionally he seated himself on the clean straw which filled its

bottom; but most of the time this was too fatiguing an occupation for

him. On the plea of walking up the hills, he ranged about on either side

of the highway, scenting the ground like a young collie. He even

gathered flowers when his grandfather was not looking, and his mother or

his "gran," who were not so sound in the faith, aided and abetted him by

concealing them when Saunders looked round. The master sat, of course,

on the front of the cart and drove; but occasionally he cast a wary eye

around, and if he saw that they were approaching any houses he would

stop the cart and make Walter get in. On these occasions he would fail

to observe it even if Walter's hands contained a posy of wild-flowers as

big as his head. His blindness was remarkable in a man whose eyesight

was so good. The women-folk in the cart generally put the proceeds of

these forays under the straw or else dropped them quietly overboard

before entering Cairn Edward.

The old Cameronian kirk sits on a hill, and is surrounded by trees, a

place both bieldy and heartsome. The only thing that the Cameronians

seriously felt the want of was a burying-ground round about it. A kirk

is never quite commodious and cheery without monuments to read and

"thruchs" to sit upon and "ca' the crack." Now, however, they have made

a modern church of it, and a steeple has been set down before it, for

all the world as if Cleopatra's needle had been added to the front wall

of a barn.

But Cairn Edward Cameronian kirk has long been a gate of heaven. To many

who in their youth have entered it the words heard there have brought

the beginning of a new life and another world. Of old, as the morning

psalm went upward in a grand slow surge, there was a sense of hallowed

days in the very air. And to this day Walter has a general idea that the

mansions of the New Jerusalem are of the barn class of architecture and

whitewashed inside, which will not show so much upon the white robes

when it rubs off, as it used to do on plain earthly "blacks."

III. A CAMERONIAN DIET OF WORSHIP

There were not many distractions for a boy of active habits and restless

tendencies during the long double service of two hours and a bittock in

the Cameronian kirk of Cairn Edward. The minister was the Reverend

Richard Cameron, the youngest scion of a famous Covenanting family.

He had come to Cairn Edward as a stripling, and he was now looked upon

as the future high priest of the sect in succession to his father, at

that time minister of the metropolitan temple of the denomination. Tall,

erect, with flowing black hair that swept his shoulders, and the

exquisitely chiselled face of some marble Apollo, Richard Cameron was,

as his name-sake had been, an ideal minister of the Hill Folk. His

splendid eyes glowed with still and chastened fire, as he walked with

his hands behind him and his head thrown back, up the long aisle from

the vestry.

His successor was a much smaller man, well set and dapper, who wore

black gloves when preaching, and who seemed to dance a minuet under his

spectacles as he walked. Alas! to him also came in due time the sore

heart and the bitter draught. They say in Cairn Edward that no man ever

left that white church on the wooded knoll south of the town and was

happier for the change. The leafy garden where many ministers have

written their sermons, has seemed to them a very paradise in after

years, and their cry has been, "O why left I my hame?"

But these were happy days for Richard Cameron when he brought his books

and his violin to the manse that nestled at the foot of the hill. He

came among men strict with a certain staid severity concerning things

that they counted material, but yet far more kindly-hearted and

charitable than of recent years they have gotten credit for.

Saunders did not object to the minister's violin, being himself partial

to a game at the ice, and willing that another man should also have his

chosen relaxation. Then, again, when the young man began to realise

himself, and lay about him in the pulpit, there were many who would tell

how they remembered his father--preaching on one occasion the sermon

that "fenced the tables," on the Fast Day before the communion, when the

partitions were out and the church crowded to the door. Being oppressed

with the heat, he craved the indulgence of the congregation to be

allowed to remove his coat; and thereafter in his shirt-sleeves, struck

terror into all, by denunciations against heresy and infidelity,

against all evil-doing and evil-speaking. It was interesting as a

battle-tale how he barred the table of the Lord to "all such as have

danced or followed after play-actors, or have behaved themselves

unseemly at Kelton Hill or other gathering of the ungodly, or have

frequented public-houses beyond what is expedient for lawful

entertainment; against all such as swear minced oaths, such as 'losh,'

'gosh,' 'fegs,' 'certes,' 'faith'; and against all such as swear by

heaven or earth, or visit their neighbours' houses upon the Lord's Day,

saving as may be necessary in coming to the house of the Lord."