CHAPTER XXXVITHE SUPPLANTER
Never did I realize so clearly the difference between what interests the people in a great city and those inhabiting remote provinces as when, in mid-August, I took Irma and my firstborn son down to the wholesome breath and quiet pine shadows of Heathknowes. I had seen the autumnal number of theUniversalsafe into its wrapper of orange and purple. In Edinburgh the old town and the new alike thrilled and hummed with the noise of a contested election. There were processions, hustings, battles royal everywhere, the night made hideous, the day insupportable.
But here, looking from the door out of the sheltering arms of Marnhoul wood into the peace of the Valley, the ear could discern only the hum of the pirn-mill buzzing like a giant insect in the greenest of the shade, and farther off the whisper of the sea on the beaches and coves about Killantringan.
Now we had taken rather a roundabout road and rested some nights on the way, for I had business at Glasgow—a great and notable professor to visit at the college, and in the library several manuscripts to consult. So Irma remained with the Wondrous Duncan the Second at the inn of the White Horse, where the coach stopped.
When I came back I thought that Irma’s face looked a trifle flushed. I discovered that, having asked the hostler to polish her shoes, he had refused with the rudeness common to his class when only rooms of the cheaper sort are engaged. WhereuponIrma, who would not let her temper get the better of her, had forthwith gone down to the pantry, taken the utensils and done them herself.
I said not much to her, but to the landlord and especially to the man himself I expressed myself with fulness and a vigour which the latter, at least, was not likely to forget for some time.
It was as well, however, that my grandmother was not there. For in that case murder might have been done, had she known of the scullion’s answer and what Irma had done. Well also, on the whole, for us that she had refused to keep us company. For having been only once in a great city in her life, and never likely to be there again, Mary Lyon made the most of her time. She had had two trunks when she came to our gate. Four would not have held all that she travelled with on her way back. And when we remonstrated on the cost, she said, “Oh, fidget! ’Tis many a day since I cost anything to speak of to the goodman. He can brave and weel afford to pay for a trifle o’ luggage.”
Accordingly she never passed a fruit stall without yearning to buy the entire stock-in-trade “for the neighbours that have never seen siccan a thing as a sweet orange in their lives—lemons being the more marketable commodity in Eden Valley.”
She had also as many commissions, for which she looked to be paid, as if she had been a commercial traveller. There were half-a-dozen “swatches” to be matched for Aunt Jen—cloth to supply missing “breadths,” yarn to mend the toes of stockings, ribbons which would transform the ancient dingy bonnet into a wonder of beauty on the day of the summer communion. She had “patterns” to buy dress-lengths of—from the byre-lasses brown or drabto stand the stress of out-of-door—checked blue and white for the daintier dairy-worker among her sweet milk and cheese.
Even groceries, and a taste of the stuff they sell in town for “bacon ham”—to be sniffed at and to become the butt for all the goodwives in the parish—no tea, for Mary Lyon knew where that could be got better and cheaper, but aPilgrim’s Progressfor a neighbour lad who was known to be fond of the reading and deserved to be encouraged—lastly, as a vast secret, a gold wedding-ring which could not be bought without talk in Eden Valley itself. Grandmother did not tell us for whom this was intended. Nor did we know, till the little smile lurking at the corner of her mouth revealed the mystery, when Agnes Anne came home from the kirk and named who had been “cried” that day. It was no other than our sly Eben—and Miss Gertrude Greensleeves was the name of the bride—far too young for him, of course, but—he had taken his mother into his confidence and not a man of us dared say a word. Doubtless the women did, but even they not in the hearing of Mary Lyon.
But now we were at rest, and quite ten days ago grandmother had arrived with her cargo. The commissions were all distributed. The parish had had a solid week to get over its amazement. And, to put all in the background, there had been a successful run into Portowarren and another the same night to Balcary—a thing not often done in the very height of summer. Yet, because the preventive men were not expecting it, perhaps safer then than at any other time.
And above all and swamping all the endless talk of a busy, heartsome farm-town! Ah, how good itwas. Even the little god in the “ben” room, Master Duncan Maitland MacAlpine, had times and seasons without a worshipper, all because there was a young farmer’s son in the kitchen telling of his experiences “among the hills,” with the gaugers behind them, and the morn breaking fast ahead.
How they must get to a place where they could hide, a place with water, where they could restore their beasts and repose themselves, a place of great shadowing rocks in a weary land. For of a certainty the sun would smite by day, even if the moon afforded them guidance over the waste by night.
Or Boyd Connoway would tell of theGolden Hindhaving been seen out in the channel, of rafts of “buoyed” casks sunk to within three foot of the bottom, to be fished up when on a dark night the herring craft slipped out of Balcary or the Scaur, silent as a shadow.
Or mayhap (and this, married or single, Irma liked best of all) there came in some shy old farmer from the uplands, or perhaps a herd, to whose boy or girl “out at service” the mistress of Heathknowes had brought home a Bible. These had come to thank Mary Lyon, but could not get a word out. They sipped their currant wine as if it were medicine and moved uneasily on the edges of their chairs. They had excellent manners stowed away somewhere—the natural well-bredness of the hill and the heather, but in a place like that, with so many folk, it seemed as if they had somehow mislaid them.
Then was Irma’s time. She would glide in, her face still pale, of course, but with such a gracious sweetness upon it that the shyest was soon at his ease. Here was a cup, an embarrassment to the hand. She would fill its emptiness, not with Aunt Jen’s currantwine, but with good Hollands—not to the brim, because the owner would spill it over and so add the finishing touch to his bashfulness. She sat down by the oldest, the shaggiest, the roughest, and in a moment (as if, like a fairy of Elfland, she had waved her wand) old Glencross of Saltflats, who only talked in monosyllables to his own wife, was telling Irma all about the prospects of his hay crop, and the bad look-out there was along the Colvend shore owing to the rabbits breeding on the green hill pastures.
“Oh, but I’ll thin them, missie,” he affirmed, in response to her look of sympathy, “ow aye, there are waur things than hare soup and rabbit pie. Marget” (his wife) “is a great hand at the pie. Ye maun come ower some day and taste—you and your guidman. I will send ye word by that daft loon Davie.”
Then with hardly an effort, now that the ice was broken, turning to my grandmother, “Eh, mistress, but it was awesome kind and mindfu’ o’ you to fetch the laddie a Bible a’ the road frae Enbra. I hae juist been promising him a proper doing, a regular flailing if he doesna read in it every nicht afore he says his prayers.”
Needless to say Davie had promised—but as to Davie’s after performance no facts have been put on record. Still, he had his Bible and was proud of it.
Then Irma, safe in her married state, would set herself down by some shy, horny-fisted fellow, all nose and knuckles. She would draw him away from his consciousness of the Adam’s apple in his throat (which he privately felt every one must be looking at) and give him a good sympathetic quarter of an hour all to himself. She would smile and smile and be a villain to her heart’s content, till the lad’s tongue would at last be loosened, and he would tell how hetried for first prize at the last ploughing match, and boast how he would have been first only for his “coulter blunting on a muckle granite stane.” He would relate with exactness how many queys his father had, the records of mortality among the wintering sheep, the favourable prospects of the spring lambs—“abune the average—aye, I will not deny, clean abune the average.”
So he would sit and talk, and gaze and gaze, till there entered into his soul the strong desire to work, to rise up and conquer fate and narrow horizons—so that in time, like a certain Duncan MacAlpine (whom very likely, as a big country fellow, he had thrashed at school), it might happen to him to have by his fireside something dainty and sweet and with great sympathetic eyes and a smile—like that!
We had only a little while of this, however, for on the morrow Louis was to arrive from school, safely escorted by Freddy Esquillant and half-a-dozen students, who had made a jovial party all the way from Edinburgh.
Now I may write myself down a selfish brute by the confession I am going to make. But all the same, the thing is true and had better be owned up to, all the more in the light of what afterwards happened. I had no great wish that Louis should join our little party, which with the advent of little Master Red Knuckles, had been rendered quite complete. It was, I admit, an unworthy jealousy. But I thought that as Irma had always been so passionately devoted to Louis—and also because she had, as I sometimes teased myself by imagining, only come to me because she had lost Louis—his coming back would—might, I had the grace to say on second thoughts, deprive me of some part of my hard-earned heritage—the love of the woman who was all to me. For with me, hisunworthy father, even Duncan Maitland had not yet begun to count. With a man that comes later.
This is my confession, and once made, let us pass on. I had even then the grace to be ashamed—at least, rather.
Louis arrived. He had grown into a tall lad with long hair of straw-coloured gold, that shone with irregular reflections like muffled moonlight on a still but gently rippling sea. He was quieter, and seemed somehow different. He was now all for his books and solitude, and sat long in the room that had been given him for a bedroom and study—that with the window looking out on the wood. It was the quietest in the house—not only because of our youthful bull of Bashan and his roaring, but because it was at the farthest end of the long rambling house, away from the stables and cattle sheds.
However, he seemed delighted to see Irma, and sat a long time with her hand in his. But I, who knew her well, noticed that there was not now on her face the old strained attention to all that her brother said or did. It was in another direction that her ears and thoughts were turned, and at the first cry from baby’s cot she rose quietly, disengaging her hand without remark before disappearing into the bedroom-nursery. In another moment I could see my grandmother pass the window drying her hands on her apron. I knew from the ceasing of the plunging thud of the dasher that she had called a substitute to the churning. The dasher was now in the hands of Aunt Jen, who handled it with a shorter, more irrascible stroke.
Left alone with him, I talked to Louis a while of his studies, of the games the boys played at school, of the length of the holidays. But to all these openings and questionings he responded in a dull and uninterested fashion. I could not but feel that heresented bitterly the marriage which had come between his sister and himself. He had had, of course, a place to come to on Saturdays and Sunday afternoons, but I had seen little of him then. My work was generally absorbing, and when I had time to give to Irma, I wanted her all to myself. So I had fallen into a habit, neither too kind nor yet too wise, of taking to my writing or my proofs as often as Louis came to our house.
Now, from the glances he cast at the door by which Irma had gone out, I saw that he too was suffering from jealousy—even as I had done. He was jealous of that inarticulate Jacob which comes into so many houses as a tiny Supplanter—the first baby!
After a quarter of an hour he rose and got out of the room quickly. I could hear him go to his own room and shut the door. When Irma and Mary Lyon had reduced our small bundle of earthquake to a sulky and plaintive reason, she came back to talk to her brother. Finding him gone, she asked where Louis was, and immediately followed him to his chamber, doubtless to continue their conversation.
But she returned after a while with a curious gleam on her face, saying that doubtless travel had given her brother a headache. He had shut his door with the bolt, and was lying down.
I was on the point of asking Irma if he had answered when she called to him, but remembered in time that I had better not meddle in what did not concern me. If Louis behaved like a bear, it would only throw Irma the more completely upon me. And this, at the time, I was selfish enough to wish for.
Afterwards—well, I had, as all men have, many things to reproach myself for—this stupid jealousy being by no means the least or the lightest.
Still, on the whole I had a great deal of peace andthe composure of the quiet mind during these first days at Heathknowes. My father, almost for the first time in his life, withdrew himself from his desk, and took a walk beyond the confines of the Academy Wood to see his grandson, keeping, however, his hands still behind him according to his custom in school. My mother, even, arranged with Agnes Anne to take the post-office duties during her absence, and seemed pleased in her quiet way to hold the boy in her arms. In this, however, she was not encouraged by Mary Lyon, who soon took Duncan away on the plea that he cried, except with her. Duncan the Second certainly stopped as soon as he felt my grandmother’s strong, well-accustomed hands grasp him. Yet she was not in the least tender with him. On the contrary, she heaved him, as it were promiscuously, over one shoulder with his head hanging down her back, and tucking his swathed legs under one armpit she proceeded about her household business, as if wholly disembarrassed—all the while Duncan never uttering a word.
But through all the talk of the weather and the crops, the night runs to Kirk Anders and the Borgue shore, the capture made by the preventives at the Hass of the Dungeon, the misdoings of Tim Cleary who had got seven days for giving impudence to the Provost of Dumfries in his own court-room, there pierced the strange sough of politics.
The elections were upon us also in Galloway, and the Government candidate was reported to be staying at Tereggles with the Lord Lieutenant. He had not yet been seen, but (it was, of course, Boyd Connoway who brought us word) his name was the Honourable Lalor Maitland, late Governor of the Meuse—a province in the Low Countries.
CHAPTER XXXVIITHE RETURN OF THE SERPENT TO EDEN VALLEY
I did not tell Irma, and I enjoined silence on all about the house. But there was no keeping such a thing, and perhaps it was as well. Jo Kettle’s father, always keen to show his wit at the expense of his betters, cried out to me in the hearing of Irma, “How much, besides his pardon, has that uncle of yours gotten in guineas for his treachery?”
And when I protested ignorance, he added, “I mean the new grand Government candidate, that has been sae lang in the Netherlands, and was a rebel not so long ago—many is the braw lad’s head that he has garred roll in the sawdust, I warrant.”
For it was currently reported of Lalor in his own day that he had been a spy for the King of France as well as for King George—aye, and afterwards against the emigrants at Coblentz in the service of the Revolution. Indeed, I do think there is little doubt but that, at some time of his life, the man had been in such a desperate way that he had spied and betrayed whoever trusted him to whomsoever would pay for his treachery.
“Lalor Maitland—is he, then, in the country?” said Irma, with a white and frightened look. “I must get home—to Baby!”
So completely had her heart changed its magnetic pole. Poor Louis, small wonder he was jealous—and rightly, not of me, but of the small and leathern-lunged person who from his cot ruled the order of the house, and made even the cheerful hum of the fireside, the yard cock-crowing of the fowls, and the egg-kekklingin the barn yield to his imperious will. For he had them banished the precincts and shut up till his highness should please to awaken.
But when we got to the Heathknowes road-end, we beheld a yellow coach, with four horses, a coachman and two outriders, all three in canary-coloured suits.
It was early days for such equipages to be seen in Galloway, where, excluding the post-road on which the Irish mail ran from Dumfries to Stranraer, there were few roads and fewer bridges which would bear a coach-and-four. Owing to the pirn-mill, our bridges were a little stronger than usual, though the roads were worn into deep ruts by the “jankers,” or great two-wheeled wagons for the transport of trees out of the woods.
The carriage drove right up to the outer gate of the yard of Heathknowes, half the idle laddies of Eden Valley running shouting after it. The “yett,” as usual, was barred, and it is more than doubtful whether, even if open, the coach could safely have passed within—so narrow was the space between post and post.
But the man inside put his head out of the window and gave a short, sharp order. Whereupon the postilions leaped down and stood to their horses’ heads. The canary coachman held his hands high, with the reins drooping upon his knees. A footman jumped out of a little niche by the side of one window in which his life must have been almost shaken out of him. He opened the door with the deepest respect, and out there stepped the bravest and finest-dressed gentleman that had ever been seen.
He was middle-sized and slight, no longer young, but of an uncertain age. He wore a powdered wig, with sky-blue coat and shorts, a white waistcoatembroidered with dainty sprig patterns of lavender and forget-me-not. He had on white silk stockings and the most fashionable shoes, tied with blue-and-gold governmental favours instead of ordinary buckles. By his side was a sword with a golden hilt—in short, such a cavalier had never been seen in Galloway within living memory.
And at the sight of him Louis ran forward, calling, “Uncle, uncle!” But Irma sank gently down on my shoulder, so that I had to take her in my arms and carry her to her chamber.
At first I stood clean dumfounded, as indeed well I might. When Lalor came last to Eden Valley he had been one of the Black Smugglers, a great man on theGolden Hind—little better, to be brief, than a common pirate. He and his had assaulted the house of Marnhoul, with a pretence of legal purpose, no doubt, but really merely levying war in a peaceful country.
Now here he was back, arrayed sumptuously, the favourite of the Government at London, the guest of the Lord Lieutenant of the county.
I could not explain it, and, indeed, till Irma came to herself, I had little time or inclination to think the matter out. But afterwards many things which had been dark became clear, while others, though still remaining mysterious, began to have a certain dim light cast upon them.
What seemed clear was that Lalor had all along benefited by mysterious protections, and the authorities, though apparently anxious for his capture, never really put themselves about in the least. They did not want to catch or imprison Lalor Maitland. He was much more useful to them elsewhere. Whereas the children of a disaffected rebel, considered as claimants to the Maitland estates, were of little account.
But the action of Louis Maitland for the first time opened my eyes to another matter. A corner of the veil which had hid a plot was lifted. During all the time that Irma had been with her Aunt Kirkpatrick, ever since Louis entered Sympson’s Classic Academy (kept by Dr. Sympson, grandson of the old Restoration Curate of Kirkmabreek), Lalor had been in Edinburgh, pursuing his plans in secret, perhaps (who knows?) with the learned assistance and council of Mr. Wringham Pollixfen Poole, that expert with the loaded riding-whip.
We had been far too busy with our own affairs—the marriage, the little house, my work at theReview, and more recently the appearance and providing for of Duncan the Second. We had seen Louis on Saturdays, and on Sundays, too, at times. But, to our shame be it said, we knew very little about his life at school, who were his friends, what his actual thoughts. For this I shall never cease to reproach myself—at least occasionally, when I think about it.
But Lalor had appeared in splendour at Dr. Sympson’s, had introduced himself as an uncle from abroad. He was in high favour with the Government. He had the most magnificent coach in the city, and, apparently, plenty of money. He had early warned Louis that we—that is, Irma and I—must hear nothing of his visits, otherwise these pleasant jaunts would be stopped—the afternoon treats to Duddingstone and Lochend, the sails on the Firth with young Walter, the Doctor’s son, as his companion. For Lalor was so wise that he never asked him out alone. So Louis had been silent, bribed by the liberty and the golden guineas, which were as plentiful with Lalor as they were scarce with Irma and myself. The Doctor wascharmed with his visitor, the ex-governor of a great province in the Netherlands (which he looked out in the Encyclopædia and lectured upon)—and as for Walter, his son, at that date he would have bartered his soul for five hours’ absence from the paternal academy and a dozen sticks of toffee.
Then with what unwonted and flattering deference the boy’s entertainer had treated him. To him he was Sir Louis, the head of the house. He would heir its great properties, the value and extent of which had been hidden from him by Irma and myself. Doubtless we had our own reasons for thus concealing the truth, but Uncle Lalor’s position with the Government enabled him to assure Sir Louis that, through his influence, all its ancient dignities would be restored to the family.
Hence it was that, at the first sight of the slim man with the powdered wig tied in a gay favour behind his back, Louis had run and flung himself into his arms. Perhaps, also, it had something to do with his disappointment in Irma, and it was in this open way that he chose to punish her.
Yet when Lalor Maitland had come into the parlour, and I had spoken with him, the man’s frank and smiling recognition of the circumstances, his high, easy manner, an old-world politeness as of one long familiar with courts, yet a kindly gentleman withal, prepossessed me in his favour even against myself.
“Well,” he said, with that rare smile which distinguished him, “here we have the fortune of war. You and I have met before, sir, and there are few that have faced me as you did, being at the time only a boy—and not myself only, but Dick, the boldest man on theGolden Hind.”
He tapped a careless tattoo on the table with his fingers.
“Ah, they were good days, after all,” he said; “mad days—when it was win ten thousand or walk the plank every time the brig put her nose outside the harbour bar!”
“It turned out the ten thousand, I presume?” I said, without too much unbending.
“Oh,” he answered lightly, “as to myself, I was never very deeply entered. I had ever an anchor out to windward. It was rare that I acted without orders, and, having been in a high official position, it was in my power to render certain important services to the Government of this country—for which, I may say, they have not proved themselves less ungrateful than is the way of governments.”
“So it would seem,” I answered.
“But,” he continued, “I called chiefly to renew my acquaintance with my sometime wards—though one of them has sought another and a better guardian” (here he bowed very gracefully to me), “and the other—well, Louis lad, what have you to say to your old uncle?”
The boy came bounding up, and stood close by his chair, smoothing the lace of Lalor’s sleeve, his eyes full of happiness and confidence. It was a pretty sight, and for a moment I confess I was baffled. Could it be that after all Louis was right and Irma wrong? Could this man have supposed that the children were being held against their will and interest, or at least fraudulently removed from their legal guardian, when he assaulted the old house of Marnhoul?
Perhaps, as I began to surmise, we had on that occasion really owed our lives to him. For had theGoldenHindsall come on at a time, they would undoubtedly, being such a crew of cut-throats, have rushed us and eaten us up in no time.
Women, I tried to persuade myself, had dislikes even more inexplicable than their likings. Some early, unforgiven, childish prejudice, perhaps. Women do not easily forgive, except those whom they love, and even these only so long as they continue to love them. For many women the phrase in the Lord’s Prayer, “as we forgive them that trespass against us,” had better be expunged. It is a dead letter. The exceptions are so rare as to prove the rule—and even they, though they may forgive their enemies, draw the line at forgiving their neighbours.
“And am I not to see my fair enemy, Madame—ah, Duncan MacAlpine? I wish to have the honour of felicitating her infinite happiness, and I have taken the liberty of bringing her an old family jewel for her acceptance.”
“My wife, sir,” I said, “is not yet well. She is subject to sudden shock, and I fear——”
“Ah, I understand,” he said, bowing gravely, and with a touch of melancholy which became him vastly; “I never had the good fortune to please the lady—as you have done.”
He smiled again, and waved away a clumsy attempt of mine to reply.
“But that is my misfortune—perhaps, though unconsciously, my fault. Still, there is the trinket. I leave it in your hands, in trust for those of your wife. My respectful duty and service to her and—to the heir of your house! Come, Louis, will you have a ride in the coach as far as the bridge and back? I have left my Lord Lieutenant there visiting some of his doubtful tenants. I will pick him up when he isready, and then bring this little friend of mine back.”
That night Louis wept and stamped in a black anger.
“I don’t want to stop here,” he said; “I want to go with Uncle Lalor in the gilded coach.”
CHAPTER XXXVIIIBY WATER AND THE WORD
During my holidays at Heathknowes I found myself necessarily in frequent communication with my Lord Advocate. For though I was the actual, he was the ultimate editor of theUniversal Review. I felt that he had done so much for me, and that we were now on such terms that I might without presumption ask him a private question about Lalor Maitland. Because, knowing the man to have been mixed with some very doubtful business, I wondered that a man of such honour and probity as the Advocate would in any circumstances act by such means—much less countenance his being put forward in the Government interest at a contested election.
I will give the text of the Advocate’s reply in so far as it deals with Lalor: “Have as little as possible to do in a private capacity with ‘your Connection by Marriage’” (for so he continued to style him). “In public affairs we must often use sweeps to explore dark and tortuous passages. Persons who object to fyle themselves cannot be expected to clean drains. You take my metaphor? Your ‘Relative by Marriage’ has proved himself a useful artist in cesspools. That is all. He has not swept clean, but he has swept. He has, on several occasions, been useful to the Government when a better man would never have earned salt to his kail. Publicly, therefore, he is an estimable servant of the Government. Privately I would not touch him with the point of my shoe. For in personal relations such men are always dangerous.See to it that you and yours have as little to do with him as possible.”
There in a nutshell was the whole philosophy of politics. “For dirty jobs use dirty tools”—and of such undoubtedly was Lalor Maitland.
But I judged that, having come through so many vicissitudes, and moving now with a certain name and fame, he would, for his own sake, do us no open harm. Rather, as witness little Louis, he would exploit the ancient renown of the Maitlands, their standing in Galloway, and his friendship with the heir of their estates.
It seemed to me that Louis was entirely safe, especially in the good hands of the Lord Lieutenant, and that the great rewards which Lalor Maitland had received from the Government constituted in some measure the best security against any dangerous plotting.
And in all the electoral campaign that followed, certain it is that Lalor showed only his amiable side, taking all that was said against him with a smiling face, yet as ready with his sword as with his tongue, and so far as courage went (it must be allowed) in no way disgracing the old and well-respected name of the Maitlands of Marnhoul. But I must tell you of the fate which befell the jewel he had left in my hands for Irma. Whether it had ever belonged to the family of Maitland or not, I should greatly doubt. It was a hoop of rubies set with brilliants, which at will could make a bracelet for the wrist, or a kind of tiara for the hair. It was placed in a lined box of morocco leather, called an “ecrin,” and stood out as beautifully against the faded blue of the velvet as a little tangled wisp of sunset cloud lost in an evening sky.
But Irma flashed out when I showed it her.
“How dare you?” she cried, and seizing the box she shut it with a snap like her own white teeth. Then, the window being open, she threw it into the low shrubbery at the orchard end, whence, after she had gone to baby, I had no great trouble in recovering it. For it seemed to me too good to waste, and would certainly be of more use to me than to the first yokel who should pass that way.
Under ordinary circumstances Lalor would certainly have been defeated. First of all, though doubtless belonging to an ancient family of the country, he was, with his gilded coach and display of wealth gotten no one could just say how or where, in speech and look an outsider. His opponent, Colonel MacTaggart of the Stroan, called familiarly “The Cornel” was one of the brave, sound, stupid, jovial country gentlemen who rode once a week to market at Dumfries, never missed a Court day at Kirkcudbright, did his duty honourably in a sufficiently narrow round, and was worshipped by his tenantry, with whose families he was on terms of extraordinary fondness and friendship. Altogether, to use the vulgar idiom, “The Cornel” was felt to be a safe man to “bring back Galloway fish-guts to Galloway sea-maws.” Or, in other words, he would see to it that patronage, like charity, should begin at home—and stop there.
To set off against this, there was a strong feeling that Galloway had been long enough in opposition. There appeared to be (and indeed there was) no chance of overturning the Government. Why, then, should Galloway dwell for seven more years in the cold and hungry shades of opposition—able to growl, but quite unable to get the bone?
Lalor was brim-full of promises. He had been, if nota smuggler, at least an associate of smugglers, and all along Solwayside that was no disadvantage to him—in a country where all either dabbled in the illicit traffic, or, at best, looked the other way as the jingling caravans went by.
Briefly, then, his Excellency Lalor Maitland, late Governor of the Province of the Meuse, now a law-abiding subject of King George, was duly elected and sent to Westminster to take his seat as representing the lieges. The excitement calmed down almost at once. The gold coach was seen no more. The preventive men and supervisors of excise were neither up nor down. Galloway felt vaguely defrauded. I think many of those who voted for Lalor imagined that the excisemen and coastguards would at once be recalled, and that henceforward cargoes from the Isle of Man and Rotterdam would be unloaded in broad daylight, instead of by the pale light of the moon, without a single question being asked on behalf of the revenue officers of King George.
After Lalor’s disappearance Louis Maitland was heavy and depressed for several days, staying long in his room and returning the shortest answers when spoken to. Suddenly one morning he declared his intention of going to Dumfries, and so on the following Wednesday my grandfather and he drove thither by the coach road while I followed behind on horseback. It was the purpose of Louis Maitland to have speech with the lawyers. So, knowing the temper in which he had been since his uncle’s departure, I let him go up alone, but afterwards had speech with the younger Mr. Smart on my own account.
He smiled when I mentioned Sir Louis and his mission.
“He wishes to go up to London to his cousin—hecalls him his uncle, Mr. Lalor, your fine new Government member for the county!”
“I judged as much,” said I, “but I hope you have not given him any such permission.”
“He can take all the permission he wishes after he is twenty-one,” said Mr. Smart; “at present he has a good many years before him at Sympson’s Academy. There he may occupy himself in turning the old curate’sThree Patriarchsinto Latin. As to his holidays, he can spend them with his sister or stay on in Edinburgh with the Doctor. But London is not a place for a young gentleman of such exalted notions of his own importance—‘You bury me at a farmhouse with a family of boors!’—was what he said. Now, that smells Mr. Lalor a mile off. But the lad is not much to blame, and I hope you will not let it go any farther.”
“Certainly not,” said I, “the boy was only quoting!”
I returned from this interview considerably relieved, but for some days Sir Louis was visibly cast down.
However, I said nothing to Irma, only advising her to devote herself a little more to her brother, at times when the exigencies of Duncan the Second would leave her time and opportunity.
“Why!” she said, with a quick gasp of astonishment, “I never forget Louis—but of course baby needs me sometimes. I can’t help that!”
If I had dared, I should have reminded her that baby appeared to need every woman about the house of Heathknowes—to whom may be added my mother from the school-house, Mrs. Thomas Gallaberry (late Anderson), and a great and miscellaneous cloud of witnesses, to all of whom the commonest details of toilet—baby’s bath, his swathing and unbandaging,the crinkling of his face and the clenching of his fists, the curious curdled marbling upon his fat arms, even the inbending of his toes, were objects of a cult to which that of the Lama of Thibet was a common and open secret.
Even fathers were excluded as profane on such occasions, and the gasps of feminine delight at each new evidence of genius were the only sounds that might be heard even if you listened at the door, as, I admit, I was often mean enough to do. Yet the manifestations of the object of worship, as overheard by me, appeared sufficiently human and ordinary to be passed over in silence.
I admit, however, that such was not the opinion of any of the regular worshippers at the shrine, and that the person of the opposite sex who was permitted to warm the hero’s bath-towel at the fire, became an object of interest and envy to the whole female community. As for my grandmother, I need only say that while Duncan the Second abode within the four walls of Heathknowes, not an ounce of decent edible butter passed out of her dairy. Yet not a man of us complained. We knew better.
There still remained, however, a ceremony to be faced which I could not look forward to with equanimity. It had been agreed upon between us, that, though by the interference of our good friend the Advocate, we had been married in the old private chapel attached to the Deanery, we should defer the christening of Duncan the Second till “the Doctor” could perform the office—there being, of course, but one “Doctor” for all Eden Valley people—Doctor Gillespie, erstwhile Moderator of the Kirk of Scotland.
I had long been under reproach for my slackness in this matter. Inuendoes were mixed with odiouscomparisons upon Mary Lyon’s tongue. If her daughter had only married a Cameronian, the bairn would have been baptized within seven days! Never had she seen an unchristened bairn so long about a house! But for them that sit at ease in an Erastian Zion—she referred to my father, who was not only precentor but also session-clerk, and could by no means be said to sit at ease—she supposed anything was good enough. It was different in her young days. She, at least, had been properly brought up.
Finally, however, I went and put the case to the Doctor. He was ready to come up to Heathknowes for the baptism. After his usual protest that according to rule it ought to be performed in sight of all the congregation, he accepted the good reason that my grandfather and grandmother, being ardent Cameronians, could not in that case be present. The Doctor had, of course, anticipated this objection. For he knew and respected the “kind of people” reared by four generations of “Societies,” and often (in private) held them up as ensamples to his own flock.
So to Heathknowes, the house of the Cameronian elder, there came, with all befitting solemnity, Doctor Gillespie, ex-Moderator of the Kirk of Scotland. Stately he stepped up the little loaning, followed by his session, their clerk, my father at their head. At the sight of the Doctor arrayed in gown and bands, his white hair falling on his neck and tied with a black ribbon, the whole family of us instinctively uncovered and stood bareheaded. My grandfather had gone down to the foot of the little avenue to open the gate for the minister. The Doctor smilingly invited him to walk by his side, but William Lyon had gravely shaken his head and said, “I thank you, Doctor, but to-day, if you will grant me the privilege, I willwalk with my brethren, the other elders of the Kirk of God.”
And so he did, and as they came within sight of the house I took Irma by the hand. For she trembled, and tears rose to her eyes as she saw that simple but dignified procession (like to that which moved out of the vestry on the occasion of the Greater Sacrament) approaching the house. The lads stood silent with bared heads. For once Duncan lay quiet in the arms of Mary Lyon—who that day would yield her charge to none, till she gave him to the mother, when the time should come, according to the Presbyterian rite, to stand up and place the firstborn in his father’s arms.
There was only one blank in that gathering. Louis had gone to his own room, pretexing a headache, but really (as he blurted out afterwards) because his Uncle Lalor had said that Presbyterianism was no religion for a gentleman.
However, it was only afterwards that he was missed.
The Doctor was great on such occasions. A surprising soft radiance, almost like a halo, surrounded his smooth snowy locks. A holy calm, exhaling from half a century of spotless life lived in the sight of all men, spoke in every word, moved in every gesture. The elders stood about grave and quiet. The great Bible lay open. The psalm of dedication was sung—of which the overword is, “Lo, children are God’s heritage,” and the conclusion the verse which no Scot forgets the world over, perhaps because it contains, quite unintentionally, so delightful a revelation of his own national character—
“O happy is the man that hathHis quiver filled with those:They unashamed in the gateShall speak unto their foes.”
CHAPTER XXXIXTHE WICKED FLAG
“There’s Boyd Connoway has been sitting on my front doorstep,” cried my Aunt Jen, “and if I’ve telled the man once, I’ve telled him twenty times!”
“But how do ye ken, Janet?” said her mother out of the still-room where she was brewing nettle-beer. “He is not there now!”
“How do I ken—fine that!” snapped Jen. “Do I no see my favourite check pattern on his trousers!” said Jen, which, indeed, being plain to the eye of every beholder, admitted of no denial—except perhaps, owing to point of view, by the unconscious wearer himself. He had sat down on these mystic criss-crossings and whorls dear to the Galloway housewife for her floor ornaments, while the whiting was still wet.
“It’s no wonder,” Jen pursued vengefully, “they may say what they like. An I were that man’s wife, I wad brain him. Here he has been the livelong day. Twa meals has he eaten. Six hours has he hung about malingering. He came to roof the pigstye. He tore off the old thatch, and there it lies, and there will lie for him. If there is frost, Girzie’s brood will be stiff by the morning. Then he ‘had a look’ at my roasting-jack and ... there it is!”
She indicated with an indignant sweep of the hand what she designated “a rickle o’ rubbish” as the net proceeds of Boyd’s industry.
The artist explained himself between the mouthfuls at his third repast.
“Ye see, Miss Lyon, there’s nocht that spoils good work like worry on the mind. The pigs will do fine. I’ll put a branch or two over them and a corn-sack over that. If a drap o’ rain comes through it will only harden the wee grunties for the trials o’ life. Aye” (here Boyd relapsed into philosophy), “life is fu’ o’ trials, for pigs as weel as men. But men the worst—for as for pigs, their bread is given them and their water is sure. Now as for myself——”
“Yourself,” cried Aunt Jen, entering into one of her sudden rages, “if ye were half as much worth to the world as our old sow Girzie, ye wad be salted and hanging up by the heels now! As it is, ye run the country like Crazy, our collie, a burden to yourself and a nuisance to the world at lairge!
“Eh, Miss Jen, but it’s the word ye have, as I was sayin’ to Rob McTurk up at the pirn-mill last Tuesday week. ‘If only our Miss Jen there had been a man,’ says I, ‘it’s never Lalor Maitland that would have been sent to sit in King George’s High House o’ Parliament.’”
Again Boyd Connoway took up his burden of testimony.
“Aye, Miss Jen, there’s some that’s born to trouble as the sparks fly upward. That’s me, Miss Jen. Now there’s my brother that’s a farmer in County Donegal. Niver a market night sober—andyethe’s not to say altogether content. An’ many is the time I say to our Bridget, ‘What would you do if I was Brother Jerry of Ballycross, coming home to ye in the box of the gig, and the reins on the horse’s neck?’
“‘Ye neverhada horse,’ says she, and thinks that an answer! Women’s heads are born void of logic, and what they fill them with—axing your pardon,Mistress Lyon, ah, if they were all like you—’tis a happier place this world would be!”
“Finish, and let us get the dishes cleared away!” said my grandmother, who did not stand upon fashions of speech, least of all with Boyd Connoway.
Boyd hastened to obey, ladling everything within reach into his mouth as fast as knife and spoon could follow each other.
He concluded, crooning over his eternal ditty, by way of thanksgiving after meat—
“If I was in bed and fast asleepI wouldn’t get up for a score of sheep.”
This distich had the gift of always infuriating Aunt Janet.
“You may well say so,” she cried, clattering away with an armful of dishes in a way that was a protest in itself; “considering all you are good for when youdoget up, you might just as well be in bed fast asleep, and——”
“Now there you’re wrong, Miss Janet,” said Boyd. “It was only last Sunday that I gave up all my evil courses and became one of Israel Kinmont’s folk. My heart is changed,” he added solemnly; “I gave it to the Lord, and He seen fit to convart me!”
The whole household looked up. Anything bearing on personal religion instantly touched Scots folk of the humble sort. But Aunt Jen was obdurate. Long experience had rendered her sceptical with regard to Boyd Connoway.
“We’ll soon see if you are converted to the Lord,” she said. “Heis a hard worker. There are no idlers on His estates. If it’s true, we may get these pigs covered in to-night yet.”
“Never trouble your head about the pigs, Miss Janet,” said Boyd, “they will surely sleep safe undera roof this night. Strive to fix your mind on higher things, Miss Jen. There’s such a thing as makin’ a god of this here transient evil world, as I said to Bridget when the potatoes went bad just because I got no time to ‘pit’ them, having had to play the fiddle at four kirns’[2]in different parishes during potato-lifting week!”
“Never mind about that,” said my grandfather from his seat in the chimney corner, “tell us about your ‘conversion’!”
For the word was then a new one in Galloway, and of no good savour either among orthodox Cameronians or pillars of the Kirk as by law established. But Israel Kinmont had been a sailor to far ports. In his youth he had heard Whitefield preach. He had followed Wesley’s folk afar off. The career of a humble evangelist attracted him, and when in his latter days he had saved enough to buy the oldest and worst of all luggers that ever sailed the sea, he devoted himself, not to the gainful traffic of smuggling, but to the unremunerative transport of sea-coal and lime from Cockermouth and Workington to the small ports and inlets of the Galloway coast.
No excisemen watching on the cliffs gave more than a single glance at “Israel’s Tabernacle,” as, without the least irreverence, he had named his boat. But, using the same ports as the smugglers, he was often brought into close relations with them. They asked him for information which was freely given, as from one friend to another. They trusted him, for though often interrogated by the supervisor and riding officers, Israel could develop upon occasion an extraordinary deafness, so that the questions to which hecould give a clear answer were never such as to commit any one. In exchange for this the smugglers would go aboard the Tabernacle and allow Israel to preach to them. And woe betide the irreverent on these occasions! Black Rob o’ Garlies or Roaring Imrie from Douglas-ha’ thought nothing of taking such a one by convenient parts of his clothing and dropping him overboard.
“Aye,” said Boyd, encouraged by my grandfather’s request, “Israel Kinmont has made a new man of many a hardened sinner!”
“I dare you to say so,” cried my grandmother; “only the Lord that is on High can do that.”
“But He can make use of instruments,” argued Boyd, who had learned his lesson, “and Israel Kinmont is one of them. He has showed me where to get grace.”
“Maybe,” snapped Jen, that unswerving Calvinist, “seeing is believing. Boyd Connowaymayhave got grace. I put no limit to the Almighty’s power. But it takes more than grace to convert a man from laziness!”
Boyd lifted his hand with a gesture so dignified that even from the good-for-nothing it commanded respect.
“’Tis from the Lord, Miss Jen, and it behoves us poor mortals noways to resist. Israel Kinmont never would smuggle, as ye know, and yet he never had any luck till the highest tide of the year brought the ‘Old Tabernacle’ up, with a cargo of sea-coal in her, half-way between Killantringan Village and the Nitwood.
“‘She’s settling, Israel,’ said his son Jacob, that’s counted soft, but can raise the tune at meeting—none like him for that.
“‘Even so,’ said Israel, ‘the will of the Lord be done!’
“‘She’s settling fast! Both my feet are wet!’ said Jacob, holding on to a rope.
“‘Amen!’ cried Israel, ‘if it only were His will that she should come ten yards higher up, she would be on the very roadside. Then I would open a door into the hold of her after the coal is out, and you and I, Jacob, could rig up seats and windows like a proper Tabernacle—fit for Mr. Whitefield himself to preach in! Truly the service of the Lord is joyful. His law doth rejoice the heart.’
“So said Israel, and, just as I am tellin’ you, there came a great inward swirling of the tide, a very merracle, and lo! theTabernaclewas laid down as by compass alongside the Nitwood road, whence she will never stir till the day of Final Judgment, as the scripture is. And Israel, he cuts the door, and Jacob, he gets out the coals and sells them to the great folk, and the supervisor, he stands by, watching in vain till he was as black as a sweep, for the brandy that was not there. But he petitioned Government that Israel should have a concession of that part of the foreshore—being against all smuggling and maybe thinking to have him as a sort of spiritual exciseman.
“Yes, Mr. Lyon,” Boyd went on, gratified by the interest in his tale, “’tis wonderful, when you think on’t. Empty from stem to stern she is, with skylights in her deck and windows in her side! Why, there are benches for the men and a pulpit for Israel. As for Jacob, he has nothing but his tuning-fork and a seat with the rest.
“And indeed there’s more chance that Israel will put a stop to the Free-trading than all the preventives in the land. He preaches against it, declaring that it makes the young men fit for nothing else, like every other way of making money without working for it.”
“Ah, Israel’s right there!” came from my grandfather.
“But every light has its shadow, and he’s made a failure of it with Dick Wilkes, and may do the like with my wife, Bridget.
“For Bridget, she will be for ever crying at me these days, ‘Here, you Tabernacle man, have you split the kindling wood?’ Or ‘No praise-the-Lord for you, lad, till your day’s work is done! Go and mend that spring-cart of the General’s that his man has been grumbling about for a month!’
“And sometimes I have to fill my mouth with the hundred and twenty-first psalm to keep from answering improper, and after all, Bridget will only ask if I don’t know the tune to that owld penny ballad. ’Tis true enough about the tune” (Boyd confessed), “me having no pitch-pipe, but Bridget has no business to miscall scripture, whether said or sung!
“As to Dick Wilkes, that got his lame leg at the attack on—well, we need not go opening up old scores, but we all know where—has been staying with us, and that maybe made Bridget worse. Aye, that he has. There’s no one like Bridget for drawing all the riff-raff of the countryside about her—I know some will say that comes of marrying me. But ’tis the ould gennleman’s own falsehood. You’ll always find Boyd Connoway in the company of his betters whenever so be he can!
“But Dick Wilkes had our ‘ben’ room, and there were a little, light, active man that came to see him—not that I know much of him, save from the sound of voices and my wife Bridget on the watch to keep me in the kitchen, and all that.
“But Old Israel would never give up Dick Wilkes. He kept coming and coming to our house, and whathe called ‘wrestling for Dick’s soul.’ Sometimes he went away pleased, thinking he had gotten the upper hand. Then the little light man would come again, and there was Dick just as bad as ever. ‘Backsliding’ was what Israel called it, and a good name, I say, for then the job was all to do over again from the beginning. But it was the Adversary that carried off Dick Wilkes at the long and last.”
“Ah!” came a subdued groan from all the kitchen. Boyd gloomily nodded his head.
“Yes,” he said, “’tis a great and terrible warning to Bridget, and so I tell her. ’Twas the night of the big meeting at the Tabernacle, when Israel kept it up for six hours, one lot coming and another going—the Isle o’ Man fleet being in—that was the night of all nights in the year that Dick Wilkes must choose for to die in. Aught more contrary than that man can’t be thought of.
“It happened just so, as I say. About four o’clock we were all of us shut up in the kitchen, and by that we knew (Jerry and I, at least) that Dick Wilkes had company—also that so far as repentance went, old Israel’s goose was cooked till he had another turn at his man. And then after six we heard him shouting that he was going to die—which seemed strange to us. For we could hear him tearing at his sea-chest and stamping about his room, which is not what is expected of a dying man.
“But Dick knew better. For when we went down and peeped at the keyhole, he heard us, and called on us all to come our ways in. And—you will never guess in a thousand years—he had routed a flag out of his sea-chest. The ‘Wicked Flag’ it was,—the pirates’ flag—black, with the Death’s Head and cross-bones done in white upon it, the same that he hadhoisted on seas where no questions were asked, when he commanded the oldGolden Hind. And wrapping himself in that, he said, ‘Tell old Israel that I diedso!’ And we, thinking it was, as one might say, braving the Almighty and his poor old servant, kept silence. And then he shouted, ‘Promise, ye white-livered rascals, or I’ve strength to slit your wizzards yet. Tell him I died under the Black!’
“And Bridget, who was feared herself, said, ‘Whist, for God’s sake, do not bring a curse on the house!’
“And then he just cursed the house from flooring to roof-tree, and so went to his own place!
“Dead? Well, yes—dead and buried is old Dickie Wilkes. But poor Israel Kinmont is quite brokenhearted. He says that Dick was the first that ever broke away, and that he is not long for this world himself now that he has lost Dick. It was always cut-and-come-again when you were converting Dick.
“But Israel has an explanation, poor old fellow.
“‘It was not Grace that missed fire,’ he says, ‘but me, the unworthy marksman. And for that I shall be smitten like the men who, with unanointed eyes, looked on the ark of God that time it went up the valley from Ekron to Bethshemish, with the cows looking back and lowing for their calves all the way. I were always main sorry for them cows!‘ old Israel says.”