CHAPTER VIII.
Thedays sped so fast with these happy people, children and “grown-ups,” as Sunny calls them, that soon it was already Sunday, the first of the only two Sundays they had to spend at the glen. Shall I tell about them both?
These parents considered Sunday the best day in all the week, and tried to make it so; especially to the children, whom, in order to give the servants rest, they then took principally into their own hands. They wished that, when the little folks grew up, Sunday should always be remembered as a bright day, a cheerful day, a day spent with papa and mamma; when nobody had any work to do, and everybody was merry, and happy, and good. Also clean, which was a novelty here. Even the elders rather enjoyed putting on their best clothes with the certainty of not getting them wetted in fishing-boats, or torn with briers and brambles on hillsides. Church was not till twelve at noon, so most of the party went a leisurely morning stroll, and Sunny’s papa and mammadecided to have a quiet row on the loch, in a clean boat, all by their two selves. But, as it happened, their little girl, taking a walk with her Lizzie, espied them afar off.
Faintly across the water came the pitiful entreaty, “Papa! mamma! Take her. Take her with you.” And the little figure, running as fast as her fat legs would carry her, was seen making its way, with Lizzie running after, to the very edge of the loch.
What heart would not have relented? Papa rowed back as fast as he could, and took her in, her face quivering with delight, though the big tears were still rolling down her cheeks. But April showers do not dry up faster than Sunny’s tears.
No fishing to-day, of course. Peacefully they floated down the loch, which seemed to know it was Sunday, and to lie, with the hills standing around it, more restful, more sunshiny, more beautiful than ever. Not a creature was stirring; even the cattle, that always clustered on a little knoll above the canal, made motionless pictures of themselves against the sky, as if they were sitting or standing for their portraits, and would not move upon any account. Now and then, as the boat passed, a bird in the bushes fluttered, but not very far off, and then sat on a bough andlooked at it, too fearless of harm to fly away. Everything was so intensely still, so unspeakably beautiful, that when mamma, sitting in the stern, with her arm fast around her child, began to sing “Jerusalem the Golden,” and afterward that other beautiful hymn, “There is a land of pure delight,” the scene around appeared like an earthly picture of that Celestial Land.
They rowed homeward just in time to dress for church, and start, leaving the little girl behind. She was to follow, by and by, with her Lizzie, and be taken charge of by mamma while Lizzie went to the English service in the afternoon.
This was the morning service, and in Gaelic. With an English prayer-book it was just possible to follow it and guess at it, though the words were unintelligible. But they sounded very sweet, and so did the hymns; and the small congregation listened as gravely and reverently as if it had been the grandest church in the world, instead of a tiny room, no bigger than an ordinary sitting-room, with a communion-table of plain deal, and a few rows of deal benches, enough to seat about twenty people, there being about fifteen present to-day. Some of them had walked several miles, as they did every Sunday, and often, their good clergyman said, when the glen was knee-deep in snow.
He himself spent his quiet days among them,winter and summer, living at a farmhouse near, and scarcely ever quitting his charge. A lonelier life, especially in winter-time, it was hardly possible to imagine. Yet he looked quite contented, and so did the little congregation as they listened to the short Gaelic sermon (which, of course, was incomprehensible to the strangers), then slowly went out of church and stood hanging about on the dike-side in the sunshine, till the second service should begin.
Very soon a few more groups were seen advancing toward church. There was Maurice, prayer-book in hand, looking so good and gentle and sweet, almost like a cherub in a picture; and Eddie, not at all cherubic, but entirely boyish, walking sedately beside his papa; Eddie clean and tidy, as if he had never torn his clothes or dirtied his face in all his life. Then came the children’s parents, papa and mamma and their guests, and the servants of the house following. While far behind, holding cautiously by her Lizzie’s hand and rather alarmed at her new position, was a certain little person, who, as soon as she saw her own papa and mamma, rushed frantically forward to meet them, with a cry of irrepressible joy.
“Sunny wants to go to church! Sunny would like to go to church with the little boys, and Lizzie says she mustn’t.”
Lizzie was quite right, mamma explained; afraid that so small a child might only interrupt the worship, which she could not possibly understand. But she compromised the matter by promising that Sunny should go to church as soon as ever she was old enough, and to-day she should stay with mamma out in the sunshiny road, and hear the singing from outside.
Staying with mamma being always sufficient felicity, she consented to part with the little boys, and they passed on into church.
By this time the post, which always came in between the services on Sundays, appeared, and the postmaster, who was also schoolmaster and beadle at the church,—as the school, the church, and the post-office were all one building,—began arranging and distributing the contents of the bag.
Everybody sat down by the roadside and read their letters. Those who had no letters opened the newspapers,—those cruel newspapers, full of the war. It was dreadful to read them, in this lovely spot, on this calm September Sunday, with the good pastor and his innocent flock preparing to begin the worship of Him who commanded “Love your enemies; bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them that despitefully use you and persecute you.”
Oh, what a mockery “church” seemed! You little children can never understand the pain of it; but you will when you are grown up. May God grant that in your time you may never suffer as we have done, but that His mercy may then have brought permanent peace; beating “swords into ploughshares, and spears into pruning-hooks,” for ever and ever throughout the world!
Sunny’s mamma prayed so with all her heart, when, the newspaper laid down, she sat on a stone outside the church, with her child playing beside her; far enough not to disturb the congregation, but near enough to catch a good deal of the service, which was the English Episcopal service; there being few Presbyterians in this district of Scotland, and not a Presbyterian church within several miles.
Presently a harmonium began to sound, and a small choir of voices, singing not badly, began theMagnificat. It was the first time in her life that the little girl had heard choral music,—several people singing all together. She pricked up her ears at once, with the expression of intense delight that all kinds of music bring into her little face.
“Mamma, is that church? Is that my papa singing?”
Mamma did not think it was, but it might be Maurice’s papa, and his mamma, and Lizzie, andseveral other people; Sunny must listen and be quite quiet, so as not to disturb them.
So she did, good little girl! sitting as mute as a mouse all the while the music lasted, and when it ceased, playing about, still quietly; building pebble mountains, and gathering a few withered leaves to stick on the top of them. For she and her mamma were sitting on the gravel walk of the schoolmaster’s garden, beside a row of flowerpots, still radiant with geraniums and fuchsias. They were so close to the open window under which stood the pulpit, that mamma was able to hear almost every word of the sermon,—and a very good sermon it was.
When it ended, the friendly little congregation shook hands and talked a little; then separated, half going up and the other half down the road. The minister came home to dinner, walking between Maurice and Eddie, of whom he was a particular friend. They always looked forward to this weekly visit of his as one of the Sunday enjoyments, for he was an admirable hand at an oar, and Eddie, who tyrannised over him in the most affectionate way, was quite sure of “a low” when the minister was there.
So, after dinner, all went out together, parents and children, pastor and flock, in two boats, and rowed peacefully up and down the loch, whichhad fallen into the cool gray shadow of evening, with the most gorgeous sunset light, resting on the mountains opposite, and gradually fading away, higher and higher, till the topmost peaks alone kept the glow. But that they did to the very last; like a good man who, living continually in the smile of God, lives cheerfully on to the end.
Sunny and her mamma watched the others, but did not go out, it being near the child’s bedtime; and unless it is quite unavoidable, nobody ever puts Sunny to bed, or hears her say her little prayers, except her own mamma. She went to sleep quite happily, having now almost forgotten to ask for Tommy Tinker, or any other story. The continual excitement of her life here left her so sleepy that the minute she had her little nightgown on, she was ready to shut her eyes, and go off into what mamma calls “the land of Nod.”
And so ended, for her, the first Sunday in the glen, which, in its cheerful, holy peace, was a day long to be remembered. But the little boys, Maurice and Eddie, who did not go to bed so early, after the loch grew dark, and the rowing was all done, spent a good long evening in the drawing-room, climbing on the minister’s knees, and talking to him about boats and salmon, andall sorts of curious things: he was so very kind to little children. And after the boys were gone to bed, he and the elder folk gathered around the not unwelcome fire, and talked too. This good minister, who spent his life in the lonely glen, with very little money,—so little that rich Southern people would hardly believe an educated clergyman could live upon it at all,—and almost no society, except that of the few cottagers and farmers scattered thinly up and down, yet kept his heart up, and was cheerful and kindly, ready to help old and young, rich and poor, and never complaining of his dull life, or anything else—this gentleman, I say, was a pattern to both great folk and small.
The one only subject of discontent in the house, if anybody could feel discontent in such a pleasant place and amid such happy circumstances, was the continued fine weather. While the sky remained unclouded, and the loch as smooth as glass, no salmon would bite. They kept jumping up in the liveliest and most provoking way; sometimes you could see their heads and shoulders clean out of water, and of course they looked bigger than any salmon ever seen before. Vainly did the master of the house and his guests go after them whenever there was the least cloud on the sky, and coax them tobite with the most fascinating flies and most alluring hooks; they refused to take the slightest notice of either. Only trout, and they not big ones, ever allowed themselves to be caught.
The children and mammas, delighting in the warm sunshiny weather, did not grieve much, but the gentlemen became quite low in their spirits, and at last, for their sakes, and especially for the sake of that one who only cared for fishing, and had come so far to fish, the whole household began to watch the sky, and with great self-sacrifice to long for a day—a whole day—of good, settled, pelting rain.
And on the Monday following this bright Sunday, it seemed likely. The morning was rather dull, the sunshiny haze which hung over the mountains melted away, and they stood out sharp and dark and clear. Toward noon, the sky clouded over a little,—a very little! Hopefully the elders sat down to their four o’clock dinner, and by the time it was over a joyful cry arose:
“It’s raining! it’s raining!”
Everybody started up in the greatest delight. “Now we shall have a chance of a salmon!” cried the gentlemen, afraid to hope too much. Nevertheless, they hastily put on their greatcoats, and rushed down to the pier, armed with arod apiece, and with Donald, the keeper, to row them; because, if they did hook a salmon, Eddie explained, they would want somebody to “low” the boat, and follow the fish wherever he went. Eddie looked very unhappy that he himself had not this duty, of which he evidently thought he was capable. But when his father told him he could not go, he obeyed, as he always did. He was very fond of his father.
The three boys, Maurice, Eddie, and Franky,—Phil, alas! was too ill to be much excited, even over salmon-fishing,—resigned themselves to fate, and made the best of things by climbing on the drawing-room table, which stood in front of the window, and thence watching the boat as it moved slowly up and down the gray loch, with the four motionless figures sitting in it,—sitting contentedly soaking. The little boys, Eddie especially, would willingly have sat and soaked too, if allowed.
At length, as some slight consolation, and to prevent Eddie’s dangling his legs out at the open window, letting in the wind and the rain, and running imminent risk of tumbling out, twenty feet or so, down to the terrace below, Sunny’s mamma brought a book of German pictures, and proposed telling stories out of them.
They were very funny pictures, and have been Little Sunshine’s delight for many months. So she, as the owner, displayed them proudly to the rest, and it having been arranged with some difficulty how six pairs of eyes could look over the same book, the party arranged themselves thus: Sunny’s mamma sat on the hearth-rug, with her own child on her lap, Austin Thomas on one side, and Phil on the other; while Maurice, Eddie, and Franky managed as well as they could to look over her shoulders. There was a general sense of smothering and huddling up, like a sparrow’s nest when the young ones are growing a little too big, but everybody appeared happy. Now and then, Sunshine knitted her brows fiercely, as she can knit them on occasion, when Austin Thomas came crawling too close upon her mamma’s lap, with his intrusively affectionate “Danmamma,” but no open quarrel broke out. The room was so cosy and bright with firelight, and everybody was so comfortable, that they had almost forgotten the rain outside, also the salmon-fishing, when the door suddenly opened, and in burst the cook.
Mary was a kind, warm-hearted Highland woman, always ready to do anything for anybody, and particularly devoted to the children. Gaelicwas easier to her than English always, but now she was so excited that she could hardly get out her words.
“Master’s hooked a salmon! He’s been crying” (calling) “on Neil to get out another boat and come to him. It must be a very big salmon, for he is playing him up and down the loch. They’ve been at it these ten minutes and more.”
Mary’s excitement affected the mistress, who laid down her baby. “Where are they? Has anybody seen them?”
“Anybody, ma’am? Why, everybody’s down at the shore looking at them. The minister, too; he was passing, and stopped to see.”
As a matter of course, cook evidently thought. Even a minister could not pass by such an interesting sight. Nor did she seem in the least surprised when the mistress sent for her waterproof cloak, and, drawing the hood over her head, went deliberately out into the pelting rain, Maurice and Franky following. As for Eddie, at the first mention of salmon, he had been off like a shot, and was now seen standing on the very edge of the pier, gesticulating with all his might for somebody to take him into a boat. Alas! in vain.
Never was there such an all-absorbing salmon. As Mary had said, the whole household was out watching him and his proceedings. The baby,Austin Thomas, Sunny, and Sunny’s mamma were left alone, to take care of one another.
These settled down again in front of the fire, and Sunny, who had been a little bewildered by the confusion, recovered herself, and, not at all alive to the importance of salmon-fishing, resumed her entreating whisper:
“’Bout German pictures, mamma; tell me ’bout German pictures.”
And she seemed quite glad to go back to her old ways; for this little girl likes nothing better than snuggling into her mamma’s lap, on the hearth-rug, and being told about German pictures.
They came to her all the way from Germany as a present from a kind German friend, and some of them are very funny. They make regular stories, a story on each page. One is about a little greedy boy, so like a pig, that at last, being caught with a sweetmeat by an old witch, she turns him into a pig in reality. He is put into a sty, and just about to be killed, when his sister comes in to save him with a fairy rose in her hand; the witch falls back, stuck through with her own carving-knife, and poor piggy-wiggy, touched by the magic rose, turns into a little boy again. Then there is another page, “’bout effelants,” as Sunny calls them,—a papa elephant and a baby elephant taking a walk together.They come across the first Indian railway, and the papa elephant, who has never seen a telegraph wire before, is very angry at it and pulls it down with his trunk. Then there comes whizzing past a railway-train, which makes him still more indignant, as he does not understand it at all. He talks very seriously on the subject to his little son, who listens with a respectful air. Then, determined to put an end to such nuisances, this wise papa elephant marches right in front of the next train that passes. He does not stop it, of course, but it stops him, cutting him up into little pieces, and throwing him on either side the line. At which the little elephant is so frightened that you see him taking to his heels, very solid heels too, and running right away.
Sunny heard this story for the hundredth time, delighted as ever, and then tried to point out to Austin Thomas which was the papa “effelant,” and which the baby “effelant.” But Austin Thomas’s more infantile capacity did not take it in; he only “scrumpled” the pages with his fat hands, and laughed. There might soon have been an open war if mamma had not soothed her little girl’s wounded feelings by the great felicity of taking off her shoes and stockings, and letting her warm her little feet by the fire, while she layback on her mamma’s lap, sucking her Maymie’s apron.
The whole group were in this state of perfect peace, outside it had grown dark, and mamma had stirred the fire and promised to begin a quite new story, when the door again opened and Eddie rushed in. Maurice and Franky followed, wet, of course, to the skin,—for each left a little pool of water behind him wherever he stood,—but speechless with excitement. Shortly after, up came the three gentlemen, likewise silent, but not from excitement at all.
“But where’s the salmon?” asked Sunny’s mamma. “Pray let us see the salmon.”
Maurice’s papa looked as solemn as—what shall I say?—the renowned Buff, when he
“Strokes his face with a sorrowful grace,And delivers his staff to the next place.”
“Strokes his face with a sorrowful grace,And delivers his staff to the next place.”
“Strokes his face with a sorrowful grace,
And delivers his staff to the next place.”
He delivered his—no, it was not a stick, but a “tommy” hat, all ornamented with fishing-flies, and dripping with rain, to anybody that would hang it up, and sank into a chair, saying, mournfully:
“You can’t see the salmon.”
“Why not?”
“Because he’s at the bottom of the loch. He got away.”
“Got away!”
“Yes, after giving us a run of a full hour.”
“An hour and five minutes by my watch,” added Sunny’s papa, who looked as dejected as the other two. Though no salmon-fisher, he had been so excited by the sport that he had sat drenched through and through, in the stern of the boat, and afterward declared “he didn’t know it had rained.”
“Such a splendid fish he was,—twenty-five pounds at least.”
“Twenty,” suggested some one, who was put down at once with scorn.
“Twenty-five, I am certain, for he rose several times, and I saw him plain. So did Donald. Oh, what a fish he was! And he bit upon a trout-line! To think that we should have had that one trout-line with us, and he chose it. It could hardly hold him, of course. He required the tenderest management. We gave him every chance.” (Of being killed, poor fish!) “The minute he was hooked, I threw the oars to Donald, who pulled beautifully, humouring him up and down, and you should have seen the dashes he made! He was so strong,—such a big fish!”
“Such a big fish!” echoed Eddie, who stood listening with open mouth and eyes that gradually became as melancholy as his father’s.
“And, as I said, we played him for an hour and five minutes. He was getting quite exhausted, and I had just called to Neil to row close and put the gaff under him, when he came up to the surface,—I declare, just as if he wanted to have a stare at me,—then made a sudden dart, right under the boat. No line could stand that, a trout-line especially.”
“So he got away?”
“Of course he did, with my hook in his mouth, the villain! I dare say he has it there still.”
It did occur to Sunny’s mamma that the fish was fully as uncomfortable as the fisherman, but she durst not suggest this for the world. Evidently, the salmon had conducted himself in a most unwarrantable manner, and was worthy of universal condemnation.
Even after the confusion had a little abated, and the younger children were safely in bed, twenty times during tea he was referred to in the most dejected manner, and his present position angrily speculated upon,—whether he would keep the hook in his mouth for the remainder of his natural life, or succeed in rubbing it off among the weeds at the bottom of the loch.
“To be sure he will, and be just as cheerful as ever, the wretch! Oh, that I had him,—hook and all! For it was one of my very best flies.”
“Papa, if you would let me ‘low’ you in the boat, while you fished, perhaps he might come and bite again to-morrow?”
This deep diplomatic suggestion of Eddie’s did not meet with half the success it deserved. Nobody noticed it except his mother, and she only smiled.
“Well!” she said, trying to cheer up the mournful company, “misfortunes can’t be helped sometimes. It is sad. Twenty-five pounds of fish; boiled, fried into steaks, kippered. Oh, dear! what a help in the feeding of the household!”
“Yes,” said the patient gentleman, who, being unable to walk, could only sit and fish, and, having come all the way from London to catch a salmon, had never yet had a bite except this one. “Yes, twenty-five pounds at two shillings the pound,—Billingsgate price now. That makes two-pound-ten of good English money gone to the bottom of the loch!”
Everybody laughed at this practical way of putting the matter, and the laugh a little raised the spirits of the gentlemen. Though still they mourned, and mourned, looking as wretched as if they had lost their whole families in the loch, instead of that unfortunate—or fortunate—salmon.
“It isn’t myself I care for,” lamented Maurice’s papa. “It’s you others. For I know you willhave no other chance. The rain will clear off—it’s clearing off now, into a beautiful starlight night. To-morrow will be another of those dreadfully sunshiny days. Not a fish will bite, and you will have to go home at the week’s end,—and there’s that salmon lying snugly in his hole, with my hook in his mouth!”
“Never mind,” said the patient gentleman, who, though really the most to be pitied, bore his disappointment better than anybody. “There’s plenty of fish in the loch, for I’ve seen them every day jumping up; and somebody will catch them, if I don’t. After all, we had an hour’s good sport with that fellow to-day,—and it was all the better for him that he got away.”
With which noble sentiment the good man took one of the boys on his knee,—his godson, for whom he was planning an alliance with his daughter, a young lady of four and a half,—and began discussing the settlements he expected; namely, a large cake on her side, and on the young gentleman’s, at least ten salmon out of the loch, to be sent in a basket to London. With this he entertained both children and parents, so that everybody grew merry as usual, and the lost salmon fell into the category of misfortunes over which the best dirge is the shrewd Scotch proverb, “It’s nae use greeting ower spilt milk.”