minister of Blawrinnie, but none kindlier; and in a few minutes he had
offered to give Simeon Gleg two nights a week in the dead languages.
Simeon quivered with the mighty words of thankfulness that rose to his
Adam's apple, but which would not come further. He took the minister's
hand.
"Oh, sir," he said, "I canna thank ye! I haena words fittin'! Gin I had
the Greek and Laitin, I wad ken what to say till ye--"
"Never mind, Simeon; do not say a word. I understand all about it,"
replied the minister warmly.
Simeon still lingered undecided. He was now standing in the M.B.
waistcoat and the pink bed-gown. The sleeves were more obtrusive than
ever. The minister was reminded of his official duties. He said
tentatively--
"Ah--would you--perhaps you would like me to give you a word of advice,
or--ah--perhaps to engage in prayer?"
These were things usually expected in Blawrinnie.
"Na, na!" cried Simeon eagerly. "No' that! But, O minister, ye micht gie
thae letters anither skelp owre--aboot _Alfy, Betaw, Gaumaw_!"
The minister took the Greek Rudiments again without a smile, and read
the alphabet slowly and with unction, as if it were his first chapter on
the Sabbath morning--and a full kirk.
Simeon Gleg stood by, looking up and clasping his hands in ecstasy.
"O Lord," he said, "help me keep mind o' it! It's just like the kingdom
o' heaven! Greek an' Laitin's the thing! There's nae mistak', Greek and
Laitin's the thing!"
Then on the doorstep he turned, after Betsy had reclad him in his dry
clothes and lent him the minister's third best umbrella.
This was Simeon Gleg's good-bye to the minister--
"Twunty pound is a dreadfu' heap o' siller; but, O minister, my mind
'ill stand an awfu' sicht o' impruvement! It'll no' be a penny owre
muckle!"
IV
KIT KENNEDY, NE'ER-DO-WELL
"_Now I wonder," with a flicker
Of the Old Ford in his eyes
As he watched the snow come thicker,
"Are the angels warm and rosy
When the snow-storms fill the skies,
As in summer when the sun
Makes their cloud-beds warm and cosy?
And I wonder if they're sleeping
Through this bitter winter weather
Or aloft their watches keeping,
As the shepherds told of them,
Hosts and hosts of them together,
Singing o'er the lowly stable,
In that little Bethlehem!_"
"_Ford Bereton_."
"Kit Kennedy, ye are a lazy ne'er-do-weel--lyin' snorin' there in your
bed on the back o' five o'clock. Think shame o' yoursel'!"
And Kit did.
He was informed on an average ten times a day that he was lazy, a
skulker, a burden on the world, and especially on the household of his
mother's cousin, Mistress MacWalter of Loch Spellanderie. So, being an
easy-minded boy, and moderately cheerful, he accepted the fact, and
shaped his life accordingly.
"Get up this instant, ye scoondrel!" came again the sharp voice. It was
speaking from under three ply of blankets, in the ceiled room beneath.
That is why it seemed a trifle more muffled than usual. It even sounded
kindly, but Kit Kennedy was not deceived. He knew better than that.
"Gin ye dinna be stirrin', I'll be up to ye wi' a stick!" cried Mistress
MacWalter.
It was a greyish, glimmering twilight when Kit Kennedy awoke. It seemed
such a short time since he went to bed, that he thought that surely his
aunt was calling him up the night before. Kit was not surprised. She had
married his uncle, and was capable of anything.
The moon, getting old, and yawning in the middle as if tired of being
out so late, set a crumbly horn past the edge of his little skylight.
Her straggling, pallid rays fell on something white on Kit's bed. He put
out his hand, and it went into a cold wreath of snow up to the wrist.
"Ouch!" said Kit Kennedy.
"I'm comin' to ye," repeated his aunt, "ye lazy, pampered
guid-for-naething! Dinna think I canna hear ye grumblin' and speakin'
ill words there!"
Yet all he had said was "Ouch!"--in the circumstances, a somewhat
natural remark.
Kit took the corner of the scanty coverlet and, with a well-accustomed
arm-sweep, sent the whole swirl of snow over the end of his bed, getting
across the side at the same time himself. He did not complain. All he
said, as he blew upon his hands and slapped them against his sides,
was--
"Michty, it'll be cauld at the turnip-pits this mornin'!"
It had been snowing in the night since Kit lay down, and the snow had
sifted in through the open tiles of the farmhouse of Loch Spellanderie.
That was nothing. It often did that. But sometimes it rained, and that
was worse. Yet Kit Kennedy did not much mind even that. He had a
cunning arrangement in old umbrellas and corn-sacks that could beat the
rain any day. Snow, in his own words, he did not give a "buckie"[5] for.
[Footnote 5: The fruit of the dog-rose is, when large and red, locally
called a "buckie."]
Then there was a stirring on the floor, a creaking of the ancient
joists. It was Kit putting on his clothes. He always knew where each
article lay--dark or shine, it made no matter to him. He had not an
embarrassment of apparel. He had a suit for wearing, and his "other
clothes." These latter were, however, now too small for him, and so he
could not go to the kirk at Duntochar. But his aunt had laid them aside
for her son Rob, a growing lad. She was a thoughtful, provident woman.
"Be gettin' doon the stair, my man, and look slippy," cried his aunt, as
a parting shot, "and see carefully to the kye. It'll be as weel for ye."
Kit had on his trousers by this time. His waistcoat followed. But before
he put on his coat he knelt down to say his prayer. He had promised his
mother to say it then. If he put on his coat he was apt to forget, in
his haste to get out-of-doors where the beasts were friendly. So between
his waistcoat and his coat he prayed. The angels were up at the time,
and they heard, and went and told the Father who hears prayer. They said
that in a garret at a hill-farm a boy was praying with his knees in a
snow-drift--a boy without father or mother.
"Ye lazy guid-for-naething! Gin ye are no' doon the stairs in three
meenits, no' a drap o' porridge or a sup o' milk shall ye get the day!"
So Kit got on his feet, and made a queer little shuffling noise with
them, to induce his aunt to think that he was bestirring himself. So
that is the way he had to finish his prayers--on his feet, shuffling and
dancing a break-down. The angels saw, and smiled. But they took it to
the Father, just the same as if Kit Kennedy had been in church. All
save one, who dropped something that might have been a pearl and might
have been a tear. Then he also went within the inner court, and told
that which he had seen.
But to Kit there was nothing to grumble about. He was pleased, if any
one was. His clogs did not let in the snow. His coat was rough, but
warm. If any one was well off, and knew it, it was Kit Kennedy.
So he came down-stairs, if stairs they could be called that were but the
rounds of a ladder. His aunt heard him.
"Keep awa' frae the kitchen, ye thievin' loon! There's nocht there for
ye--takin' the bairns' meat afore they're up!"
But Kit was not hungry, which, in the circumstances, was as well.
Mistress MacWalter had caught him red-handed on one occasion. He was
taking a bit of hard oatcake out of the basket of "farles" which swung
from the black, smoked beam in the corner. Kit had cause to remember the
occasion. Ever since, she had cast it up to him. She was a master at
casting up, as her husband knew. But Kit was used to it, and he did not
care. A thick stick was all that he cared for, and that only for three
minutes; but he minded when Mistress MacWalter abused his mother, who
was dead.
Kit Kennedy made for the front door, direct from the foot of the ladder.
His aunt raised herself on one elbow in bed, to assure herself that he
did not go into the kitchen. She heard the click of the bolt shot back,
and the stir of the dogs as Tweed and Tyke rose from the fireside to
follow him. There was still a little red gleaming between the bars, and
Kit would have liked to go in and warm his toes on the hearthstone. But
he knew that his aunt was listening. He was going thirteen, and big for
his age, so he wasted no pity on himself, but opened the door and went
out. Self-pity is bad at any time. It is fatal at thirteen.
At the door one of the dogs stopped, sniffed the keen frosty air, turned
quietly, and went back to the hearthstone. That was Tweed. But Tyke was
out rolling in the snow when Kit Kennedy shut the door.
Then his aunt went to sleep. She knew that Kit Kennedy did his work, and
that there would be no cause to complain. But she meant to complain all
the same. He was a lazy, deceitful hound, an encumbrance, and an
interloper among her bairns.
Kit slapped his long arms against his sides. He stood beneath his aunt's
window, and crowed so like a cock that Mistress Mac Walter jumped out of
her bed.
"Save us!" she said. "What's that beast doin' there at this time in the
mornin'?"
She got out of bed to look; but she could see nothing, certainly not
Kit. But Kit saw her, as she stood shivering at the window in her
night-gear. Kit hoped that her legs were cold. This was his revenge. He
was a revengeful boy.
As for himself, he was as warm as toast. The stars tingled above with
frost. The moon lay over on her back and yawned still more ungracefully.
She seemed more tired than ever.
Kit had an idea. He stopped and cried up at her--
"Get up, ye lazy guid-for-naething! I'll come wi' a stick to ye!"
But the moon did not come down. On the contrary, she made no sign. Kit
laughed. He had to stop in the snow to do it. The imitation of his aunt
pleased him. He fancied himself climbing up a rung-ladder to the moon,
with a broomstick in his hand. He would start that old moon, if he fell
down and broke his neck. Kit was hungry now. It was a long time since
supper. Porridge is, no doubt, good feeding; but it vanishes away like
the morning cloud, and leaves behind it only an aching void. Kit felt
the void, but he could not help it. Instead, however, of dwelling upon
it, his mind was full of queer thoughts and funny imaginings. It is a
strange thing that the thought of rattling on the ribs of a lazy, sleepy
moon with a besom-shank pleased him as much as a plate of porridge and
as much milk as he could sup to it. But that was the fact.
Kit went next into the stable to get a lantern. The horses were moving
about restlessly, but Kit had nothing to do with them. He went in only
to get a lantern. It was on the great wooden corn-crib in the corner.
Kit lighted it, and pulled down his cap over his ears.
Then he crossed over to the cattle-sheds. The snow was crisp under foot.
His feet went through the light drift which had fallen during the night,
and crackled frostily upon the older and harder crust. At the barn, Kit
paused to put fresh straw in his iron-shod clogs. Fresh straw every
morning in the bottom of one's clogs is a great luxury. It keeps the
feet warm. Who can afford a new sole of fleecy wool every morning to his
shoe? Kit could, for straw is cheap, and even his aunt did not grudge a
handful. Not that it would have mattered if she had.
The cattle rattled their chains in a friendly and companionable way as
he crossed the yard, Tyke following a little more sedately than before.
Kit's first morning job was to fodder the cattle. He went to the hay-mow
and carried a great armful of fodder, filling the manger before the
bullocks, and giving each a friendly pat as he went by. Great Jock, the
bull in the pen by himself in the corner, pushed a moist nose over the
bars, and dribbled upon Kit with slobbering affection. Kit put down his
head and pretended to run at him, whereat Jock, whom nobody else dared
go near, beamed upon him with the solemn affection of "bestial"--his
great eyes shining in the light of the lamp with unlovely but genuine
affection.
Then came the cows' turn. Kit Kennedy took a milking-pail, which he
would have called a luggie, set his knee to Crummie, his favourite, who
was munching her fodder, and soon had a warm draught. He pledged her in
her own milk, wishing her good health and many happy returns. Then, for
his aunt's sake, he carefully wiped the luggie dry, and set it where he
had found it. He had got his breakfast--no mean or poor one.
But he did not doubt that he was, as his aunt had said, "a lazy,
deceitful, thieving hound."
Kit Kennedy came out of the byre, and trudged away out over the field at
the back of the barn, to the sheep in the park. He heard one of them
cough as a human being does behind his hand. The lantern threw dancing
reflections on the snow. Tyke grovelled and rolled in the light drift,
barking loudly. He bit at his own tail. Kit set down the lantern, and
fell upon him for a tussle. The two of them had rolled one another into
a snowdrift in exactly ten seconds, from which they rose glowing with
heat--the heat of young things when the blood runs fast. Tyke, being
excited, scoured away wildly, and circled the park at a hand-gallop
before his return. But Kit only lifted the lantern and made for the
turnip-pits.
The turnip-cutter stood there, with great square mouth black against the
sky. That mouth must be filled. Kit went to the end of the barrow-like
mound of the turnip-pit. It was covered with snow, so that it hardly
showed above the level of the field. Kit threw back the coverings of old
sacks and straw which kept the turnips from the frost. There lay the
great green-and-yellow globes full of sap. The snow fell upon them from
the top of the pit. The frost grasped them without. It was a chilly job
to handle them, but Kit did not hesitate a moment.
He filled his arms with them, and went to the turnip-cutter. Soon the
_crunch, crunch_ of the knives was to be heard as Kit drove round the
handle, and afterwards the frosty sound of the square finger-lengths of
cut turnip falling into the basket. The sheep had gathered about him,
silently for the most part. Tyke sat still and dignified now, guarding
the lantern, which the sheep were inclined to butt over. Kit heard the
animals knocking against the empty troughs with their hard little
trotters, and snuffing about them with their nostrils.
He lifted the heavy basket, heaved it against his breast, and made his
way down the long line of troughs. The sheep crowded about him, shoving
and elbowing each other like so many human beings, callously and
selfishly. His first basket did not go far, as he shovelled it in great
handfuls into the troughs, and Kit came back for another. It was tiring
work, and the day was dawning grey when he had finished. Then he made
the circuit of the field, to assure himself that all was right, and that
there were no stragglers lying frozen in corners, or turned _avel_[6] in
the lirks of the knowes.
[Footnote 6: A sheep turns _avel_ when it so settles itself upon its
back in a hollow of the hill that it cannot rise.]
Then he went back to the onstead. The moon had gone down, and the
farm-buildings loomed very cold and bleak out of the frost-fog.
Mistress MacWalter was on foot. She had slept nearly two hours, being
half-an-hour too long, after wearying herself with raising Kit; and,
furthermore, she had risen with a very bad temper. But this was no
uncommon occurrence.
She was in the byre with a lantern of her own. She was talking to
herself, and "flyting on" the patient cows, who now stood chewing the
cuds of their breakfast. She slapped them apart with her stool, applied
savagely to their flanks. She even lifted her foot to them, which
affronts a self-respecting cow as much as a human being.
In this spirit she greeted Kit when he appeared.
"Where hae ye been, ye careless deevil, ye? A guid mind hae I to gie ye
my milking-stool owre yer crown, ye senseless, menseless blastie! What
ill-contriving tricks hae ye been at, that ye haena gotten the kye
milkit?"
"I hae been feeding the sheep at the pits, aunt," said Kit Kennedy.
"Dinna tell me," cried his aunt; "ye hae been wasting your time at some
o' your ploys. What do ye think that John MacWalter, silly man, feeds ye
for? He has plenty o' weans o' his ain to provide for withoot meddling
wi' the like o' you--careless, useless, fushionless blagyaird that ye
are."
Mistress Mac Walter had sat down on her stool to the milking by this
time. But her temper was such that she was milking unkindly, and Crummie
felt it. Also she had not forgotten, in her slow-moving bovine way, that
she had been kicked. So in her turn she lifted her foot and let drive,
punctuating a gigantic semi-colon with her cloven hoof just on that part
of the person of Mistress MacWalter where it was fitted to take most
effect.
Mistress MacWalter found herself on her back, with the milk running all
over her. She picked herself up, helped by Kit, who had come to her
assistance.
Her words were few, but not at all well ordered. She went to the byre
door to get the driving-stick to lay on Crummie. Kit stopped her.
"If you do that, aunt, ye'll pit a' the kye to that o't that they'll no'
let doon a drap o' milk this morning--an' the morn's kirning-day."
Mistress Mac Walter knew that the boy was right; but she could only
turn, not subdue, her anger. So she turned it on Kit Kennedy, for there
was no one else there.
"Ye meddlin' curse," she cried, "it was a' your blame!"
She had the shank of the byre besom in her hand as she spoke. With this
she struck at the boy, who ducked his head and hollowed his back in a
manner which showed great practice and dexterity. The blow fell
obliquely on his coat, making a resounding noise, but doing no great
harm.
Then Mistress MacWalter picked up her stool and sat down to another cow.
Kit drew in to Crummie, and the twain comforted one another. Kit bore no
malice, but he hoped that his aunt would not keep back his porridge.
That was what he feared. No other word of good or bad said the Mistress
of Loch Spellanderie by the Water of Ken. Kit carried the two great
reaming cans of fresh milk into the milkhouse; and as he went out
empty-handed, Mistress Mac Walter waited for him, and with a hand both
hard and heavy fetched him a ringing blow on the side of the head, which
made his teeth clack together and his eyes water.
"Tak' that, ye gangrel loon!" she said.
Kit Kennedy went into the barn with fell purpose in his heart. He set up
on end a bag of chaff, which was laid aside to fill a bed. He squared up
to it in a deadly way, dancing lightly on his feet, his hands revolving
in a most knowing manner.
His left hand shot out, and the sack of chaff went over in the corner.
"Stand up, Mistress MacWalter," said Kit, "an' we'll see wha's the
better man."
It was evidently Kit who was the better man, for the sack subsided
repeatedly and flaccidly on the hard-beaten earthen floor. So Kit
mauled Mistress MacWalter exceeding shamefully, and obtained so many
victories over that lady that he quite pleased himself, and in time gat
him into such a glow that he forgot all about the tingling on his ear
which had so suddenly begun at the milkhouse door.
"After all, she keeps me!" said Kit Kennedy cheerily.
There was an angel up aloft who went into the inner court at that moment
and told that Kit Kennedy had forgiven his enemies. He said nothing
about the sack. So Kit Kennedy began the day with a clean slate and a
ringing ear.
He went to the kitchen door to go in and get his breakfast.
"Gae'way wi' ye! Hoo daur ye come to my door after what yer wark has
been this mornin'?" cried Mistress MacWalter as soon as she heard him.
"Aff to the schule wi' ye! Ye get neither bite nor sup in my hoose the
day."
The three MacWalter children were sitting at the table taking their
porridge and milk with horn spoons. The ham was skirling and frizzling
in the pan. It gave out a good smell, but that did not cost Kit Kennedy
a thought. He knew that that was not for the like of him. He would as
soon have thought of wearing a white linen shirt or having the lairdship
of a barony, as of getting ham to his breakfast. But after his morning's
work, he had a sore heart enough to miss his porridge.
But he knew that it was no use to argue with Mistress MacWalter. So he
went outside and walked up and down in the snow. He heard the clatter of
dishes as the children, Rob, Jock, and Meysie MacWalter, finished their
eating, and Meysie set their bowls one within the other and carried them
into the back-kitchen to be ready for the washing. Meysie was nearly
ten, and was Kit's very good friend. Jock and Rob, on the other hand,
ran races who should have most tales to tell of his misdoings at home,
and also at the village school.
"Kit Kennedy, ye scoondrel, come in this meenit an' get the dishes
washen afore yer uncle tak's the 'Buik,'"[7] cried Mistress MacWalter,
who was a religious woman, and came forward regularly at the half-yearly
communion in the kirk of Duntochar. She did not so much grudge Kit his
meal of meat, but she had her own theories of punishment. So she called
Kit in to wash the dishes from which he had never eaten. Meysie stood
beside them, and dried for him, and her little heart was sore. There was
something in the bottom of some of them, and this Kit ate quickly and
furtively--Meysie keeping a watch that her mother was not coming. The
day was now fairly broken, but the sun had not yet risen.
[Footnote 7: Has family worship.]
"Tak' the pot oot an' clean it. Gie the scrapins' to the dogs!" ordered
Mistress MacWalter.
Kit obeyed. Tyke and Tweed followed with their tails over their backs.
The white wastes glimmered in the grey of the morning. It was rosy where
the sun was going to rise behind the great ridge of Ben Arrow, which
looked, smoothly covered with snow as it was, exactly like a gigantic
turnip-pit. At the back of the milkhouse Kit set down the pot, and with
a horn spoon which he took from his pocket he shared the scraping of the
pot equally into three parts, dividing it mathematically by lines drawn
up from the bottom. It was a good big pot, and there was a good deal of
scrapings, which was lucky for both Tweed and Tyke, as well as good for
Kit Kennedy.
Now, this is the way that Kit Kennedy--that kinless loon, without father
or mother--won his breakfast.
He had hardly finished and licked his spoon, the dogs sitting on their
haunches and watching every rise and fall of the horn, when a
well-known voice shrilled through the air--
"Kit Kennedy, ye lazy, ungrateful hound, come ben to the "Buik." Ye are
no better than the beasts that perish, regairdless baith o' God and
man!"
So Kit Kennedy cheerfully went in to prayers and thanksgiving, thinking
himself not ill off. He had had his breakfast.
And Tweed and Tyke, the beasts that perish, put their noses into the
porridge-pot to see if Kit Kennedy had left anything. There was not so
much as a single grain of meal.
THE BACK O' BEYONT
I
_O nest, leaf-hidden, Dryad's green alcove,
Half-islanded by hill-brook's seaward rush,
My lovers still bower, where none may come but I!
Where in clear morning prime and high noon hush
With only some old poet's book I lie!
Sometimes a lonely dove
Calleth her mate, or droning honey thieves
Weigh down the bluebell's nodding campanule;
And ever singeth through the twilight cool
Low voice of water and the stir of leaves_.
II
_Perfect are August's golden afternoons!
All the rough way across the fells, a peal
Of joy-bells ring, not heard by alien ear.
The jealous brake and close-shut beech conceal
The sweet bower's queen and mine, albeit I hear
Hummed scraps of dear old tunes,
I push the boughs aside, and lo, I look
Upon a sight to make one more than wise,--
A true maid's heart, shining from tender eyes,
Rich with love's lore, unlearnt in any book_.
"_Memory Harvest_."
"An' what brings the lang-leggit speldron howkin' an' scrauchlin' owre
the Clints o' Drumore an' the Dungeon o' Buchan?" This was a question
which none of Roy Campbell's audience felt able to answer. But each
grasped his rusty Queen's-arm musket and bell-mouthed horse-pistol with
a new determination. The stranger, whoever he might be, was manifestly
unsafe. Roy Campbell had kept the intruder under observation for some
time through the weather-beaten ship's prospect-glass which he had
stayed cumbrously on the edge of a rock. The man was poking about among
rocks and _débris_ at the foot of one of the cliffs in which the granite
hills break westward towards the Atlantic.
Roy Campbell, the watcher, was a grey-headed man, slack in the twist but
limber in the joints--distinguished by a constant lowering of the eye
and a spasmodic twitching of the corners of the mouth. He was active and
nimble, and in moments of excitement much given to spitting Gaelic oaths
like a wild-cat. But, spite his half-century of life, he was still the
best and the most daring man of a company who had taken daring as their
stock-in-trade.
It was in the palmy days of the traffic with the Isle of Man, when that
tight little island supplied the best French brandy for the drouthy
lairds of half Scotland, also lace for the "keps" and stomachers of
their dames, not to speak of the Sabbath silks of the farmer's goodwife,
wherein she brawly showed that she had as proper a respect for herself
in the house of God as my lady herself.
Solway shore was a lively place in those days, and it was worth
something to be in the swim of the traffic; ay, or even to have a snug
farmhouse, with perhaps a hidden cellar or two, on the main trade-routes
to Glasgow and Edinburgh. Much of the stuff was run by the "Rerrick
Nighthawks," gallant lads who looked upon the danger of the business as
a token of high spirit, and considered that the revenue laws of the land
were simply made to be broken--an opinion in which they were upheld
generally by the people of the whole countryside, not excepting even
those of the austere and Covenanting sort.
How Roy Campbell had found his way among the Westland Whigs is too long
a story to be told--some little trouble connected with the days of the
'45, he said. More likely something about a lass. Suffice it that he had
drawn himself into hold in a lonely squatter shieling deep among the
fastnesses of the Clints o' Drumore. He had built the house with his own
hands. It was commonly known to the few who ventured that way as "The
Back o' Beyont." In the hills behind the hut, which itself lay high on
the brae-face, were many caves, each with its wattling of woven wicker,
over which the heather had been sodded, so that in summer and autumn it
grew as vigorously as upon the solid hill-side. Here Roy Campbell, late
of Glen Dochart, flourished exceedingly, in spite of all the Kennedys of
the South.
So it was that from the Clints o' Drumore and from among the scattered
boulder-shelters around it, Roy and his men had been watching this
intrusive stranger. Suddenly Roy gave a cry, and the prospect-glass
shook in his hand. A little after there came the far-away sound of a
gun.
"Somebody has let a shot intil him," said Roy, dancing with excitement,
"but it has no' been a verra good shot, for he's sittin' on a stane an'
rubbin' the croon o' his hat. Have I no telled you till I'm tired
tellin' you, that there was no' be no shootin' till there was no fear o'
missin'? It is not good to have to shoot; but it iss a verra great deal
waur to shoot an' miss. If that's Gavin Stevenson, the muckle nowt, I
declare I'll brek his ramshackle blunderbuss owre his thick heid."
Taming for an instant his fury, the old man kept his eye on the distant
point of interest, and the others fixed their eyes on him. Suddenly he
leapt to his feet, uttering what, by the sound, were very strong words
indeed, for they were in the Gaelic, a language in which it is good and
mouth-filling to read the imprecatory psalms. When at last his feelings
subsided to the point when his English returned to him, he said--
"May I, Roy Campbell, be boiled in my ain still-kettle, distilled
through my ain worm, an' drucken by a set o' reckless loons, if that's
no my ain Flora that's speakin' till the man himsel'!"
The old man himself seemed much calmed either by the outbreak or by the
discovery he had made; but on several of the younger men among his
followers the news seemed to have an opposite effect.
* * * * *
At the same moment, high on the hill-side above them, a young woman was
talking to a young man. She had walked towards him holding a
bell-mouthed musket in her hands. As she approached, the youth rose to
his feet with a puzzled expression on his face. But there was no fear in
it, only doubt and surprise, slowly fading into admiration. He put his
forefinger and the one next it through the hole in his hat, and said
calmly, since the young woman seemed to expect him to begin the
conversation--
"Did you do this?"
"I took the gun from the man who did. The accident will not happen
again!"
It seemed inadequate as an explanation, but there was something in the
girl's manner of saying it which seemed to give the young man complete
satisfaction. Then the speaker seated herself on a fragment of rock, and
set her chin upon her hand. It was a round and rather prominent chin,
and the young man, who stood abstractedly twirling his hat, making a
pivot of the two fingers which protruded through the hole, thought that
he had never seen a chin quite like it. Or perhaps, on second thoughts,
was it that dimple at the side of the mouth, in which an arch mockery
seemed to be lurking, which struck him more? He resolved to think this
out. It seemed now more important than the little matter of the hole in
the hat.
"You had better go away," said the young girl suddenly.
"And why?" asked the young man.
"Because my father does not like strangers!" she said.
Again the explanation appeared inadequate, but again the youth was
satisfied, finding reason enough for the dislike, mayhap, either in the
dimple on the prominent chin, or in the hole by which he twirled his
hat.
"Do you come from England?" he asked, referring to her accent.
The girl rose from her seat as she answered--
"Oh, no, I come from the 'Back o' Beyont'! What is your name?"
"My name," said the young man stolidly, "is Hugh Kennedy; and I am
coming soon to the 'Back o' Beyont,' father or no father!"
* * * * *
It was a dark night in August, brightening with the uncertain light of a
waning moon, which had just risen. High up on a mountain-side a man was
hastening along, running with all his might whenever he reached a dozen
yards of fairly level ground, desperately clinging at other times with
fingers and knees and feet to the niches in the bare slates which formed
the slippery roofing of the mountain-side. As he paused for a long
moment, the moon turned a scarred and weird face towards him, one-half
of it apparently eaten away. Panting, he resumed his course, and the
pebbles that he started rattled noisily down the mountain-side. But as
he drew near the top of the ridge up which he had been climbing, he
became more cautious. He raced no more wildly, and took care that he
loosened no more boulders to go trundling and thundering down into the
valley. Here he crawled carefully among the bare granite slabs which lay
in hideous confusion--the weather-blanched bones of the mountain, each
casting an ebony shadow on its neighbour. He looked over the ridge into
the gulf through which the streams sped westward towards the Atlantic. A
deep glen lay beneath him--over it on the other side a wilderness of
rugged screes and sheer precipices. Opposite, to the east, rose the
solemn array of the Range of Kells, deep indigo-blue under the gibbous
moon. There were the ridges of towering Millfore, the shadowy form of
Millyea, to the north, the mountain of the eagle, Ben Yelleray, with his
sides gashed and scarred. But the young man's eyes instinctively sought
the opener space between the precipices, whence the face of the loch
glimmered like steel on which one has breathed, in the scanty moonbeams.
Hugh Kennedy had come as he said to seek the Back o' Beyont, and, by his
familiarity and readiness, he sought it not for the first time.
Surmounting the ridge, he wormed his way along the sky-line with
caution, till, getting his back into a perpendicular cleft down the side
of the mountain, he cautiously descended, making no halt until he paused
in the shadow of the precipice at the foot of the perilous stairway. A
plain surface of benty turf lay before him, bright in the moonlight,
dangerous to cross, upon which a few sheep came and went. A little burn
from the crevice of the rocks, through which he had descended, cut the
green surface irregularly. Into this the daring searcher for hidden
treasure descended, and prone on his face pushed his way along, hardly a
pennon of heather or a spray of red sorrel swaying with his stealthy
passage.
At the end of the grassy level the little burn fell suddenly with a
ringing sound into a basin of pure white granite--a drinking-cup with a
yard-wide edge of daintiest silver sand. The young man made his way
hastily across the water to a little bower beneath the western bank,
overhung with birch and fern, half islanded by the swift rush of the
mountain streamlet. Here a tiny circle of stones lay on the sand. Hugh
Kennedy stooped to examine their position with the most scrupulous care.
Five black at intervals, and a white one to the north with a bit of
ribbon under it.
"That means," he said, "that the whole crew are out, and they are
expecting a cargo from the south. The white stone to the north and the
bit ribbon--Flora is waiting, then, at the Seggy Goats."
He strained his eyes forward, but they could see nothing. Far away to
the south he heard voices, and a gun cracked. "I'm well off the ridge,"
he muttered; "they could have marked me down like a foumart as I ran.
They'll be fetching a cargo up from the Brig o' Cree," he added, "and
it'll be all Snug at the 'Back o' Beyont' before the morning." He
listened again, and laughed low to himself, the pleased laugh a lover
laughs when things are speeding well with him.
"Maybe," said he, "Roy Campbell may miss something from the 'Back o'
Beyont' the morrow's morn, that a score of casks of Isle of Man brandy
will not make up for."
So saying, he took his way back through the low, overgrown cavity of the
runnel. When he was midway he heard a step coming across the heath,
brushing through the "gall"[8] bushes, splashing through the shallow
pools. A foot heavily booted crashed through the half-concealed tunnel,
not six inches from where the young man lay, a gun was discharged,
evidently by the sudden jerk upon the earth, and the air was rent above
him by a perfect tornado of vigorous Gaelic--a good language, as has
been said, for preaching or swearing.
[Footnote 8: The bog-myrtle is locally called "gall" bushes. It is the
most characteristic and delightful of Galloway scents.]
"That's Roy himsel'!" said the young man. "It's a strange chance when a
Kennedy comes near to getting his brains knocked out on his own land by
the heel of an outlaw Highlander."
Once on the hillside again, he kept an even way over the boulders and
stones which cumbered it, with less care than hitherto, as though to
protest against the previous indignity of his position. But, Kennedy
though he might be, it had been fitter if he had remembered that he was
on the No Man's Land of the Dungeon of Buchan, for here, about this
time, was a perfect Adullam cave of all the broken and outlaw men south
of the Highland border. A challenge came from the hill-side--"Wha's
there?" Kennedy dropped like a stone, and a shot rang out, followed
immediately by the "scat" of a bullet against the rock behind which he
lay concealed.
A tramp of heavy Galloway brogans was heard, and a half-hearted kicking
about among the heather bushes, and at last a voice saying
discontentedly--
"Gin Roy disna keep Kennedy's liftit beasts in the hollow whaur they
should be, he needna blame me gin some o' them gets a shot intil their
hurdies."
"My beasts!" said Kennedy to himself, silently chuckling, "mine for a
groat!" He was in a mood to find things amusing. So, having won clear of
the keen-eyed watcher, the young man made the best of his way with more
caution to that northern gateway he had called the Seggy Goats.
There he turned to the right up a little burnside which led into a lirk
in the hill, such as would on the border have been called a "hope." As
he came well within the dusky-walled basin of the hill-side, some one
tall and white glided out to meet him; but at this moment the moon
discreetly withdrew herself behind a cloud, mindful, it may be, of her
own youth and of Endymion's greeting on the Latmian steep. So the
chronicler, willing though he be, is yet unable to say how these two
met. He only knows that when the pale light flooded back upon the
hillside and cast its reflection into the dim depths of the hope, they
were evidently well agreed. "It is true what I told you," he is saying
to her, "that my name is Hugh Kennedy, but I did not tell you that I am
Kennedy of Bargany, and yours till death!"
"Then," said the girl, "it is fitter that I should return to the 'Back
of Beyont' till such time as you and your men come back to burn the
thatch about our ears."
The young man smiled and said--"No, Flora, you and I have another road
to travel this night. Over there by the halse o' the pass, there stand
tethered two good horses that will take us before the morning to the
Manse of Balmaclellan, where my cousin, the minister, is waiting, and
his mother is expecting you. Come with me, and you shall be Lady of
Bargany before morning." He stooped again to take her hand.
"My certes, but ye made braw and sure of me with your horses," she said.
"I have a great mind not to stir a foot."
But the young man laughed, being still well pleased, and giving no heed
to her protestations.
* * * * *
So there was a wedding in the early morning at the Manse of the Kells,
and a young bride was brought home to Bargany. As for old Roy Campbell,
he was made the deputy-keeper of the Forest of Buchan, which was an old
Cassilis distinction--and a post that exactly suited his Highland blood.
Time and again, however, had his son to intercede with him not to be too
severe with those smugglers and gangrel bodies who had come to look upon
the fastnesses of the Forest as their own.
"Have ye no fellow-feeling, Roy, for old sake's sake?" Kennedy would
ask.
"Feeling? havers!" growled Roy impolitely, for Roy was spoiled. "I'm a
chief's man noo, and I'll harbour nae gangrel loons on the lands o'
Kennedy."
So the old cateran would depart humming the Galloway rhyme--
"Frae Wigtown to the Toon o' Ayr,
Portpatrick to the Cruives o' Cree;
Nae man need hope to bide safe there,
Unless he court wi' Kennedy."
"Body o' MacCallum More," chuckled the deputy-keeper of the Forest of
Buchan, "but it was Kennedy that cam' coortin' to the 'Back o' Beyont'
that time, whatever, I'm thinkin'!"
VI
NORTH TO THE ARCTIC
_At home 'tis sunny September,
Though here 'tis a waste of snows,
So bleak that I scarce remember
How the scythe through the cornland goes_.
_With an aching heart I wander
Through the cold and curved wreaths,
And dream that I see meander
Brown burns amid purple heaths_:
_That I hear the stags on the mountains
Bray loud in the early morn,
And that scarlet gleams by the fountains
The red-berried wild-rose thorn_.
"It was bad enough in the Free Command," said Constantine, leaning back
in his luxurious easy-chair and joining his thin fingers easily before
him as though he were measuring the stretch between thumb and middle
finger. "But, God knows, it was Paris itself to the hell on earth up at
the Yakût Yoort."
It was a strange sentence to hear, sitting thus in the commonplace
drawing-room of a London house with the baker's boy ringing the area
bell and the last edition of the _Pall Mall_ being cried blatantly
athwart the street.
But no one could look twice at Constantine Nicolai and remain in the
land of the commonplace. I had known him nearly two years, and we had
talked much--usually on literary and newspaper topics, seldom of Russia,
and never of his experiences. Constantine and I had settled down
together as two men will sometimes do, who work together and are drawn
by a sympathy of unlikeness which neither can explain. Both of us worked
on an evening paper of pronounced views upon moral questions and a fine
feeling for a good advertising connection.
We had been sitting dreamily in the late twilight of a gloomy November
day. Work was over, and we were free till Monday morning should call us
back again to the Strand. We sat silent a long while, till Constantine
broke out unexpectedly with the words which startled me.
I looked up with a curiosity which I tried to make neither too apparent
nor yet too lukewarm.
"You were speaking of the time you spent in Siberia?" I said, as though
we had often discussed it.
"Yes; did I ever tell you how I got away?"
Constantine took out his handkerchief and flicked a speck of dust from
his clothes. He was an exception to the rule that revolutionaries care
nothing about their persons--Russian ones especially. He said that it
was because his mother was an English-woman, and England is a country
where they manufacture soap for the world.
"Yes," he continued thoughtfully, "the Free Command was purgatory, but
the Yoort was Hell!" Then he paused a moment, and added, "_I_ was in the
Yoort." He went on--
"There were three of us in the cage which boated us along the rivers.
Chained and manacled we were, so that our limbs grew numb and dead under
the weight of the iron. All Kazan University men, I as good as an
Englishman. The others, Leof and Big Peter, had been students in my
class. They looked up to me, for it was from me that they had learned to
read Herbert Spencer. They had taught themselves to plot against the
White Czar. Yet I had been expatriated because it could not be supposed
that I could teach them Spencer without Anarchy."
Constantine paused and smiled at the stupidity of his former rulers.
"Well," he continued, "the two who had plotted to blow up his Majesty
were sent to the Free Command. They could come and go largely at their
own pleasure--in fact, could do most things except visit their old
teacher, who for showing them how to read Spencer was isolated in the
Yakût Yoort.' Not that the Yakûts meant to be unkind. They were a weak
and cowardly set--cruel only to those who could not possibly harm them.
They had the responsibility of my keeping. They were paid for looking
after me, therefore it was to their interest to keep me alive. But the
less this cost them, the greater gainers were they. They knew also that
if, by accident, they starved the donkey for the lack of the last straw,
a paternal Government would not make the least trouble.
"At first I was not allowed to go out of their dirty tents or still
filthier winter turf-caves, than which the Augean stables were a cleaner
place of abode. Within the tent the savages stripped themselves naked.
The reek of all abominations mingled with the smoke of seal-oil and
burning blubber, and the temperature even on the coldest day climbed
steadily away up above a hundred. Sometimes I thought it must be the
smell that sent it up. The natives had apparently learned their vices
from the Russians and their habits of personal cleanliness from monkeys.
For long I was never allowed to leave the Yoort for any purpose, even
for a moment, without a couple of savages coming after me with long
fish-spears.
"But for all that, much is possible, even in Siberia, to a man who has
a little money. By-and-by my hosts began to understand that when the
inspector visited us to see me in the flesh, there was money enclosed in
the letters (previously carefully edited by the Government official),
money which could be exchanged at Bulun Store for raw leaf-tobacco.
After this discovery, things went much better. I was allowed a little
tent to myself within the enclosure, and close to the great common tent
in which the half-dozen families lived, each in its screened cubicle,
with its own lamp and common rights on the fire of driftwood and blubber
in the centre. This was of course much colder than the great tent, but
with skins and a couple of lamps I did not do so badly.
"One day I had a letter stealthily conveyed to me from Big Peter, to say
that he and Leof were resolved on escaping. They had a boat, he said,
concealed about eight miles up the Lena under some willows on a stagnant
backwater. They intended to try for the north as soon as the water
opened, and hoped then to go towards the west and Wrangell Island, where
they felt pretty sure of being picked up by American sealers by the
month of August or September.
"This letter stirred all my soul. I did not believe rightly in their
chance. It is seldom, I knew, that whalers come that way, or enter far
through the Straits of Behring. Still, undoubtedly, a few did so every
year. It was worth risking, any way, for any kind of action was better
than that ghastly wearing out of body and fatty degeneration of soul.
One or two more letters passed, stimulated by the tobacco-money, and the
day of rendezvous was fixed.
"Leof and Big Peter were to make their own way down the river, hiding by
day and travelling by night. I was to go straight across country and
meet them at the tail of the sixth island above Bulun. So, very
quietly, I made my preparations, and laid in a store of frozen meat and
fish, together with a fish-spear, which I _cached_ due south of my
Yoort, never by any chance allowing myself to take a walk towards the
north, the direction in which I would finally endeavour to escape. It
was very lonely, for I had no one to consult, and no friend to whom to
intrust any part of my arrangements. But the suspicion of the Yakûts was
now very considerably allayed, for, said they, he is now well fed. A dog
in good condition does not go far from home to hunt. He will therefore
stay. They knew something about dogs, for they tried their hunting
condition by running a finger up and down the spine sharply. If that
member was not cut, the dog was in good condition.
"At last, in the dusk of a night in early summer, when the mosquitos
were biting with all their first fury and it was still broad day at ten
o'clock, I started, walking easily and conspicuously to the south,
sitting down occasionally to smoke as though enjoying the night air
before turning in, lest any of my hosts should chance to be awake. Once
out of sight of the Yoort, I went quickly to my _cache_ of provisions,
and, shouldering the whole, I turned my face towards the river and the
Northern Ocean.
"I had not gone far when I struck the track which led along the
riverside in the direction of Bulun. There, to my intense horror, I saw
a man sitting still in a Siberian cart within a few hundred yards,
apparently waiting for me to descend. I gave myself up for lost, but,
nevertheless, made my way down to him. He was a young man with an
uncertain face and weak, shifty eyes.
"'Halloo!' I cried, in order to have the first word, 'what will you take
to drive me to Maidy, where I wish to fish?'
"'I cannot drive you to Maidy,' he returned, 'for I am carrying
provisions to my father, who has the shop in Bulun; but for two roubles
I will give you a lift to Wiledóte, where you can cross the river to
Maidy in a boat.'
"It was none so evil a chance after all which took me in his way. He was
a useless fellow enough, and intolerably conceited. He was for ever
asking if I could do this and that, and jeering at me for my incapacity
when I disclaimed my ability.
"'You cannot kill a wild goose at thirty paces when it is coming towards
you--_plaff_--so fast! You could not shoot as I. Last week I killed
thirty ducks with one discharge of my gun.'
"At this point he drove into a ditch, and we were both spilled out on
the _tundra_, an unpleasant thing in summer when the peaty ground is one
vast sponge. At Maidy we met this young man's father. Here I found that
it was a good thing for me that I had been isolated at the Yoort, for
had I been in the Free Command I should certainly have been spotted. The
wily old merchant knew every prisoner in the Command; but as I had
always obtained all my supplies indirectly through Big Peter, my name
and appearance were alike unknown to him. He approached me, however,
with caution and circumspection, and asked for a drink of _vodka_ for
the ride which his son had given me.
"'Why should I give thee a drink of _vodka_?' I asked, lest I should
seem suspiciously ready to be friendly.
"'Because my son drove you thirteen versts and more.'
"'But I paid your son for all he has done--two roubles, according to
bargain. Why should I buy thee _vodka_? Thou art better without _vodka_.
_Vodka_ will make thee drunk, and thou shalt be brought before the
_ispravnik_.'
"The dirty old rascal drew himself up.
"'I, even I, am _ispravnik_, and the horses were mine and the
_tarantass_ also.'
"'But thy son drove badly and upset us in the ditch.'
"'Then,' whispered the old scoundrel, coming close up with a look of
indescribable cunning on his face, 'give my son no _vodka_--give me all
the _vodka_.'
"Being glad on any terms to get clear of the precious couple, I gave
them both money for their _vodka_, and set off along the backwaters
towards the place described by Leof and Big Peter. I found them there
before me, and we lost no time in embarking. I found that they had the
boat well provendered and equipped. Indeed, the sight of their luxuries
tempted us all to excess; but I reminded them that we were still in a
country of game, and that we must save all our supplies till we were out
in the ocean. The Lena was swollen by the melting snows, and the boat
made slow progress, especially as we had to follow the least frequented
arms of the vast delta. We found, however, plenty of fish--specially
salmon, which were in great quantities wherever, in the blind alleys of
the backwaters, we put down the fish-spear. We were not the only animals
who rejoiced in the free and open life of the delta archipelago. Often
we saw bears swimming far ahead, but none of them came near our boat.
"One night when the others were sleeping I strayed away over the marshy
_tundra_, plunging through the hundred yards of black mud and moss where
the willow-grouse and the little stint were feeding. I came upon a nest
or two of the latter, and paused to suck some of the eggs, one of the
birds meanwhile coming quite close, putting its head quaintly to the
side as though to watch where its property was going, with a view to
future recovery. A little farther along I got on the real _tundra_, and
wandered on in the full light of a midnight sun, which coloured all the
flat surface of the marshy moorland a deep crimson, and laid deep
shadows of purple mist in the great hollow of the Lena river.
"In a little I sat down, and, putting up the collar of my coat--for the
air was beginning to bite sharply--I meditated on the chances of our
life. It did not seem that we had much more than one chance in a
hundred, yet the hundredth chance was indubitably worth the risk--better
than inaction, and better than the suicide which would inevitably come
with the weakening brain, after another winter such as that we had just
passed through.
"Meditating so, I heard a noise behind me, and, turning, found myself
almost face to face with a great she-bear, with two cubs of the year
running gambolling about her. I had not even so much as a fish-spear
with me. With my heart leaping like the piston-rod of an engine, I sat
as still as though I had been a pillar of ice carved out of the hummock.
The cubs were within twenty paces, and the mother would have passed by
but for the roystering youngsters. They came galloping awkwardly up, and
nosed all over me, rubbing themselves against my clothes with just such
a purring noise as a cat might make. There was no harm in them, but
their whining caused the old bear to halt, then abruptly to turn round
and come slowly toward me.
"As I sat motionless I saw that she stood on the ground beside me, her
nose quite on a level with my face. She came and smelled me over as if
uncertain. Then she took a walk all round me. One of the cubs put his
long thin snout into the pocket of my fur coat, and nuzzled delightedly
among the crumbs. His mother gave him a cuff with her paw which knocked
him sprawling three or four paces.
"Having finished her own survey, the bear-mother called away her
offspring. The young bear which had first taken the liberty of search,
waited till his mother was a few steps off, and then came slyly round
and sunk his nose deep in the corresponding pocket on the other side. It
was a false move and showed bad judgment. A fish-hook attached itself
sharply to his nostril, and he withdrew his head with a howl of pain.
The mother turned with an impatient grunt, and I gave myself up for
lost. She came back at a great stretching gallop, to where the cub was
lying on the snow pawing at his nose. His mother, having turned him over
two or three times as if he were a bag of wool, and finding nothing
wrong, concluded that he had been stung by a gadfly, or that he was
making a fuss about nothing, paying no attention to me whatever. Having
finished her inspection, she cuffed him well for his pains, as a
troublesome youngster, and disappeared over the _tundra_. I sat there
for the matter of an hour, not daring to move lest the lady-bruin might
return. Then fearfully and cautiously I found my way back to the boat
and my companions.
"Our voyage after this was quiet and uneventful. Siberia is like no
other country in the world, except the great Arctic plains which fence
in the Pole on the American side. The very loneliness and vastness of
the horizon, like the changeless plain of the sea, envelop you. As soon
as you are off the main roads, wide, untrodden, untouched, virgin space
swallows you up.
"Specially were we safe in that we had chosen to go to the north. Had we
fled to the east, we should have been pursued by swift horses; to the
west, the telegraph would have stopped us; to the south, the Altai and
Himalaya, to say nothing of three thousand miles, barred our way. But no
escape had ever been made to the north, and, so far as we knew, no
attempt.
"One evening, while I was rowing, bending a back far too weary to be
conscious of any additional fatigue, Leof, who happened to be resting,
cried out suddenly, 'The Arctic Ocean!' And there, blue and clear,
through the narrow entrance of a channel half-filled with drift-ice, lay
the mysterious ocean of which we had thought so long. The wind had been
due from the north, and therefore in our teeth, so that not till now had
we had any chance of sailing. Now, however, we rigged a sail, and,
passing over the bar, we felt for the first time the lift of the waves
of the Polar Sea.
"Day by day we held on to the eastward, coasting along almost within
hail of the lonely shore. Often the ice threatened to close in upon us.
Sometimes the growling of the pack churned and crackled only a quarter
of a mile out. One night as we lay asleep--it was my watch, but in that
great silence I too had fallen asleep--Big Peter waked first, and in his
strong emphatic fashion he rose to take the oars. But there before us
were three boats' crews within half a mile, all rowing toward us, while
a mile out from shore, near the edge of the pack, lay a steamer, blowing
off steam through her escape-valves, as though at the end of her day's
run.
"As we woke our first thought was, 'Lost!' For we had no expectation
that any other vessel save a Russian cruiser could be in these waters.
But out from the sternsheets of the leading cutter fluttered the blessed
Stars and Stripes. My companions did not know all the happiness that was
included in the sight of that ensign. Leof had reached for his
case-knife to take his life, and I snatched it from him ere I told him
that of all peoples the Americans would never give us up.
"We were taken on board the U.S. search-vessel _Concord_, commissioned
to seek for the records of the lost American Polar expedition. There we
were treated as princes, or as American citizens, which apparently means
the same thing. That is all my yarn. The Czar's arm is long, but it
does not reach either London or New York."
"And Leof and Big Peter?" I asked, as Constantine ceased speaking. As
though with an effort, he recalled himself.
"Big Peter," he said, "is at St. Louis. He is in the pork trade, is
married, and has a large family."
"And Leof?"
"Ah, Leof! he went back to Russia at the time of the former Czar's
death, and has not been heard of since."
"And you, Constantine, you will never put your nose in the lion's den
again--_you_ will never go back to Russia?"
Almost for the first time throughout the long story, Constantine looked
me fixedly in the eyes. The strange light of another world, of the
fatalist East, looked plainly out of his eyes. Every Russian carries a
terrible possibility about with him like a torch of tragic flame, ready
to be lighted at any moment.
"That is as may be," he said very slowly; "it is possible that I may go
back--at the time of other deaths, _and--also--not--return--any--more_."
BOOK FOURTH
IDYLLS
I
ACROSS THE MARCH DYKE
I
_Far in the deep of Arden wood it lies;
About it pleasant leaves for ever wave.
Through charmèd afternoons we wander on,
And at the sundown reach the seas that lave
The golden isles of blessèd Avalon.
When the sweet daylight dies,
Out of the gloom the ferryman doth glide
To take us both into a younger day;
And as the twilight land recedes away,
My lady draweth closer to my side_.
II
_Thus to a granary for our winter need
We bring these gleanings from the harvest field;
Not the full crop we bring, but only sheaves
At random ta'en from autumn's golden yield--
One handful from a forest's fallen leaves;
Yet shall this grain be seed
Wherewith to sow the furrows year by year--
These wither'd leaves of other springs the pledge,
When thou shalt hear, over our hawthorn hedge
The mavis to his own mate calling clear_.
"_Memory Harvest_."
There was the brool of war in the valley of Howpaslet. It was a warlike
parish. Its strifes were ecclesiastical mainly, barring those of the ice
and the channel-stones. The deep voice of the Reverend Doctor Spence
Hutchison, minister of the parish, whose lair was on the broomy knowes
of Howpaslet beside its ancient kirk, was answered by the keener, more
intense tones of the Reverend William Henry Calvin, of the Seceder
kirk, whose manse stood defiantly on an opposite hill, and dared the
neighbourhood to come on. But the neighbourhood never came, except only
the Kers. In fact, the neighbourhood mostly went to Dr. Hutchison's, for
Howpaslet was a great country of the Moderates. Unto whom, as Mr. Calvin
said, be peace in this world, for they have small chance of any in the
next--at least not to speak of.
Now, ever since the school-board came to Howpaslet its meetings are the
great arena of combat. At the first election Dr. Spence Hutchison had
the largest number of votes by a very great deal, and carried two
colleagues with him to the top of the poll as part of his personal
baggage. He did not always remember to consult them, because he knew
that they were put there to vote as he wished them, and for no other
purpose. And, being honest and modest men, they had no objections. So
Dr. Hutchison was chairman of Howpaslet school-board.
But he reigned not without opposition. The forces of revolution had
carried the two minority men, and the Doctor knew that at the first
meeting of the board he would be met by William Henry Calvin, minister
of the Seceder kirk of the Cowdenknowes, and his argumentative elder,
Saunders Ker of Howpaslet Mains--one of a family who had laid aside
moss-trooping in order to take with the same hereditary birr to
psalm-singing and church politics. They were, moreover, great against
paraphrases.
That was a great day when the board was formed. There was a word that
the Doctor was to move that the meetings of the school-board be private.
So the Kers got word of it and sent round the fiery cross. They gathered
outside and roosted on the dyke by dozens, all with long faces and cutty
pipes. If the proceedings were to be private they would ding down the
parish school. So they said, and the parish believed them.
It is moved by the majority farmer, and seconded by the majority
publican (whose names do not matter), that the Reverend Dr. Spence
Hutchison, minister of the parish, take the chair. It is moved and
seconded that the Reverend William Henry Calvin take the chair--moved by
Saunders Ker, seconded by himself. So Dr. Hutchison has the casting
vote, and he gives it on the way to the chair.
The school-board is constituted.
"Preserve us! what's that?" say the Kers from the windows where they are
listening. They think it is some unfair Erastian advantage.
"Nocht ava'--it's juist a word!" explains to them over his shoulder
their oracle Saunders, from where he sits by the side of his minister--a
small but indomitable phalanx of two in the rear of the farmer and
publican. The schoolroom, being that of the old parochial school, is
crowded by the supporters of Church and State. These are, however, more
especially supporters of the Church, for at the parliamentary elections
they mostly vote for "Auld Wullie" in spite of parish politics and Dr.
Spence Hutchison.
"Tak' care o' Auld Willie's tickets!" is the cry when in Howpaslet they
put the voting-urns into the van to be carried to the county town
buildings for enumeration. It was a Ker who drove, and the Tories
suspected him of "losing" the tickets of Auld Wullie's opponent by the
way. They say that is the way Auld Wullie got in. But nobody really
knows, and everybody is aware that a Tory will say anything of a Ker.
So the schoolroom was crowded with "Establishers," for the Kers would
not come within such a tainted building as a parochial school--except to
a comic nigger minstrel performance, which in Howpaslet levels and
composes all differences. So instead they waited at the windows and
listened. One prominent and officious stoop of the Kirk tried to shut a
window. But he got a Ker's clicky[9] over his head from without, and sat
down discouraged.
[Footnote 9: Shepherd's staff.]
"Wull it come to ocht, think ye?" the Kers asked of each other outside.
"I'm rale dootfu'," was the general opinion; "but we maun juist howp for
the best."
So the Kers stood without and hoped for the best--which, being
interpreted, was that their champions, the Reverend William Calvin and
Saunders Ker of the Mains, would get ill-treated by their opponents
inside, and that they, the Kers, might then have a chance of clearing
out the school. Every Ker had already picked his man. It has never been
decided, though often argued, whether in his introductory prayer Mr.
Calvin was justified in putting up the petition that peace might reign.
The general feeling was against him at the time.
"But there's three things that needs to be considered," said Saunders
Ker: "in the first place, it was within his richt as a minister to pit
up what petition he liked; and, in the second, he didna mean it
leeterally himsel', for we a' kenned it was his intention to be doon the
Doctor's throat in five meenits; an', thirdly, it wad be a bonny queer
thing gin thirty-three Kers an' Grahams a' earnestly prayin' the
contrar', hadna as muckle influence at a throne o' grace, as ae man that
didna mean what he said, even though the name o' him was William Henry
Calvin."
Saunders expressed the general feeling of the meeting outside, which was
frankly belligerent. They had indeed been beaten at the polls as they
had expected, but in an honest tulzie with dickies the parish would hear
a different tale.
But there was one element in the meeting that the Kers had taken no
notice of. There was but one woman there, and she a girl. In the corner
of the schoolroom, on the chairman's right hand, sat Grace Hutchison,
daughter of the manse. The minister was a widower, and this was his only
daughter. She was nineteen. She kept his house, and turned him out like
a new pin. But the parish knew little of her. It called her "the
minister's shilpit bit lassie."
Her face was indeed pale, and her dark eyes of a still and serene
dignity, like one who walks oft at e'en in the Fairy Glen, and sees
deeper into the gloaming than other folk.
Grace Hutchison accompanied her father, and sat in the corner knitting.
A slim, girlish figure hardly filled to the full curves of maidenhood,
she was yet an element that made for peace. The younger men saw that her
lips were red and her eyes had the depth of a mountain tarn. But they
had as soon thought of trysting with a ghaist from the kirkyaird, or
with the Lady of the Big House, as with Grace Hutchison, the minister's
daughter.
So it happened that Grace Hutchison had reached the age of nineteen
years, without knowing more of love than she gathered from the
seventeenth and eighteenth century books in her father's library. And
one may get some curious notions out of Laurence Sterne crossed with
Rutherfurd's _Letters_ and _The Man of Feeling_.
"It is moved and seconded that the meetings be opened with prayer."
Objected to by Doctor Hutchison, ostensibly on the ground that they are
engaged in a purely practical and parochial business, really because it
is proposed by Mr. Calvin and seconded by Saunders Ker. Loyalty to the
National Zion forbade agreement. Yet even Dr. Hutchison did not see the
drift of the motion, but only had a general impression that some
advantage for the opposition was intended. So he objected. Then there
was a great discussion, famous through the parish, and even heard of as
far as Polmont and Crossraguel. William Henry Calvin put the matter on
the highest moral and spiritual grounds, and is generally considered,
even by the Government party, to have surpassed himself. His final
appeal to the chairman as a professing minister of religion was a
masterpiece. Following his minister, Saunders Ker put the matter
practically in his broadest and most popular Scots. The rare Howpaslet
dialect thrilled to the spinal cord of every man that heard it, as it
fell marrowy from the lips of Saunders; and when he reached his
conclusion, even the ranks of Tuscany could scarce forbear to cheer.
"Ye are men, ye are faithers, near the halewar o' ye--maist o' ye are
marriet. Ye mind what ye learned aboot your mither's knee. Ye mind where
ye learned the twenty-third psalm on the quiet Sabbath afternoons. Ye
dinna want to hae yer ain bairns grow up regairdless o' a' that's guid.
Na, ye want them to learn the guid an' comfortable word in the schule as
ye did yoursel's. Ye want them to begin wi' the psalm o' Dawvid an' the
bit word o' prayer. Can ye ask a blessin' on the wark o' the schule,
that hasna been askit on the wark o' the schule-board? Gin ye do, it'll
no be the first time or the last that the bairn's hymn an' the bairn's
prayer has put to shame baith elder an' minister."
As he sat down, Grace Hutchison looked at her father. The Doctor was
conscious of her look, and withdrew his motion. The meetings were opened
with prayer in all time coming.
There was a murmur of rejoicing among the Kers outside, and thighs were
quietly slapped with delight at the management of the question by the
minister and Saunders. It was, with reason, considered masterly.
"Ye see their drift, dinna ye, man?" said one Ker to another. "What,
no?--ye surely maun hae been born on a Sabbath. D'ye no see that ilka
time the Doctor is awa, eyther aboot his ain affairs or aboot the
concerns o' the General Assembly, or when he's no weel, they'll be
obleeged to vote either Saunders or oor minister into the chair--for, of
coorse, the ither two can pray nane, bein' elders o' the Establishment?
An' the chairman has aye the castin' vote!"
"Dod, man, that's graund--heard ye ever the like o' that!"
The Kers rejoiced in first blood, but they kept their strategical
theories to themselves, so as not to interfere with the designs of
Saunders and Mr. Calvin.
Little else was done that day. A clerk of school-board was
appointed--the lawyer factor of the Laird of Howpaslet and a strong
member of the State Church.
Mr. Calvin proposed the young Radical lawyer from the next town, but
simply for form's sake, and to lull the other side with the semblance of
victory.
"The clerk has nae vote," Saunders explained quietly through the window
to the nearest Ker. This satisfied the clan, which was a little inclined
to murmur.
It was then decided that a new teacher was to be appointed, and
applications were to be advertised for. This was really the crux of the
situation. The old parochial dominie had retired on a comfortable
allowance. The company inside the school wanted him to get the allowance
doubled, because he was precentor in the parish kirk, till they heard
that it was to come out of the rates. Then they wanted him to have none
at all. He should just have saved his siller like other folk. Who would
propose to support them with forty-five pounds a year off the rates when
they came to retire?--a fresh strong man, too, and well able for his
meat, and said to be looking out for his third wife. The idea of giving
him forty-five of their pounds to do nothing at all the rest of his
life was a preposterous one. Some said they would have voted for the
Seceders if they had known what the minister had in his head. But, in
spite of the murmurs, the dominie got the money.
The next meeting was to be held on Tuesday fortnight--public intimation
whereof having been made, the meeting was closed with the benediction,
pronounced by Dr. Hutchison in a non-committal official way to show the
Kers that he was not to be coerced into prayer by them.
Applications for the mastership poured in thick and fast. The members of
the school-board were appealed to by letter and by private influence.
They were treated at the market and buttonholed on the street--all
except Saunders and his minister. These two kept their counsel sternly
to themselves, knowing that they had no chance of carrying their man
unless some mysterious providence should intervene.
Providence did intervene, and that manifestly, only three days before
the meeting. After Sabbath service in the parish church, the Reverend
Doctor Hutchison went home to the manse complaining of a violent pain in
his breast.
His daughter promptly put on mustard, and sent for the doctor. By so
doing she probably saved his life. For when the doctor came, he shook
his head, and immediately pronounced it lung inflammation of a virulent
type. The Doctor protested furiously that he must go to the meeting on
Tuesday. He would go, even if he had to be carried. His daughter said
nothing, but locked the door and put the key in her pocket, till she got
the chance of conveying away every vestige of his clerical clothing out
of his reach, locking it where Marget Lamont, his faithful servant,
could not find it. Marget would have brought him a rope to hang himself
if the Doctor had called for it. Sometimes in his delirium he made the
speeches which he had meant to make at the school-board meeting on
Tuesday; and sometimes, but more rarely, he opened the meeting with
prayer. Grace sat by the side of the bed and moistened his lips. He said
it was ridiculous--that he was quite well, and would certainly go to the
meeting. Grace said nothing, and gave him a drink. Then he went babbling
on.
The meeting was duly held. As the Kers had foretold, Mr. Calvin was
voted into the chair unanimously, owing to a feint of Saunders Ker's,
who proposed that the publican majority elder take the chair and open
the proceedings with prayer--which so frightened that gentleman that he
proposed Mr. Calvin before he knew what he was about. It was "more
fitting," he said.
Dr. Hutchison fitted him afterwards for this.
At the close of the prayer, which was somewhat long, the Clerk proposed
that, owing to the absence of an important member, they should adjourn
the meeting till that day three weeks.
Mr. Calvin looked over at the Clerk, who was a broad, hearty, dogmatic
man, accustomed to wrestle successfully with tenants about reductions
and improvements.
"Mr. Clerk," he said sharply, "it is your business to advise us as to
points of law. How many members of this board does it take to make a
quorum?"
"Three," said the solicitor promptly.
"Then," answered Mr. Calvin, with great pith and point, "as we are one
more than a quorum, we shall proceed to our business. And yours, Mr.
Clerk, is to read the minutes of last meeting, and to take note of the
proceedings of this. It will be as well for you to understand soon as
syne that you have no _locus standi_ for speech on this board, unless
your opinion is asked for by the chair."
This was an early instance of what was afterwards, in affairs imperial,
called the _closure_, a political weapon of some importance. The Kers
afterwards observed that they always suspected that "Auld Wullie"
(referring to the Prime Minister of the time) studied the reports of the
Howpaslet school-board proceedings in the _Bordershire Advertiser_.
Indeed, Saunders Ker was known to post one to him every week. So they
all knew where the closure came from.
This is how the strongly Auld Kirk parish of Howpaslet came to have a
Dissenting teacher in the person of Duncan Rowallan, a young man of
great ability, who had just taken a degree at college after passing
through Moray House (an ancient ducal palace where excellent dominies
are manufactured), at a time when such a double qualification was much
less common than it is now.
Duncan Rowallan was admitted by all to be the best man for the position.
It was, indeed, a wonder that one who had been so brilliant at college,
should apply for so quiet a place as the mastership of the school of
Howpaslet. But it was said that Duncan Rowallan came to Howpaslet to
study. And study he did. In one way he was rather a disappointment to
the Kers, and even to his proposer and seconder. He was not bellicose
and he was not political; but, on the other hand, he did his work
soundly and thoroughly, and obtained wondrous reports written in the
official hand of H.M. Inspector, and signed with a flourish like the
tail of a kite. But he shrank from the more active forms of
partisanship, and devoted himself to his books.
Yet even in Howpaslet his life was not to be a peaceful one.
The Reverend Doctor Hutchison arose from his bed of sickness with the
most fixed of determinations to make it hot for the new dominie. When he
lay near the gate of death he had seen a vision, and heaven had been
plain to him. He had observed, among other things, that there was but
one establishment there, a uniform government in the church triumphant.
He took this as a sign that there should be only one on earth. He
understood the secession of the fallen angels referred to by Milton to
be a type of the Disruption. He made a note of this upon his cuff at the
time, resolving to develop it in a later sermon. Then, on rising, he
proceeded at once to act upon it by making the young dominie's life a
burden to him.
Duncan Rowallan found himself hampered on every hand. He was refused
material for the conduct of his school. The new schoolhouse was only
built because the Inspector wrote to the board that the grant would be
withheld till the alterations were made.
The militant Doctor could not dismiss Duncan Rowallan openly. That, at
the time, would have been going too far; but he could, and did, cut down
his salary to starvation point, in the hope that he would resign. But
Duncan Rowallan had not come to Howpaslet for salary, and his expenses
were so few that he lived as comfortably on his pittance as ever he had
done. Porridge night and morning is not costly when you use little milk.
So he continued to wander much about the lanes with a book. In the
summer he could be met with at all hours of light and dusk. Howpaslet
was a land of honeysuckle and clematis. The tendrils clung to every
hedge, and the young man wandered forth to breathe the gracious airs.
One day in early June he was abroad. It was a Saturday, his day of days.
Somehow he could not read that morning, though he had a book in his
pocket, for the stillness of early summer (when the buds come out in
such numbers that the elements are stilled with the wonder of watching)
had broken up. It was a day of rushing wind and sudden onpelts of
volleying rain. The branches creaked, and the young green leaves were
shred untimeously from the beeches. All the orchards were dappled with
flying showers of rosy snow, as the blossoms of the apple and cherry
fled before the swirling gusts of cheerful tempest.
Duncan Rowallan was up on the windy braeface above the kirk of
Howpaslet, with one hand to his cloth cap, as he held down his head and
bored himself into the eye of the wind. Of a sudden he was amazed to see
a straw hat, with a flash of scarlet about it, whirl past him, spinning
upon its edge. To turn and pursue was the work of a moment. But he did
not catch the run-away till it brought up, blown flat against the
kirkyard dyke. He returned with it in his hand. A tall slip of a girl
stood on the slope, her hair wind-blown and unfilleted--wind-blown also
as to her skirts. Duncan knew her. It was the minister's daughter, the
only child of the house of his enemy.
They met--he beneath, she above on the whinny braeface. Her hair,
usually so smooth, blew out towards him in love-locks and witch-tangles.
For the first time in his life Duncan saw a faint colour in the cheeks
of the minister's daughter.
The teacher of the village school found himself apologising, he was not
quite sure for what. He held the hat out a little awkwardly.
"I found it," he said, not knowing what else to say.
This description of his undignified progress as he rattled down the face
of the hill after the whirling hat amused Grace Hutchison, and she
laughed a little, which helped things wonderfully.
"But you have lost your own cap," she said, looking at his cropped blond
poll without disapproval.
"It does not matter," said Duncan, rubbing it all over with his hand as
though the action would render it waterproof.
Now, Grace Hutchison was accustomed to domineer over her father in
household matters, such as the care of his person; so it occurred to her
that she ought to order this young man to go and look after his cap. But
she did not. On the contrary, she took a handkerchief out of her pocket,
disentangling it mysteriously from the recesses of flapping skirts.
"Put that over your head till you get your own," she said.
Sober is not always that which sober looks, and it may be that Grace
Hutchison had no objections to a little sedate merriment with this young
man. It was serious enough down at the manse, in all conscience; and
every young man in the parish stood ten yards off when he spoke to Miss
Hutchison. She had not been at a party since she left the Ministers'
Daughters' College two years ago, and then all the young men were
carefully selected and edited by the lady principal. And Grace Hutchison
was nineteen. Think of that, maids of the many invitations!
The young master's attempts to tie the handkerchief were ludicrous in
the extreme. One corner kept falling over and flicking into his eye, so
that he seemed to be persistently winking at her with that eyelid, a
proceeding which would certainly not have been allowed at the parties of
the Ministers' Daughters' College with the consent of the
authorities--at least not in Grace's time.
"Oh, how stupid you are!" said Grace, putting a pin into her mouth to be
ready; "let me do it."
She spoke just as if she had been getting her father ready for church.
She settled the handkerchief about Duncan Rowallan's head with one or
two little tugs to the side. Then she took the pin out of her mouth and
pinned it beneath his chin, in a way mightily practical, which the youth
admired.
"Now, then," she said, stepping back to put on her own hat, fastening it
with a dangerous-looking weapon of war shaped like a stiletto, thrust
most recklessly in.
The two young people stood in the lee of the plantation on the corner of
the glebe, which had been planted by Dr. Hutchison's predecessor, an old
bachelor whose part in life had been to plant trees for other people to
make love under.
But there was no love made that day--only a little talk on equal terms
concerning Edinburgh and Professor Ramage's, where on an eve of tea and
philosophy it was conceivable that they might have met. Only, as a
matter of fact they did not. But at least there were a great many
wonderful things which might have happened. And the time flew.
But in the mid-stream of interest Grace Hutchison recollected herself.
"It is time for my father's lunch. I must go in," she said.
And she went. She had forgotten her duties for more than half an hour.
But even as she went, she turned and said simply, "You may keep the
handkerchief till you find your cap."
"Thank you," said Duncan, watching her so soberly that the white cap on
his head did not look ridiculous--at least not to Grace.
As soon as she was out of sight he took off the handkerchief carefully,
and put it, pin and all, into the leather case in his inner pocket where
he had been accustomed to keep his matriculation card.
He looked down at the kirkyard wall over which his cap had flown.
"Oh, hang the cap!" he said; "what's about a cap, any way?"
Now, this was a most senseless observation, for the cap was a good cap
and a new cap, and had cost him one shilling and sixpence at the
hat-shop up three stairs at the corner of the Bridges.
* * * * *
The next evening Duncan Rowallan stood by his own door. Deaf old Mary
Haig, his housekeeper, was clacking the pots together in the kitchen and
grumbling steadily to herself. Duncan drew the door to, and went up by
the side of his garden, past the straw-built sheds of his bees, a legacy
from a former occupant, into the cool breathing twilight of the fields.
He sauntered slowly up the dykeside with his hands behind his back. He
was friends with all the world. It was true that the school-board had
met that day and his salary had been still further reduced, so that it
was now thought that for very pride he would leave. In his interests the
Kers had assaulted and battered four fellow-Christians of the contrary
opinion, and the Reverend William Henry Calvin had shaken his fist in
the stern face of Dr. Hutchison as he defied him at the school-board
meeting. But Duncan only smiled and set his lips a little more firmly.
He did not mean to let himself be driven out--at least not yet.
Up by the little wood there was a favourite spot from which the whole
village could be seen from under the leaves. It was a patch of firs on
the edge of the glebe, a useless rocky place let alone even by the cows.
Against the rough bark of a fir-tree Duncan had fastened a piece of
plank in order to form a rude seat.
As soon as he reached his favourite thinking stance, he forgot all about
ecclesiastical politics and the strifes of the Kers with the minister.
He stood alone in the wonder of the sunset. It glowed to the zenith.
But, as very frequently in his own water-colours, the colour had run
down to the horizon and flamed intensest crimson in the Nick of
Benarick. Broader and broader mounted the scarlet flame, till he seemed
in that still place to hear the sun's corona crackle, as observers think
they do when watching a great eclipse. The set of the sun affected him
like a still morning--that most mysterious thing in nature. He missed,
indeed, the diffused elation of the dawn; but it was infinitely sweet to
hear in that still place the softened sounds of the sweet village
life--for Howpaslet was a Paradise to those to whom its politics were
naught. He saw the blue smoke go up from the supper fires into the
windless air in pillars of cloud, then halt, and slowly dissipate into
lawny haze.
The cries of the playing children, the belated smith ringing the evening
chimes on his anvil in the smithy, the tits chirping among the firs, the
crackle of the rough scales on the red boughs of the Scotch fir above
him as they cooled--all fed his soul as though Peter's sheet had been
let down, and there was nothing common or unclean on all the earth.
"I beg your pardon--will you speak to me?"
The words stole upon him as from another sphere, startling him into
dropping his book. Duncan looked round. Some one was standing by the
rough stone dyke within a dozen yards of his summer-seat. It was Grace
Hutchison.
Duncan went towards the dyke, taking off his cap as he went--a new cap.
So they stood there, the wall of rough hill-stones between them, but
looking into one another's eyes.
There was no merriment now in the eyes that met his, no word of the
return of handkerchief or any maidenly coquetry. The mood of the day of
blowing leaves had passed away. She had a shawl over her head, drawn
close about her shoulders. Underneath it her eyes were like night. But
her lips showed on her pale face like a geranium growing alone and
looking westward in the twilight.
"You will pardon me, Mr. Rowallan," she said, "if I have startled you. I
am grieved for what is happening--more sorry than I can say--my father
thinks that it is his duty, but--"
Duncan Rowallan did not suffer her to go on.
"Pray do not say a word about the matter, Miss Hutchison; believe that I
do not mind at all. I know well the conscientiousness of your father,
and he is quite right to carry out his duty."
"He has no quarrel against you," said Grace.
"Only against my office," said Duncan; "poor office! If it were not for
the peace of this countryside up here against the skies, I should go at
once and be no barrier to the unanimity of the parish."
She seemed to draw a long breath as his words came to her across the
stone dyke.
"Ah," she said, "I hope that you will not go; for if Howpaslet did not
quarrel about you, it would just be something else. But I am sorry you
should be annoyed by our bickerings."
"No one could be less annoyed," said Duncan, smiling; "so perhaps it is
to save some more sensitive person from suffering, that I have been sent
here."
They were very near to each other, these two young people, though the
dyke was between them. They leaned their elbows on it, turning together
and looking down the valley. A scent that was not the scent of flowers
stole on Duncan Rowallan's senses, quickening his pulses, and making him
breathe faster to take it in. He was very near the dark, bird-like head
from which the June wind had blown the love-locks. A balmy breath
surrounded him like a halo--the witchery of youth's attraction, which is
as old as Eden, ambient as the air.
Grace Hutchison may have felt it too, for she shuddered slightly, and
drew her shawl closer about her shoulders.
"My father--" she began, and paused.
"Please do not talk of these things," said Duncan, the heart within him
thrilling to the hinted womanhood which came to him upon the balmy
breath; "I do not care for anything if you are not mine enemy."
"I--your enemy!" she said softly, with a pause between the words; "oh
no, not that."
Her hand fell from the folds of her shawl and lay across the dyke. It
looked a lonely thing, and Duncan Rowallan was sure that it trembled, so
he took it in his. There it fluttered a little and then lay still, as a
taken bird that knows it cannot escape. The dyke was between them, but
they drew very near to it on either side.
Then at the same moment each drew a deep breath, and one looked at the
other as if expecting speech. Yet neither spoke, and after a slow
dwelling of questioning eyes, each on each, as if in a kind of reproach
they looked suddenly away again.
The sunset glow deepened into rich crimson. The valleys into which they
looked down from the high corner of the field were lakes of fathomless
sapphire. The light smoky haze on the ridges was infinitely varied in
tone, and caused the distance to fall back, crest behind crest, in
illimitable perspective.
Still they did not speak, but their hearts beat so loudly that they
answered each other. The stone dyke was between. Grace Hutchinson took
back her hand.
Opportunity stood on tip-toe. The full tide of Duncan Rowallan's affairs
lipped the watershed, the stone dyke only standing between.
He turned towards her. Far away a sheep bleated. The sound came to
Duncan scornfully, as though a wicked elf had laughed at his
indecision.
He put out his hands across the rough stones to take her hand again. He
touched her warm shoulders instead beneath the shawl. He drew her to
him. Into the deep eyes luminous with blackness he looked as into the
mirror of his fate. Now, what happened just then is a mystery, and I
cannot explain it. Neither can Grace nor Duncan. They have gone many
times to the very place to find out exactly how it all happened, but
without success. Where they have failed, can I succeed?
I can only tell what did happen.
Duncan Rowallan seemed to rise into another world, as in his childhood
he had often dreamed of doing, looking up and up into the fleecy waves
of the highest cloudlets. Her lips beckoned to him in the gloaming, like
a red flower whose petals have fallen a little apart. It came at last.
For the dyke proved too narrow, and in one swift electric touch their
old world flew into flinders.
The stone dyke was not any longer between. Duncan Rowallan had
overleaped it and stood by the side of Grace Hutchison.
* * * * *
The minister had come home to Howpaslet manse exceedingly elate. At last
he had won the battle. The Kers had gone home gnashing their teeth.
There was lament in the manse of the Calvins. After long endeavours he
had got the farmer and the publican to vote for the dismissal of Duncan
Rowallan. He smiled to himself as he came in. He was not a malicious
man, but he could not bear being worsted in his own parish. His feeling
against Duncan Rowallan was neither here nor there; but, indeed, the
Kers were hard to bear.
His daughter met him with a grave face. The determined Hutchison blood
ran still and sure in her veins.
"Father," she said, "what I am going to tell you will give you pain: I
have promised to marry Duncan Rowallan."
The stern old minister swayed--doubting whether he had heard aright.
"Marry Duncan Rowallan, the dominie!" he said; "the lassie's gane gyte!
He's dismissed and a pauper!"
"No," she said; "on the contrary, he has got a mastership at the High
School. I have promised to marry him."
The old man said no word. He did not try to hector Grace, as he would
have done any one outside the manse. Her household autocracy asserted
itself even in that supreme moment. Besides, he knew that it would be so
useless, for she was his own child. He put one hand up uncertainly and
smoothed his brow vaguely, as though something hurt him and he did not
understand.
He sat down in his great chair, and took up a little fire-screen that
had stood many years by his chair. Grace had worked it as a sampler when
as a little girl she went to the village school and had slept at night
in his room in a little trundle-bed. He looked at it strangely.
"Grade," he said, "Gracie--my wee Gracie!"--and then he set the
fire-screen down very gently. "I am an old man and full of years," he
said. He looked worn and broken.
Grace went quickly and put her arms about his neck.
"No, no, father," she said; "you have only gained a son."
But the old man's passions could not turn so quickly, not having the
pliancy of youth and love. He only shook his head sadly.
"Not so," he said; "I am left a lonely man--my house is left unto me
desolate."
Yet, nevertheless, Grace was right. He stays with them for a month every
Assembly time, and lectures them daily on the relations of Church and
State.
II
A FINISHED YOUNG LADY
I
_I cannot send thee gold
Nor silver for a show;
Nor are there jewels sold
One-half so dear as thou_.
II
_No daffodil doth blow
In this dull winter time,
Nor purple violet grow
In so unkind a clime_.
III
_To-day I have not got
One spray of meadow-sweet,
Nor blue forget-me-not
My posy to complete_.
IV
_Yet none of these can claim
So much goodwill as you;
Their lips put not to shame
Cowslip end Oxlip too_.
V
_But joy I'll take in this,
Pleasure more sweet than all,
If thou this book but kiss
As Love's memorial_.
There were few bigger men in the West of Scotland than Fergus Teeman,
the grocer in Port Ryan. He had come from Glasgow and set up in quite
grand style, succeeding to the business of his uncle, John M'Connell,
who had spent all his days selling treacle and snuff to the guidwives of
the Port. When Fergus Teeman came from Glasgow, he found that he could
not abide the small-paned, gloomy windows of the grocer's shop at the
corner, so in a little while the whole shop became window and door,
overfrowned by mere eyebrows of chocolate-coloured eaves.
He had a broad and gorgeous sign specially painted in place of the old
"_John M'Connell, licensed to sell Tea, Coffee, and Tobacco_," which
had so long occupied its place. Then he dismounted the crossed pipes and
the row of sweetie-bottles, and filled the great windows according to
the latest canons of Glasgow retail provision-trade taste. The result
was amazing, and for days there was the danger of a block before the
windows. It was as good as a peep-show, and considerably cheaper. As
many as four boys and a woman with a shawl over her head, had been
counted on the pavement in front of the shop at once--a fact which the
people in the next town refused to credit.
Fergus Teeman was a business man. He was "no gentleman going about with
his hands in his pockets"--he said so himself. And so far he was right,
for, let his hands be where they might, certainly he was no gentleman.
But, for all that, he was a big man in Port Ryan, and it was a great day
for the Kirk in the Vennel when Fergus Teeman led his family to worship
within the precincts of that modest Zion. They made much of him there,
and Fergus sunned himself in his pew in the pleasing warmth of his own
greatness.
In the congregation from whence he had come he had not been accustomed
to be so treated. He had held a seat far under the gallery; but in the
Kirk in the Vennel he had the corner seat opposite to the manse pew.
There Fergus installed his wife and family, and there last of all he
shut himself in with a bang. He then looked pityingly around as his
women-folk reverently bent a moment forward on the book-board. That was
well enough for women, but a leading grocer could not so bemean himself.
In a few months Fergus started a van. This was a new thing about the
Port. The van was for the purpose of conveying the goods and benefits of
the Emporium to the remoter villages. The van was resplendent with paint
and gilding. It was covered with advertisements of its contents
executed in the highest style of art. The Kirk in the Vennel felt the
reflected glory, and promptly elected him an elder. A man _must_ be a
good man to come so regularly to ordinances and own such a van. The wife
of this magnificent member of society was, like the female of so many of
the lower animals, of modest mien and a retiring plumage. She sat much
in the back parlour; and even when she came out, she crept along in the
shadow of the houses.
"Na," said Jess Kissock of the Bow Head, "it's no' a licht thing to be
wife to sic a man"--which, indeed, it assuredly was not. Mrs. Fergus
Teeman could have given some evidence on that subject, but she only hid
her secrets under the shabby breast of her stuff gown.
There was said to be a daughter at a boarding-school employed in
"finishing," whatever that might be. There were also various boys like
steps in an uneven stair, models of all the virtues under their father's
eye, and perfect demons on the street--that is, on the streets of Port
Ryan which were not glared upon by the omniscient plate-glass of
Teeman's Emporium.
There was no minister in the Kirk in the Vennel when Fergus Teeman came
to Port Ryan. The last one had got another kirk after fifteen years'
service, thirteen of which he had spent in fishing for just such a call
as he got, being heartily tired of the miserable ways of his
congregation. When he received the invitation, he waited a week before
he thought it would be decent to say, that perhaps he might have
seriously to consider whether this were not a direct leading of
Providence. On the following Thursday he accepted. On the Monday he left
Port Ryan for ever, directing his meagre properties to be sent after
him. He shook his fist at the town as the train moved out.
So Fergus Teeman was just in time to come in for the new election,
which seemed like a favouritism of Providence to a new man--for, of
course, he was put on the committee which was to choose the candidates.
Then there was a great preaching. All the candidates stopped with Mr.
Teeman. This suited the Kirk in the Vennel, for it was a saving in
expense. It also suited Fergus Teeman, for it allowed him to sound them
on all the subjects which interested him. And, as he said, the expense
was really a mere trifle, so long as one did not give them ham and eggs
for their breakfast. It is not good to preach on ham and eggs. It spoils
the voice. Fergus Teeman had a cutting out of the Glasgow _Weekly
Flail_, an able paper which is the Saturday Bible of those parts. This
extract said that Adelina Patti could not sing for five hours after ham
and eggs. It is just the same with preaching. Fergus, therefore, read
this to the candidates, and gave them for breakfast plain bread and
butter (best Irish cooking, 6-1/2d. per pound).
Fergus was an orthodox man. His first question was, "How long are you
out of the college?" His next, "Were you under Professor Robertson?" His
third, "Do ye haud wi' hymn-singin', street-preachin', revival meetings,
and novel-reading?"
From the answers to these questions Fergus Teeman formed his own short
leet. It was a very short one. There was only the Rev. Farish Farintosh
upon it. He took "cent.-per-cent." in the examination. Some of the
others made a point or two in their host's estimation, but Farish
Farintosh cleared the paper. He was just out of college that very
month--which was true. (But he did not say that he had been detained a
year or two, endeavouring to overcome the strange scruples of the
Examination Board.) He had studied under Professor Robertson, and had
frequently proved him wrong to his very face in the class, till the
students could not keep from laughing (which, between ourselves, was a
lie). He was no hypocrite, advanced critic, or teetotaler, and would
scorn to say he was. (He smelled Fergus Teeman's breath. He had been a
staunch teetotaler at another vacancy the Saturday before.) He would not
open a hymn-book for thirty pounds. This was the very man for Fergus
Teeman. So they made a night of it, and consumed five "rake" of hot
water. Hot water is good for the preaching.
But, strange to say, when the day of the voting came, the congregation
would by no means have the Reverend Farish Farintosh, though his claims
were vehemently urged by the grocer in a speech, with strange blanks in
the places where the strong words would have come on other occasions.
They elected instead a mere nobody of a young beardless boy, who had
been a year or two in a city mission, and whose only recommendation was
that he had very successfully worked among the poor of his district.
Fergus Teeman stated his opinions of the new minister, across his
counter, often and vehemently.
"The laddie kens nae mair nor a guano-bag. There's nocht in him but what
the spoon pits intil him. He hasna the spunk o' a rabbit. I tell ye
what, we need a man o' wecht in oor kirk. _Come up oot o' there, boy;
ye're lickin' that sugar again_! Na, he'll ken wha he's preachin' till,
when he stands up afore me. My e'e wull be on him nicht and day. _Hae ye
no thae bags made yet? Gin they're no' dune in five meenits, I'll knock
the heid aff ye_!"
The new minister came. He was placed with a great gathering of the
clans. The Kirk in the Vennel was full to overflowing the night of his
first sermon. Fergus Teeman 'was there with his notebook, and before the
close of the service more than two pages were filled with the measure
of the new minister's iniquity. Then, on the Tuesday after, young Duncan
Stewart, seeking to know all his office-bearers, entered like the
innocentest of flies the plate-glass-fronted shop where Fergus Teeman
lay in wait. There and then, before half a score of interested
customers, the elder gave the young minister "sic a through-pittin' as
he never gat in his life afore." This was the elder's own story, but the
popular opinion was clearly on the side of the minister. It had to be
latent opinion, however, for the names of most of the congregation stood
in the big books in Fergus Teeman's shop.
The minister commended himself to his Maker, and went about his own
proper business. Every Sabbath, after the sermon, often also before the
service, Fergus Teeman was on hand to say his word of reproof to the
young minister, to interject the sneering word which, like the poison of
asps, turned sweet to bitter. Had Duncan Stewart been older or wiser, he
would have showed him to the door. Unfortunately he was just a simple,
honest, well-meaning lad from college, trying to do his duty in the Kirk
in the Vennel so far as he knew it.
There was an interval of some months before the minister could bring
himself to visit again the shop and house of his critical elder. This
time he thought that he would try the other door. As yet he had only
paid his respects at a distance to Mrs. Teeman. It seemed as if they had
avoided each other. He was shown into a room in which a canary was
swinging in the window, and a copy of Handel's _Messiah_ lay on the open
piano. This was unlike the account he had heard of Mrs. Teeman. There
was a merry voice on the stairs, which said clearly in girlish tones--
"Do go and make yourself decent, father; and then if you are good you
may come in and see the minister!"
Duncan Stewart said to himself that something had happened. He was
right, and something very important, too. May Teeman was "finished."
"And I hope you like me," she had said to her father when she came home.
"Sit down, you disreputable old man, till I do your hair. You're not fit
to be seen!"
And, though it would not be credited in the Port, it is a fact that
Fergus Teeman sat down without a word. In a week her father was a new
man. In a fortnight May kept the key of the cupboard where the square
decanter was hidden.
A tall, slim girl with an eager face, and little wisps of fair hair
curling about her head, came into the room and frankly held out her hand
to the minister.
"You are Mr. Stewart. I am glad to see you."
Whereupon they fell a-talking, and in a twinkling were in the depths of
a discussion upon poetry. Duncan Stewart was so intent on watching the
swift changes of expression across the face of this girl, that he made
several flying shots in giving his opinions of certain poems--for which
he was utterly put to shame by May Teeman, who instantly fastened him to
his random opinions and asked him to explain them.
To them entered another Fergus Teeman to the militant critic of the
Sabbath morning whom Duncan knew too well.
"Sit down, father. Make yourself at home," said his daughter. "I am just
going to play something." And so her father sat down not ill-pleased,
and, according to her word, tried to make himself at home, till the
hours slipped away, and Duncan Stewart was induced to stay for tea.
"He's mellowin' fine, like a good blend o' Glenlivet!" said the grocer
next day, in his shop. (He did not speak nearly so loud as he used to
do.) "He's comin' awa' brawly. I'll no' say but what I was owre sharp
wi' the lad at first. He'll mak' a sound minister yet, gin he was a
kennin' mair spunky. Hear till me, yon was a graun' sermon we got
yesterday. It cowed a'! Man, Lochnaw, he touched ye up fine aboot pride
and self-conceit!"
* * * * *
"What's at the bottom o' a' that, think ye, na?" asked Lochnaw that
night as his wife and he dodged home at the rate of five miles an hour
behind the grey old pony with the shaggy fetlocks.
"Ye cuif," said his wife; "that dochter o' his 'ill be gaun up to the
manse. That boardin'-schule feenished her, an' she's feenished the
minister!"
"Davert! what a woman ye are!" said Lochnaw, in great admiration.
III
THE LITTLE LAME ANGEL
_In the field so wide and sunny
Where the summer clover is,
Where each year the mower searches
For the nests of wild-bee honey,
All along these silver birches
Stand up straight in shining row,
Dewdrops sparkling, shadows darkling,
In the early morning glow;
And in gleaming time they're gleaming
White, like angels when I'm dreaming_.
_There among its handsome brothers
Was one little crooked tree,
Different from all the others,
Just as bent as bent could be.
First it crawl'd along the heather
Till it turn'd up straight again,
Then it drew itself together
Like a tender thing in pain;
Scarce a single green leaf straggled
From its twigs so bare and draggled--
And it really looks ashamed
When I'm passing by that way,
Just as if it tried to say--
"Please don't look at such a maim'd
Little Cripple-Dick as I;
Look at all the rest about,
Look at them and pass me by,
I'm so crooked, do not flout me,
Kindly turn your head awry;
Of what use is my poor gnarl'd
Body in this lovely world?_"
Once I wrote[10] about two little, boys who played together all through
the heats of the Dry Summer in a garden very beautiful and old. The tale
told how it came to pass that one of the boys was lame, and also why
they loved one another so greatly.
[Footnote 10: Jiminy and Jaikie (_The Stickit Minister_).]
Now, it happened that some loved what was told, and perhaps even more
that which was not told, but only hinted. For that is the secret of
being loved--not to tell all. At least, from over-seas there came
letters one, two, and three, asking to be told what these two did in the
beautiful garden of Long Ago, what they played at, where they went, and
what the dry summer heats had to do with it all.
Perhaps it is a foolish thing to try to write down in words that which
was at once so little and so dear. Yet, because I love the garden and
the boys, I must, for my own pleasure, tell of them once again.
It was Jiminy's garden, or at least his father's, which is the same
thing, or even better. For his father lived in a gloomy study with
severe books, bound in divinity calf, all about him; and was no more
conscious of the existence of the beautiful garden than if it had been
the Desert of Sahara.
On the other hand, Jiminy never opened a book that summer except when he
could not help it, which was once a day, when his father instructed him
in the Latin verb.
The old garden was cut into squares by noble walks bordered by boxwood,
high like a hedge. For it had once been the garden of a monastery, and
the yews and the box were all that remained of what the good monks had
spent so much skill and labour upon.
There was an orchard also, with old gnarled, green-mossed trees, that
bore little fruit, but made a glory of shade in the dog-days. Up among
the branches Jiminy made a platform, like those Jaikie read to him about
in a book of Indian travel, where the hunters waited for tigers to come
underneath them. Ever since Jaikie became lame he lived at the manse,
and the minister let him read all sorts of queer books all day long, if
so he wished. As for Jiminy, he had been brought up among books, and
cared little about them; but Jaikie looked upon each one as a new gate
of Paradise.
"You never can tell," said Jaikie to Jiminy; "backs are deceivin',
likewise names. I've looked in ever so many books by the man that wrote
_Robinson Crusoe_, and there's not an island in any of them."
"Books are all stuff," said Jiminy. "Let's play 'Tiger.'"
"Well," replied Jaikie, "any way, it was out of a book I got 'Tiger.'"
So Jaikie mounted on the platform, and they began to play 'Tiger.' This
is how they played it. Jaikie had a bow and arrow, and he watched and
waited silently up among the green leaves till Jiminy came, crawling as
softly beneath as the tiger goes _pit-pat_ in his own jungles. Then
Jaikie drew the arrow to a head, and shot the tiger square on the back.
With a mighty howl the beast sprang in the air, as though to reach
Jaikie. But brave Jaikie only laughed, and in a moment the tiger fell on
his back, pulled up its trouser-legs, and expired. For that is the way
tigers always do. They cannot expire without pulling up their
trouser-legs. If you do not believe me, ask the man at the Zoo.
Now, as the former story tells, it was Jaikie who used always to do what
Jiminy bade him; but after Jaikie was hurt, helping Jiminy's father to
keep his church and manse, it was quite different. Jiminy used to come
to Jaikie and say, "What shall we do to-day?" And then he used to wheel
his friend in a little carriage the village joiner made, and afterwards
carry him among the orchard trees to the place he wanted to go.
"Jiminy," said Jaikie, "the flowers are bonnie in the plots, but they
are a' prisoners. Let us make a place where they can grow as they like."
Perhaps he thought of himself laid weak and lonely, when the green world
without was all a-growing and a-blowing.
"Bring some of the flowers up to this corner," said Jaikie, the lame
boy. And it was not long till Jiminy brought them. The ground was baked
and dry, however, and soon they would have withered, but that Jaikie
issued his commands, and Jiminy ran for pails upon pails of water from
the little burn where now the water had stopped flowing, and only slept
black in the pools with a little green scum over them.
"I can't carry water all night like this," said Jiminy at last. "I
suppose we must give up this wild garden here in the corner of the
orchard."
"No," said Jaikie, rubbing his lame ankle where it always hurt, "we must
not give it up, for it is our very own, and I shall think about it
to-night between the clock-strikes."
For Jaikie used to lie awake and count the hours when the pain was at
the worst. Jaikie now lived at the manse all the time (did I tell you
that before?), for his father was dead.
So in the little room next to Jiminy's, Jaikie lay awake and hearkened
to the gentle breathing of his friend. Jiminy always said when he went
to bed, "I'll keep awake to-night sure, Jaikie, and talk to you."
And Jaikie only smiled a wan smile with a soul in it, for he knew that
as soon as Jiminy's head touched the pillow he would be in the dim and
beautiful country of Nod, leaving poor Jaikie to rub the leg in which
the pains ran races up and down, and to listen and pray for the next
striking of the clock.
As he lay, Jaikie thought of the flowers in the corner of the orchard
thirsty and sick. It might be that they, like him, were sleepless and
suffering. He remembered the rich clove carnations with their dower of a
sweet savour, the dark indigo winking "blueys" or cornflowers, the
spotted musk monkey-flowers, smelling like a village flower-show. They
would all be drooping and sad. And it might be that the ferns would be
dead--all but the hart's-tongue; which, though moisture-loving, can yet,
like the athlete, train itself to endure and abide thirsty and unslaked.
But the thought of their pain worked in Jaikie's heart.
"Maybe it will make me forget my foot if I can go and water them."
So he arose, crawling on his hands and knees down-stairs very softly,
past where Jiminy tossed in his bed, and softer still past the
minister's door. But there was no sound save the creak of the stair
under him.
Jaikie crept to the water-pail, and got the large quart tankard that
hung by the side of the wall.
It was a hard job for a little lad to get a heavy tin filled--a harder
still to unlock the door and creep away across the square of gravel.
"You have no idea" (so he said afterwards) "how badly gravel hurts your
knees when they are bare."
Luckily it was a hot night, and not a breath of air was stirring, so the
little white-clad figure moved slowly across the front of the house to
the green gate of the garden. Jaikie could only reach out as far as his
arms would go with the tin of water. Then painfully he pulled himself
forward towards the tankard. But in spite of all he made headway, and
soon he was creeping up the middle walk, past the great central sundial,
which seemed high as a church-steeple above him. The ghostly moths
fluttered about him, attracted by the waving white of his garments. In
their corner he found the flowers, and, as he had thought, they were
withered and drooping.
He lifted the water upon them with his palms, taking care that none
dripped through, for it was very precious, and he seemed to have carried
it many miles.
And as soon as they felt the water upon them the flowers paid him back
in perfume. The musk lifted up its head, and mingled with the late
velvety wallflower and frilled carnation in releasing a wonder of
expressed sweetness upon the night air.
"I wish I had some for you, dear dimpled buttercups," said Jaikie to the
golden chalices which grew in the hollows by the burnside, where in
other years there was much moisture; "can you wait another day?"
"We have waited long," they seemed to reply; "we can surely wait another
day."
Then the honeysuckle reached down a single tendril to touch Jaikie on
the cheek.
"Some for me, please," it said; "there are so many of us at our house,
and so little to get. Our roots are such a long way off, and the big
fellows farther down get most of the juice before it comes our way. If
you cannot water us all, you might pour a little on our heads." So
Jaikie lifted up his tankard and poured the few drops that were in the
bottom upon the nodding heads of the honeysuckle blooms.
"Bide a little while," said he, "and you shall have plenty for root and
flower, for branch and vine-stem."
There were not many more loving little boys than Jaikie in all the
world; and with all his work and his helping and talking, he had quite
forgotten about the pain in his foot.
Now, if I were telling a story--making it up, that is--it is just the
time for something to happen,--for a great trumpet to blow to tell the
world what a brave fellow this friend of the flowers was; or at least
for some great person, perhaps the minister himself, to come and find
him there alone in the night. Then he might be carried home with great
rejoicing.
But nothing of the kind happened. In fact, nothing happened at all.
Jaikie began to creep back again in the quiet, colourless night; but
before he had quite gone away the honeysuckle said--
"Remember to come back to-morrow and water us, and we will get ready
such fine full cups of honey for you to suck."