“‘God,’ said I, ‘be my help and stay secure!I’ll think of the leech-gatherer on the lonely moor;’”
and added, “It is said Wordsworth never knew what it was to be in want of money all his life.”
“Nae doubt, nae doubt: he trusted in Him.”
It was for the sake of the minute notices of nature, and not for the religious lesson, which he now seemed to see for the first time, that Hugh had read the poem. He could not help being greatly impressed by the confidence with which David received the statement he had just made on the authority of De Quincey in his unpleasant article about Wordsworth. David resumed:
“He maun hae had a gleg ‘ee o’ his ain, that Maister Wordsworth, to notice a’thing that get. Weel he maun hae likit leevin’ things, puir maukin an’ a’—jist like our Robbie Burns for that. An’ see hoo they a’ ken ane anither, thae poets. What says he aboot Burns?—ye needna tell me, Mr. Sutherlan’; I min’t weel aneuch. He says:—
‘Him wha walked in glory an’ in joy,Followin’ his ploo upo’ the muntain-side.’
Puir Robbie! puir Robbie! But, man, he was a gran’ chield efter a’; an’ I trust in God he’s won hame by this!”
Both Janet and Hugh, who had had a very orthodox education, started, mentally, at this strange utterance; but they saw the eye of David solemnly fixed, as if in deep contemplation, and lighted in its blue depths with an ethereal brightness; and neither of them ventured to speak. Margaret seemed absorbed for the moment in gazing on her father’s face; but not in the least as if it perplexed her like the fir-wood. To the seeing eye, the same kind of expression would have been evident in both countenances, as if Margaret’s reflected the meaning of her father’s; whether through the medium of intellectual sympathy, or that of the heart only, it would have been hard to say. Meantime supper had been rather neglected; but its operations were now resumed more earnestly, and the conversation became lighter; till at last it ended in hearty laughter, and Hugh rose and took his leave.
It is the property of good and sound knowledge, to putrifie and dissolve into a number of subtle, idle, unwholesome, and (as I may tearme them) vermiculate questions; which have indeed a kinde of quicknesse, and life of spirite, but no soundnesse of matter, or goodnesse of quality.—LORD BACON.—Advancement of Learning.
The following morning, the laird’s family went to church as usual, and Hugh went with them. Their walk was first across fields, by pleasant footpaths; and then up the valley of a little noisy stream, that obstinately refused to keep Scotch Sabbath, praising the Lord after its own fashion. They emerged into rather a bleak country before reaching the church, which was quite new, and perched on a barren eminence, that it might be as conspicuous by its position, as it was remarkable for its ugliness. One grand aim of the reformers of the Scottish ecclesiastical modes, appears to have been to keep the worship pure and the worshippers sincere, by embodying the whole in the ugliest forms that could be associated with the name of Christianity. It might be wished, however, that some of their followers, and amongst them the clergyman of the church in question, had been content to stop there; and had left the object of worship, as represented by them, in the possession of some lovable attribute; so as not to require a man to love that which is unlovable, or worship that which is not honourable—in a word, to bow down before that which is not divine. The cause of this degeneracy they share in common with the followers of all other great men as well as of Calvin. They take up what their leader, urged by the necessity of the time, spoke loudest, never heeding what he loved most; and then work the former out to a logical perdition of everything belonging to the latter.
Hugh, however, thought it was all right: for he had the same good reasons, and no other, for receiving it all, that a Mohammedan or a Buddhist has for holding his opinions; namely, that he had heard those doctrines, and those alone, from his earliest childhood. He was therefore a good deal startled when, having, on his way home, strayed from the laird’s party towards David’s, he heard the latter say to Margaret as he came up:
“Dinna ye believe, my bonny doo, ‘at there’s ony mak’ ups or mak’ shifts wi’ Him. He’s aye bringin’ things to the licht, no covenin’ them up and lattin them rot, an’ the moth tak’ them. He sees us jist as we are, and ca’s us jist what we are. It wad be an ill day for a’ o’s, Maggy, my doo, gin he war to close his een to oor sins, an’ ca’ us just in his sicht, whan we cudna possibly be just in oor ain or in ony ither body’s, no to say his.”
“The Lord preserve’s, Dawvid Elginbrod! Dinna ye believe i’ the doctrine o’ Justification by Faith, an’ you a’maist made an elder o’?”
Janet was the respondent, of course, Margaret listening in silence.
“Ou ay, I believe in’t, nae doot; but, troth! the minister, honest man, near-han’ gart me disbelieve in’t a’thegither wi’ his gran’ sermon this mornin’, about imputit richteousness, an’ a clean robe hidin’ a foul skin or a crookit back. Na, na. May Him ‘at woosh the feet o’ his friens, wash us a’thegither, and straucht oor crookit banes, till we’re clean and weel-faured like his ain bonny sel’.”
“Weel, Dawvid—but that’s sanctificaition, ye ken.”
“Ca’t ony name ‘at you or the minister likes, Janet, my woman. I daursay there’s neither o’ ye far wrang after a’; only this is jist my opingan aboot it in sma’—that that man, and that man only, is justifeed, wha pits himsel’ into the Lord’s han’s to sanctifee him. Noo! An’ that’ll no be dune by pittin’ a robe o’ richteousness upo’ him, afore he’s gotten a clean skin aneath’t. As gin a father cudna bide to see the puir scabbit skin o’ his ain wee bit bairnie, ay, or o’ his prodigal son either, but bude to hap it a’ up afore he cud lat it come near him! Ahva!”
Here Hugh ventured to interpose a remark.
“But you don’t think, Mr. Elginbrod, that the minister intended to say that justification left a man at liberty to sin, or that the robe of Christ’s righteousness would hide him from the work of the Spirit?”
“Na; but there is a notion in’t o’ hidin’ frae God himsel’. I’ll tell ye what it is Mr. Sutherlan’: the minister’s a’ richt in himsel’, an’ sae’s my Janet here, an’ mony mair; an’ aiblins there’s a kin’ o’ trowth in a’ ‘at they say; but this is my quarrel wi’ a’ thae words an’ words an’ airguments, an’ seemilies as they ca’ them, an’ doctrines, an’ a’ that—they jist haud a puir body at airm’s lenth oot ower frae God himsel’. An’ they raise a mist an’ a stour a’ aboot him, ‘at the puir bairn canna see the Father himsel’, stan’in’ wi’ his airms streekit oot as wide’s the heavens, to tak’ the worn crater,—and the mair sinner, the mair welcome,—hame to his verra hert. Gin a body wad lea’ a’ that, and jist get fowk persuâdit to speyk a word or twa to God him lane, the loss, in my opingan, wad be unco sma’, and the gain verra great.”
Even Janet dared not reply to the solemnity of this speech; for the seer-like look was upon David’s face, and the tears had gathered in his eyes and dimmed their blue. A kind of tremulous pathetic smile flickered about his beautifully curved mouth, like the glimmer of water in a valley, betwixt the lofty aquiline nose and the powerful but finely modelled chin. It seemed as if he dared not let the smile break out, lest it should be followed instantly by a burst of tears.
Margaret went close up to her father and took his hand as if she had been still a child, while Janet walked reverentially by him on the other side. It must not be supposed that Janet felt any uneasiness about her husband’s opinions, although she never hesitated to utter what she considered her common-sense notions, in attempted modification of some of the more extreme of them. The fact was that, if he was wrong, Janet did not care to be right; and if he was right, Janet was sure to be; “for,” said she—and in spirit, if not in the letter, it was quite true—“I never mint at contradickin’ him. My man sall hae his ain get, that sall he.” But she had one especial grudge at his opinions; which was, that it must have been in consequence of them that he had declined, with a queer smile, the honourable position of Elder of the Kirk; for which Janet considered him, notwithstanding his opinions, immeasurably more fitted than any other man “in the haill country-side—ye may add Scotlan’ forby.” The fact of his having been requested to fill the vacant place of Elder, is proof enough that David was not in the habit of giving open expression to his opinions. He was looked upon as a douce man, long-headed enough, and somewhat precise in the exaction of the laird’s rights, but open-hearted and open-handed with what was his own. Every one respected him, and felt kindly towards him; some were a little afraid of him; but few suspected him of being religious beyond the degree which is commonly supposed to be the general inheritance of Scotchmen, possibly in virtue of their being brought up upon oatmeal porridge and the Shorter Catechism.
Hugh walked behind the party for a short way, contemplating them in their Sunday clothes: David wore a suit of fine black cloth. He then turned to rejoin the laird’s company. Mrs. Glasford was questioning her boys, in an intermittent and desultory fashion, about the sermon.
“An’ what was the fourth heid, can ye tell me, Willie?”
Willie, the eldest, who had carefully impressed the fourth head upon his memory, and had been anxiously waiting for an opportunity of bringing it out, replied at once:
“Fourthly: The various appellations by which those who have indued the robe of righteousness are designated in Holy Writ.”
“Weel done, Willie!” cried the laird.
“That’s richt, Willie,” said his mother. Then turning to the younger, whose attention was attracted by a strange bird in the hedge in front. “An’ what called he them, Johnnie, that put on the robe?” she asked.
“Whited sepulchres,” answered Johnnie, indebted for his wit to his wool-gathering.
This put an end to the catechising. Mrs. Glasford glanced round at Hugh, whose defection she had seen with indignation, and who, waiting for them by the roadside, had heard the last question and reply, with an expression that seemed to attribute any defect in the answer, entirely to the carelessness of the tutor, and the withdrawal of his energies from her boys to that “saucy quean, Meg Elginbrod.”
When the Soul is kindled or enlightened by the Holy Ghost, then it beholds what God its Father does, as a Son beholds what his Father does at Home in his own House.—JACOB BEHMEN’S Aurora—Law’s Translation.
Margaret began to read Wordsworth, slowly at first, but soon with greater facility. Ere long she perceived that she had found a friend; for not only did he sympathize with her in her love for nature, putting many vague feelings into thoughts, and many thoughts into words for her, but he introduced her to nature in many altogether new aspects, and taught her to regard it in ways which had hitherto been unknown to her. Not only was the pine wood now dearer to her than before, but its mystery seemed more sacred, and, at the same time, more likely to be one day solved. She felt far more assuredly the presence of a spirit in nature,
“Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns,And the round ocean, and the living air;”
for he taught her to take wider views of nature, and to perceive and feel the expressions of more extended aspects of the world around her. The purple hill-side was almost as dear to her as the fir-wood now; and the star that crowned its summit at eve, sparkled an especial message to her, before it went on its way up the blue. She extended her rambles in all directions, and began to get with the neighbours the character of an idle girl. Little they knew how early she rose, and how diligently she did her share of the work, urged by desire to read the word of God in his own handwriting; or rather, to pore upon that expression of the face of God, which, however little a man may think of it, yet sinks so deeply into his nature, and moulds it towards its own likeness.
Nature was doing for Margaret what she had done before for Wordsworth’s Lucy: she was making of her “a lady of her own.” She grew taller and more graceful. The lasting quiet of her face began to look as if it were ever upon the point of blossoming into an expression of lovely feeling. The principal change was in her mouth, which became delicate and tender in its curves, the lips seeming to kiss each other for very sweetness. But I am anticipating these changes, for it took a far longer time to perfect them than has yet been occupied by my story.
But even her mother was not altogether proof against the appearance of listlessness and idleness which Margaret’s behaviour sometimes wore to her eyes; nor could she quite understand or excuse her long lonely walks; so that now and then she could not help addressing her after this fashion:
“Meg! Meg! ye do try my patience, lass, idlin’ awa’ yer time that get. It’s an awfu’ wastery o’ time, what wi’ beuks, an’ what wi’ stravaguin’, an’ what wi’ naething ava. Jist pit yer han’ to this kirn noo, like a gude bairn.”
Margaret would obey her mother instantly, but with a look of silent expostulation which her mother could not resist; sometimes, perhaps, if the words were sharper than usual, with symptoms of gathering tears; upon which Janet would say, with her honest smile of sweet relenting,
“Hootoots, bairn! never heed me. My bark’s aye waur nor my bite; ye ken that.”
Then Margaret’s face would brighten at once, and she would work hard at whatever her mother set her to do, till it was finished; upon which her mother would be more glad than she, and in no haste to impose any further labour out of the usual routine.
In the course of reading Wordsworth, Margaret had frequent occasion to apply to Hugh for help. These occasions, however, generally involved no more than small external difficulties, which prevented her from taking in the scope of a passage. Hugh was always able to meet these, and Margaret supposed that the whole of the light which flashed upon her mind when they were removed, was poured upon the page by the wisdom of her tutor; never dreaming—such was her humility with regard to herself, and her reverence towards him—that it came from the depths of her own lucent nature, ready to perceive what the poet came prepared to show. Now and then, it is true, she applied to him with difficulties in which he was incapable of aiding her; but she put down her failure in discovering the meaning, after all which it must be confessed he sometimes tried to say, to her own stupidity or peculiarity—never to his incapacity. She had been helped to so much by his superior acquirements, and his real gift for communicating what he thoroughly understood; he had been so entirely her guide to knowledge, that she would at once have felt self-condemned of impiety—in the old meaning of the word—if she had doubted for a moment his ability to understand or explain any difficulty which she could place clearly before him.
By-and-by he began to lend her harder, that is, more purely intellectual books. He was himself preparing for the class of Moral Philosophy and Metaphysics; and he chose for her some of the simpler of his books on these subjects—of course all of the Scotch school—beginning with Abercrombie’s Intellectual Powers. She took this eagerly, and evidently read it with great attention.
One evening in the end of summer, Hugh climbed a waste heathery hill that lay behind the house of Turriepuffit, and overlooked a great part of the neighbouring country, the peaks of some of the greatest of the Scotch mountains being visible from its top. Here he intended to wait for the sunset. He threw himself on the heather, that most delightful and luxurious of all couches, supporting the body with a kindly upholding of every part; and there he lay in the great slumberous sunlight of the late afternoon, with the blue heavens, into which he was gazing full up, closing down upon him, as the light descended the side of the sky. He fell fast asleep. If ever there be an excuse for falling asleep out of bed, surely it is when stretched at full length upon heather in bloom. When he awoke, the last of the sunset was dying away; and between him and the sunset sat Margaret, book in hand, waiting apparently for his waking. He lay still for a few minutes, to come to himself before she should see he was awake. But she rose at the moment, and drawing near very quietly, looked down upon him with her sweet sunset face, to see whether or not he was beginning to rouse, for she feared to let him lie much longer after sundown. Finding him awake, she drew back again without a word, and sat down as before with her book. At length he rose, and, approaching her, said—
“Well, Margaret, what book are you at now?”
“Dr. Abercrombie, sir,” replied Margaret.
“How do you like it?”
“Verra weel for some things. It makes a body think; but not a’thegither as I like to think either.”
It will be observed that Margaret’s speech had begun to improve, that is, to be more like English.
“What is the matter with it?”
“Weel, ye see, sir, it taks a body a’ to bits like, and never pits them together again. An’ it seems to me that a body’s min’ or soul, or whatever it may be called—but it’s jist a body’s ain sel’—can no more be ta’en to pieces like, than you could tak’ that red licht there oot o’ the blue, or the haill sunset oot o’ the heavens an’ earth. It may be a’ verra weel, Mr. Sutherland, but oh! it’s no like this!”
And Margaret looked around her from the hill-top, and then up into the heavens, where the stars were beginning to crack the blue with their thin, steely sparkle.
“It seems to me to tak’ a’ the poetry oot o’ us, Mr. Sutherland.”
“Well, well,” said Hugh, with a smile, “you must just go to Wordsworth to put it in again; or to set you again up after Dr. Abercrombie has demolished you.”
“Na, na, sir, he sanna demolish me: nor I winna trouble Mr. Wordsworth to put the poetry into me again. A’ the power on earth shanna tak’ that oot o’ me, gin it be God’s will; for it’s his ain gift, Mr. Sutherland, ye ken.”
“Of course, of course,” replied Hugh, who very likely thought this too serious a way of speaking of poetry, and therefore, perhaps, rather an irreverent way of speaking of God; for he saw neither the divine in poetry, nor the human in God. Could he be said to believe that God made man, when he did not believe that God created poetry—and yet loved it as he did? It was to him only a grand invention of humanity in its loftiest development. In this development, then, he must have considered humanity as farthest from its origin; and God as the creator of savages, caring nothing for poets or their work.
They turned, as by common consent, to go down the hill together.
“Shall I take charge of the offending volume? You will not care to finish it, I fear,” said Hugh.
“No, sir, if you please. I never like to leave onything unfinished. I’ll read ilka word in’t. I fancy the thing ‘at sets me against it, is mostly this; that, readin’ it alang wi’ Euclid, I canna help aye thinkin’ o’ my ain min’ as gin it were in some geometrical shape or ither, whiles ane an’ whiles anither; and syne I try to draw lines an’ separate this power frae that power, the memory frae the jeedgement, an’ the imagination frae the rizzon; an’ syne I try to pit them a’ thegither again in their relations to ane anither. And this aye takes the shape o’ some proposition or ither, generally i’ the second beuk. It near-han’ dazes me whiles. I fancy gin’ I understood the pairts o’ the sphere, it would be mair to the purpose; but I wat I wish I were clear o’t a’thegither.”
Hugh had had some experiences of a similar kind himself, though not at all to the same extent. He could therefore understand her.
“You must just try to keep the things altogether apart,” said he, “and not think of the two sciences at once.”
“But I canna help it,” she replied. “I suppose you can, sir, because ye’re a man. My father can understan’ things ten times better nor me an’ my mother. But nae sooner do I begin to read and think about it, than up comes ane o’ thae parallelograms, an’ nothing will driv’t oot o’ my head again, but a verse or twa o’ Coleridge or Wordsworth.”
Hugh immediately began to repeat the first poem of the latter that occurred to him:
“I wandered lonely as a cloud.”
She listened, walking along with her eyes fixed on the ground; and when he had finished, gave a sigh of delight and relief—all the comment she uttered. She seemed never to find it necessary to say what she felt; least of all when the feeling was a pleasant one; for then it was enough for itself. This was only the second time since their acquaintance, that she had spoken of her feelings at all; and in this case they were of a purely intellectual origin. It is to be observed, however, that in both cases she had taken pains to explain thoroughly what she meant, as far as she was able.
It was dark before they reached home, at least as dark as it ever is at this season of the year in the north. They found David looking out with some slight anxiety for his daughter’s return, for she was seldom out so late as this. In nothing could the true relation between them have been more evident than in the entire absence from her manner of any embarrassment when she met her father. She went up to him and told him all about finding Mr. Sutherland asleep on the hill, and waiting beside him till he woke, that she might walk home with him. Her father seemed perfectly content with an explanation which he had not sought, and, turning to Hugh, said, smiling:
“Weel, no to be troublesome, Mr. Sutherlan’, ye maun gie the auld man a turn as weel as the young lass. We didna expec ye the nicht, but I’m sair puzzled wi’ a sma’ eneuch matter on my sklet in there. Will you no come in and gie me a lift?”
“With all my heart,” said Sutherland. So there were five lessons in that week.
When Hugh entered the cottage he had a fine sprig of heather in his hand, which he laid on the table.
He had the weakness of being proud of small discoveries—the tinier the better; and was always sharpening his senses, as well as his intellect, to a fine point, in order to make them. I fear that by these means he shut out some great ones, which could not enter during such a concentration of the faculties. He would stand listening to the sound of goose-feet upon the road, and watch how those webs laid hold of the earth like a hand. He would struggle to enter into their feelings in folding their wings properly on their backs. He would calculate, on chemical and arithmetical grounds, whether one might not hear the nocturnal growth of plants in the tropics. He was quite elated by the discovery, as he considered it, that Shakspeare named his two officers of the watch, Dogberry and Verjuice; the poisonous Dogberry, and the acid liquor of green fruits, affording suitable names for the stupidly innocuous constables, in a play the very essence of which is Much Ado About Nothing. Another of his discoveries he had, during their last lesson, unfolded to David, who had certainly contemplated it with interest. It was, that the original forms of the Arabic numerals were these:
1.2.3.4.5.6.7.8.9. {original text has a picture}
the number for which each figure stands being indicated by the number of straight lines employed in forming that numeral. I fear the comparative anatomy of figures gives no countenance to the discovery which Hugh flattered himself he had made.
After he had helped David out of his difficulty, he took up the heather, and stripping off the bells, shook them in his hand at Margaret’s ear. A half smile, like the moonlight of laughter, dawned on her face; and she listened with something of the same expression with which a child listens to the message from the sea, inclosed in a twisted shell. He did the same at David’s ear next.
“Eh, man! that’s a bonny wee soun’! It’s jist like sma’ sheep-bells—fairy-sheep, I reckon, Maggy, my doo.”
“Lat me hearken as weel,” said Janet.
Hugh obeyed. She laughed.
“It’s naething but a reestlin’. I wad raither hear the sheep baain’, or the kye routin’.”
“Eh, Mr. Sutherlan’! but, ye hae a gleg ee an’ a sharp lug. Weel, the warld’s fu’ o’ bonny sichts and souns, doon to the verra sma’est. The Lord lats naething gang. I wadna wonner noo but there micht be thousands sic like, ower sma’ a’thegither for human ears, jist as we ken there are creatures as perfect in beowty as ony we see, but far ower sma’ for our een wintin’ the glass. But for my pairt, I aye like to see a heap o’ things at ance, an’ tak’ them a’ in thegither, an’ see them playin’ into ane anither’s han’ like. I was jist thinkin’, as I came hame the nicht in the sinset, hoo it wad hae been naewise sae complete, wi’ a’ its red an’ gowd an’ green, gin it hadna been for the cauld blue east ahint it, wi’ the twa-three shiverin’ starnies leukin’ through’t. An’ doubtless the warld to come ‘ill be a’ the warmer to them ‘at hadna ower muckle happin here. But I’m jist haverin’, clean haverin’, Mr. Sutherlan’,” concluded David, with a smile of apologetic humour.
“I suppose you could easily believe with Plato, David, that the planets make a grand choral music as they roll about the heavens, only that as some sounds are too small, so that is too loud for us to hear.”
“I cud weel believe that,” was David’s unhesitating answer. Margaret looked as if she not only could believe it, but would be delighted to know that it was true. Neither Janet nor Hugh gave any indication of feeling on the matter.
So a small seed that in the earth lies hid And dies, reviving bursts her cloddy side, Adorned with yellow locks, of new is born, And doth become a mother great with corn, Of grains brings hundreds with it, which when old Enrich the furrows with a sea of gold.
SIR WILLIAM DRUMMOND.—Hymn of the Resurrection.
Hugh had watched the green corn grow, and ear, and turn dim; then brighten to yellow, and ripen at last under the declining autumn sun, and the low skirting moon of the harvest, which seems too full and heavy with mellow and bountiful light to rise high above the fields which it comes to bless with perfection. The long threads, on each of which hung an oat-grain—the harvest here was mostly of oats—had got dry and brittle; and the grains began to spread out their chaff-wings, as if ready to fly, and rustled with sweet sounds against each other, as the wind, which used to billow the fields like the waves of the sea, now swept gently and tenderly over it, helping the sun and moon in the drying and ripening of the joy to be laid up for the dreary winter. Most graceful of all hung those delicate oats; next bowed the bearded barley; and stately and wealthy and strong stood the few fields of wheat, of a rich, ruddy, golden hue. Above the yellow harvest rose the purple hills, and above the hills the pale-blue autumnal sky, full of light and heat, but fading somewhat from the colour with which it deepened above the vanished days of summer. For the harvest here is much later than in England.
At length the day arrived when the sickle must be put into the barley, soon to be followed by the scythe in the oats. And now came the joy of labour. Everything else was abandoned for the harvest field. Books were thrown utterly aside; for, even when there was no fear of a change of weather to urge to labour prolonged beyond the natural hours, there was weariness enough in the work of the day to prevent even David from reading, in the hours of bodily rest, anything that necessitated mental labour.
Janet and Margaret betook themselves to the reaping-hook; and the somewhat pale face of the latter needed but a single day to change it to the real harvest hue—the brown livery of Ceres. But when the oats were attacked, then came the tug of war. The laird was in the fields from morning to night, and the boys would not stay behind; but, with their father’s permission, much to the tutor’s contentment, devoted what powers they had to the gathering of the fruits of the earth. Hugh himself, whose strength had grown amazingly during his stay at Turriepuffit, and who, though he was quite helpless at the sickle, thought he could wield the scythe, would not be behind. Throwing off coat and waistcoat, and tying his handkerchief tight round his loins, he laid hold on the emblematic weapon of Time and Death, determined likewise to earn the name of Reaper. He took the last scythe. It was desperate work for a while, and he was far behind the first bout; but David, who was the best scyther in the whole country side, and of course had the leading scythe, seeing the tutor dropping behind, put more power to his own arm, finished his own bout, and brought up Hugh’s before the others had done sharpening their scythes for the next.
“Tak’ care an’ nae rax yersel’ ower sair, Mr. Sutherlan’. Ye’ll be up wi’ the best o’ them in a day or twa; but gin ye tyauve at it aboon yer strenth, ye’ll be clean forfochten. Tak’ a guid sweep wi’ the scythe, ‘at ye may hae the weicht o’t to ca’ through the strae, an’ tak’ nae shame at bein’ hindmost. Here, Maggy, my doo, come an’ gather to Mr. Sutherlan’. Ane o’ the young gentlemen can tak’ your place at the binin’.”
The work of Janet and Margaret had been to form bands for the sheaves, by folding together cunningly the heads of two small handfuls of the corn, so as to make them long enough together to go round the sheaf; then to lay this down for the gatherer to place enough of the mown corn upon it; and last, to bind the band tightly around by another skilful twist and an insertion of the ends, and so form a sheaf. From this work David called his daughter, desirous of giving Hugh a gatherer who would not be disrespectful to his awkwardness. This arrangement, however, was far from pleasing to some of the young men in the field, and brought down upon Hugh, who was too hard-wrought to hear them at first, many sly hits of country wit and human contempt. There had been for some time great jealousy of his visits at David’s cottage; for Margaret, though she had very little acquaintance with the young men of the neighbourhood, was greatly admired amongst them, and not regarded as so far above the station of many of them as to render aspiration useless. Their remarks to each other got louder and louder, till Hugh at last heard some of them, and could not help being annoyed, not by their wit or personality, but by the tone of contempt in which they were uttered.
“Tak’ care o’ yer legs, sir. It’ll be ill cuttin’ upo’ stumps.”
“Fegs! he’s taen the wings aff o’ a pairtrick.”
“Gin he gang on that get, he’ll cut twa bouts at ance.”
“Ye’ll hae the scythe ower the dyke, man. Tak’ tent.”
“Losh! sir; ye’ve taen aff my leg at the hip!”
“Ye’re shavin’ ower close: ye’ll draw the bluid, sir.”
“Hoot, man! lat alane. The gentleman’s only mista’en his trade, an’ imaigins he’s howkin’ a grave.”
And so on. Hugh gave no further sign of hearing their remarks than lay in increased exertion. Looking round, however, he saw that Margaret was vexed, evidently not for her own sake. He smiled to her, to console her for his annoyance; and then, ambitious to remove the cause of it, made a fresh exertion, recovered all his distance, and was in his own place with the best of them at the end of the bout. But the smile that had passed between them did not escape unobserved; and he had aroused yet more the wrath of the youths, by threatening soon to rival them in the excellencies to which they had an especial claim. They had regarded him as an interloper, who had no right to captivate one of their rank by arts beyond their reach; but it was still less pardonable to dare them to a trial of skill with their own weapons. To the fire of this jealousy, the admiration of the laird added fuel; for he was delighted with the spirit with which Hugh laid himself to the scythe. But all the time, nothing was further from Hugh’s thoughts than the idea of rivalry with them. Whatever he might have thought of Margaret in relation to himself, he never thought of her, though labouring in the same field with them, as in the least degree belonging to their class, or standing in any possible relation to them, except that of a common work.
In ordinary, the labourers would have had sufficient respect for Sutherland’s superior position, to prevent them from giving such decided and articulate utterance to their feelings. But they were incited by the presence and example of a man of doubtful character from the neighbouring village, a travelled and clever ne’er-do-weel, whose reputation for wit was equalled by his reputation for courage and skill, as well as profligacy. Roused by the effervescence of his genius, they went on from one thing to another, till Hugh saw it must be put a stop to somehow, else he must abandon the field. They dared not have gone so far if David had been present; but he had been called away to superintend some operations in another part of the estate; and they paid no heed to the expostulations of some of the other older men. At the close of the day’s work, therefore, Hugh walked up to this fellow, and said:
“I hope you will be satisfied with insulting me all to-day, and leave it alone to-morrow.”
The man replied, with an oath and a gesture of rude contempt,
“I dinna care the black afore my nails for ony skelp-doup o’ the lot o’ ye.”
Hugh’s highland blood flew to his brain, and before the rascal finished his speech, he had measured his length on the stubble. He sprang to his feet in a fury, threw off the coat which he had just put on, and darted at Hugh, who had by this time recovered his coolness, and was besides, notwithstanding his unusual exertions, the more agile of the two. The other was heavier and more powerful. Hugh sprang aside, as he would have done from the rush of a bull, and again with a quick blow felled his antagonist. Beginning rather to enjoy punishing him, he now went in for it; and, before the other would yield, he had rendered his next day’s labour somewhat doubtful. He withdrew, with no more injury to himself than a little water would remove. Janet and Margaret had left the field before he addressed the man.
He went borne and to bed—more weary than he had ever been in his life. Before he went to sleep, however, he made up his mind to say nothing of his encounter to David, but to leave him to hear of it from other sources. He could not help feeling a little anxious as to his judgment upon it. That the laird would approve, he hardly doubted; but for his opinion he cared very little.
“Dawvid, I wonner at ye,” said Janet to her husband, the moment he came home, “to lat the young lad warstle himsel’ deid that get wi’ a scythe. His banes is but saft yet, There wasna a dry steek on him or he wan half the lenth o’ the first bout. He’s sair disjaskit, I’se warran’.”
“Nae fear o’ him, Janet; it’ll do him guid. Mr. Sutherland’s no feckless winlestrae o’ a creater. Did he haud his ain at a’ wi’ the lave?”
“Haud his ain! Gin he be fit for onything the day, he maun be pitten neist yersel’, or he’ll cut the legs aff o’ ony ither man i’ the corn.”
A glow of pleasure mantled in Margaret’s face at her mother’s praise of Hugh. Janet went on:
“But I was jist clean affronted wi’ the way ‘at the young chields behaved themselves till him.”
“I thocht I heard a toot-moot o’ that kin’ afore I left, but I thocht it better to tak’ nae notice o’t. I’ll be wi’ ye a’ day the morn though, an’ I’m thinkin’ I’ll clap a rouch han’ on their mou’s ‘at I hear ony mair o’t frae.”
But there was no occasion for interference on David’s part. Hugh made his appearance—not, it is true, with the earliest in the hairst-rig, but after breakfast with the laird, who was delighted with the way in which he had handled his scythe the day before, and felt twice the respect for him in consequence. It must be confessed he felt very stiff, but the best treatment for stiffness being the homoeopathic one of more work, he had soon restored the elasticity of his muscles, and lubricated his aching joints. His antagonist of the foregoing evening was nowhere to be seen; and the rest of the young men were shame-faced and respectful enough.
David, having learned from some of the spectators the facts of the combat, suddenly, as they were walking home together, held out his hand to Hugh, shook his hard, and said:
“Mr. Sutherlan’, I’m sair obleeged to ye for giein’ that vratch, Jamie Ogg, a guid doonsettin’. He’s a coorse crater; but the warst maun hae meat, an’ sae I didna like to refeese him when he cam for wark. But its a greater kin’ness to clout him nor to cleed him. They say ye made an awfu’ munsie o’ him. But it’s to be houpit he’ll live to thank ye. There’s some fowk ‘at can respeck no airgument but frae steekit neives; an’ it’s fell cruel to haud it frae them, gin ye hae’t to gie them. I hae had eneuch ado to haud my ain han’s aff o’ the ted, but it comes a hantle better frae you, Mr. Sutherlan’.”
Hugh wielded the scythe the whole of the harvest, and Margaret gathered to him. By the time it was over, leading-home and all, he measured an inch less about the waist, and two inches more about the shoulders; and was as brown as a berry, and as strong as an ox, or “owse,” as David called it, when thus describing Mr. Sutherland’s progress in corporal development; for he took a fatherly pride in the youth, to whom, at the same time, he looked up with submission, as his master in learning.
Affliction, when I know it, is but this— A deep alloy, whereby man tougher is To bear the hammer; and the deeper still, We still arise more image of his will. Sickness—an humorous cloud ‘twist us and light; And death, at longest, but another night. Man is his own star; and that soul that can Be honest, is the only perfect Man.
JOHN FLETCHER.—Upon an Honest Man’s Fortune.
Had Sutherland been in love with Margaret, those would have been happy days; and that a yet more happy night, when, under the mystery of a low moonlight and a gathering storm, the crop was cast in haste into the carts, and hurried home to be built up in safety; when a strange low wind crept sighing across the stubble, as if it came wandering out of the past and the land of dreams, lying far off and withered in the green west; and when Margaret and he came and went in the moonlight like creatures in a dream—for the vapours of sleep were floating in Hugh’s brain, although he was awake and working.
“Margaret,” he said, as they stood waiting a moment for the cart that was coming up to be filled with sheaves, “what does that wind put you in mind of?”
“Ossian’s Poems,” replied Margaret, without a moment’s hesitation.
Hugh was struck by her answer. He had meant something quite different. But it harmonized with his feeling about Ossian; for the genuineness of whose poetry, Highlander as he was, he had no better argument to give than the fact, that they produced in himself an altogether peculiar mental condition; that the spiritual sensations he had in reading them were quite different from those produced by anything else, prose or verse; in fact, that they created moods of their own in his mind. He was unwilling to believe, apart from national prejudices (which have not prevented the opinions on this question from being as strong on the one side as on the other), that this individuality of influence could belong to mere affectations of a style which had never sprung from the sources of real feeling. “Could they,” he thought, “possess the power to move us like remembered dreams of our childhood, if all that they possessed of reality was a pretended imitation of what never existed, and all that they inherited from the past was the halo of its strangeness?”
But Hugh was not in love with Margaret, though he could not help feeling the pleasure of her presence. Any youth must have been the better for having her near him; but there was nothing about her quiet, self-contained being, free from manifestation of any sort, to rouse the feelings commonly called love, in the mind of an inexperienced youth like Hugh Sutherland.—I say commonly called, because I believe that within the whole sphere of intelligence there are no two loves the same.—Not that he was less easily influenced than other youths. A designing girl might have caught him at once, if she had had no other beauty than sparkling eyes; but the womanhood of the beautiful Margaret kept so still in its pearly cave, that it rarely met the glance of neighbouring eyes. How Margaret regarded him I do not know; but I think it was with a love almost entirely one with reverence and gratitude. Cause for gratitude she certainly had, though less than she supposed; and very little cause indeed for reverence. But how could she fail to revere one to whom even her father looked up? Of course David’s feeling of respect for Hugh must have sprung chiefly from intellectual grounds; and he could hardly help seeing, if he thought at all on the subject, which is doubtful, that Hugh was as far behind Margaret in the higher gifts and graces, as he was before her in intellectual acquirement. But whether David perceived this or not, certainly Margaret did not even think in that direction. She was pure of self-judgment—conscious of no comparing of herself with others, least of all with those next her.
At length the harvest was finished; or, as the phrase of the district was, clyack was gotten—a phrase with the derivation, or even the exact meaning of which, I am unacquainted; knowing only that it implies something in close association with the feast of harvest-home, called the kirn in other parts of Scotland. Thereafter, the fields lay bare to the frosts of morning and evening, and to the wind that grew cooler and cooler with the breath of Winter, who lay behind the northern hills, and waited for his hour. But many lovely days remained, of quiet and slow decay, of yellow and red leaves, of warm noons and lovely sunsets, followed by skies—green from the west horizon to the zenith, and walked by a moon that seemed to draw up to her all the white mists from pond and river and pool, to settle again in hoar-frost, during the colder hours that precede the dawn. At length every leafless tree sparkled in the morning sun, incrusted with fading gems; and the ground was hard under foot; and the hedges were filled with frosted spider-webs; and winter had laid the tips of his fingers on the land, soon to cover it deep with the flickering snow-flakes, shaken from the folds of his outspread mantle. But long ere this, David and Margaret had returned with renewed diligence, and powers strengthened by repose, or at least by intermission, to their mental labours, and Hugh was as constant a visitor at the cottage as before. The time, however, drew nigh when he must return to his studies at Aberdeen; and David and Margaret were looking forward with sorrow to the loss of their friend. Janet, too, “cudna bide to think o’t.”
“He’ll tak’ the daylicht wi’ him, I doot, my lass,” she said, as she made the porridge for breakfast one morning, and looked down anxiously at her daughter, seated on the creepie by the ingle-neuk.
“Na, na, mither,” replied Margaret, looking up from her book; “he’ll lea’ sic gifts ahin’ him as’ll mak’ daylicht i’ the dark;” and then she bent her head and went on with her reading, as if she had not spoken.
The mother looked away with a sigh and a slight, sad shake of the head.
But matters were to turn out quite different from all anticipations. Before the day arrived on which Hugh must leave for the university, a letter from home informed him that his father was dangerously ill. He hastened to him, but only to comfort his last hours by all that a son could do, and to support his mother by his presence during the first hours of her loneliness. But anxious thoughts for the future, which so often force themselves on the attention of those who would gladly prolong their brooding over the past, compelled them to adopt an alteration of their plans for the present.
The half-pay of Major Sutherland was gone, of course; and all that remained for Mrs. Sutherland was a small annuity, secured by her husband’s payments to a certain fund for the use of officers’ widows. From this she could spare but a mere trifle for the completion of Hugh’s university-education; while the salary he had received at Turriepuffit, almost the whole of which he had saved, was so small as to be quite inadequate for the very moderate outlay necessary. He therefore came to the resolution to write to the laird, and offer, if they were not yet provided with another tutor, to resume his relation to the young gentlemen for the winter. It was next to impossible to spend money there; and he judged that before the following winter, he should be quite able to meet the expenses of his residence at Aberdeen, during the last session of his course. He would have preferred trying to find another situation, had it not been that David and Janet and Margaret had made there a home for him.
Whether Mrs. Glasford was altogether pleased at the proposal, I cannot tell; but the laird wrote a very gentlemanlike epistle, condoling with him and his mother upon their loss, and urging the usual common-places of consolation. The letter ended with a hearty acceptance of Hugh’s offer, and, strange to tell, the unsolicited promise of an increase of salary to the amount of five pounds. This is another to be added to the many proofs that verisimilitude is not in the least an essential element of verity.
He left his mother as soon as circumstances would permit, and returned to Turriepuffit; an abode for the winter very different indeed from that in which he had expected to spend it.
He reached the place early in the afternoon; received from Mrs. Glasford a cold “I hope you’re well, Mr. Sutherland;” found his pupils actually reading, and had from them a welcome rather boisterously evidenced; told them to get their books; and sat down with them at once to commence their winter labours. He spent two hours thus; had a hearty shake of the hand from the laird, when he came home; and, after a substantial tea, walked down to David’s cottage, where a welcome awaited him worth returning for.
“Come yer wa’s butt,” said Janet, who met him as he opened the door without any prefatory knock, and caught him with both hands; “I’m blithe to see yer bonny face ance mair. We’re a’ jist at ane mair wi’ expeckin’ o’ ye.”
David stood in the middle of the floor, waiting for him.
“Come awa’, my bonny lad,” was all his greeting, as he held out a great fatherly hand to the youth, and, grasping his in the one, clapped him on the shoulder with the other, the water standing in his blue eyes the while. Hugh thought of his own father, and could not restrain his tears. Margaret gave him a still look full in the face, and, seeing his emotion, did not even approach to offer him any welcome. She hastened, instead, to place a chair for him as she had done when first he entered the cottage, and when he had taken it sat down at his feet on her creepie. With true delicacy, no one took any notice of him for some time. David said at last,
“An’ hoo’s yer puir mother, Mr. Sutherlan’?”
“She’s pretty well,” was all Hugh could answer.
“It’s a sair stroke to bide,” said David; “but it’s a gran’ thing whan a man’s won weel throw’t. Whan my father deit, I min’ weel, I was sae prood to see him lyin’ there, in the cauld grandeur o’ deith, an’ no man ‘at daured say he ever did or spak the thing ‘at didna become him, ‘at I jist gloried i’ the mids o’ my greetin’. He was but a puir auld shepherd, Mr. Sutherlan’, wi’ hair as white as the sheep ‘at followed him; an’ I wat as they followed him, he followed the great Shepherd; an’ followed an’ followed, till he jist followed Him hame, whaur we’re a’ boun’, an’ some o’ us far on the road, thanks to Him!”
And with that David rose, and got down the Bible, and, opening it reverently, read with a solemn, slightly tremulous voice, the fourteenth chapter of St. John’s Gospel. When he had finished, they all rose, as by one accord, and knelt down, and David prayed:
“O Thou in whase sicht oor deeth is precious, an’ no licht maitter; wha through darkness leads to licht, an’ through deith to the greater life!—we canna believe that thou wouldst gie us ony guid thing, to tak’ the same again; for that would be but bairns’ play. We believe that thou taks, that thou may gie again the same thing better nor afore—mair o’t and better nor we could ha’ received it itherwise; jist as the Lord took himsel’ frae the sicht o’ them ‘at lo’ed him weel, that instead o’ bein’ veesible afore their een, he micht hide himsel’ in their verra herts. Come thou, an’ abide in us, an’ tak’ us to bide in thee; an’ syne gin we be a’ in thee, we canna be that far frae ane anither, though some sud be in haven, an’ some upo’ earth. Lord help us to do oor wark like thy men an’ maidens doon the stair, remin’in’ oursel’s, ‘at them ‘at we miss hae only gane up the stair, as gin ‘twar to haud things to thy han’ i’ thy ain presence-chamber, whaur we houp to be called or lang, an’ to see thee an’ thy Son, wham we lo’e aboon a’; an’ in his name we say, Amen!”
Hugh rose from his knees with a sense of solemnity and reality that he had never felt before. Little was said that evening; supper was eaten, if not in silence, yet with nothing that could be called conversation. And, almost in silence, David walked home with Hugh. The spirit of his father seemed to walk beside him. He felt as if he had been buried with him; and had found that the sepulchre was clothed with green things and roofed with stars—was in truth the heavens and the earth in which his soul walked abroad.
If Hugh looked a little more into his Bible, and tried a little more to understand it, after his father’s death, it is not to be wondered at. It is but another instance of the fact that, whether from education or from the leading of some higher instinct, we are ready, in every more profound trouble, to feel as if a solution or a refuge lay somewhere—lay in sounds of wisdom, perhaps, to be sought and found in the best of books, the deepest of all the mysterious treasuries of words. But David never sought to influence Hugh to this end. He read the Bible in his family, but he never urged the reading of it on others. Sometimes he seemed rather to avoid the subject of religion altogether; and yet it was upon those very occasions that, if he once began to speak, he would pour out, before he ceased, some of his most impassioned utterances.