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 hushWith only some old poet's book I lie!Sometimes a lonely doveCalleth her mate, or droning honey thievesWeigh down the bluebell's nodding campanule;And ever singeth through the twilight coolLow voice of water and the stir of leaves.
Perfect are August's golden afternoons!All the rough way across the fells, a pealOf joy-bells ring, not heard by alien ear.The jealous brake and close-shut beech concealThe sweet bower's queen and mine, albeit I hearHummed scraps of dear old tunes,I push the boughs aside, and lo, I lookUpon 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 anddébrisat 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'!"
At home 'tis sunny September,Though here 'tis a waste of snows,So bleak that I scarce rememberHow the scythe through the cornland goes.
With an aching heart I wanderThrough the cold and curved wreaths,And dream that I see meanderBrown burns amid purple heaths:
That I hear the stags on the mountainsBray loud in the early morn,And that scarlet gleams by the fountainsThe 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 thePall Mallbeing 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, "Iwas 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 Icacheddue 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 mycacheof 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 carryingprovisions to my father, who has the shop in Bulun; but for two roublesI will give you a lift to Wiledóte, where you can cross the river toMaidy 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 thetundra, 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 ofvodkafor the ride which his son had given me.
"'Why should I give thee a drink ofvodka?' 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 theevodka? Thou art better withoutvodka.Vodkawill make thee drunk, and thou shalt be brought before theispravnik.'
"The dirty old rascal drew himself up.
"'I, even I, amispravnik, and the horses were mine and thetarantassalso.'
"'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 novodka—give me all thevodka.'
"Being glad on any terms to get clear of the precious couple, I gave them both money for theirvodka, 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 marshytundra, 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 realtundra, 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 thetundra. 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-vesselConcord, 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—youwill 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."
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 laveThe golden isles of blessèd Avalon.When the sweet daylight dies,Out of the gloom the ferryman doth glideTo take us both into a younger day;And as the twilight land recedes away,My lady draweth closer to my side.
Thus to a granary for our winter needWe bring these gleanings from the harvest field;Not the full crop we bring, but only sheavesAt random ta'en from autumn's golden yield—One handful from a forest's fallen leaves;Yet shall this grain be seedWherewith to sow the furrows year by year—These wither'd leaves of other springs the pledge,When thou shalt hear, over our hawthorn hedgeThe 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'sLettersandThe 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 nolocus standifor 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 theclosure, 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 theBordershire 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.