I left Bryde sleeping at last and restless, with Belle wide-eyed by his bedside, and traked down to the big house very bitter at heart against Hugh, for the quarrel had been of his seeking; and when I came under the rowan-trees and past the moss-covered stone horse-trough, the grey day was coming in. And at the little window of Margaret's room I saw a white face peering, and there in a bare stone-flagged lobby she came to me, a stricken white thing, and dumb. She had no words at all, but stood gazing at my face, her hands twisting and twisting, and a strange moving in her white throat.
"Come, my lass," said I, and took her up and carried her to my room, where there was still a glow of red in the wide fireplace, and I kicked the charred wood together, and threw dry spills on that and made a blaze, and set her in my chair in the glow of it, for she was stiff with cold, being but half clothed or maybe less. Then I brought from an aumery some French spirit, and she took a little, shivering and making faces, but it lifted the cold from her heart. Yet in her eyes was a dreadful look, as of one who had gazed all night over bottomless chasms of nameless fear.
"And now, Mistress Margaret McBride," said I in as blithe a voice as I could be mustering, "why am I to be finding you in cold lobbies, and carrying you to my chamber like the ogre?"
At that came the saddest little smile over her face, and all her body seemed to relax.
"Tell me," said she, "there would not be laughing in your voice and him—away," and even then I was thinking she would be afraid to say that grim word.
"Bryde will have a sned from a hanger," said I, making light of it."You will have seen deeper in a turnip, and I left him sleeping."
"The dear," said she—"the dear," and then looking at me, "Oh, Hamish,Hamish, be good to me; I will not can help it."
"Where is Hugh?" said I.
"He came into us," said the lass, "like a wraith."
"'I have provoked my cousin,' he said, 'and wounded and maybe killed him, and I am owing him my life forbye,' and I ran to be waiting for you, and locked my door on all of them, even my mother."
She had a droll coaxing way with her, Margaret—a way of saying, "Will you tell me?" and then of repeating it, and she started now.
"Hamish," said she, "will you tell me one thing? Will you tell me?"
I nodded.
"Would it be—will you tell me—truly?" and she waited for my assent.
"Would it be Helen the boys were fighting over?"
"It would not," said I, and she said nothing more after that; but as I took her to the door she pulled my head down.
"I am thinking often, Hamish," said she, "you are the best one of us all."
* * * * * *
Now I will say this—that Bryde was like a wean in bed, fretful and ill-natured and restless, and his mother had to be beside him when folk came in, and I think in his new knowledge he feared she might suffer some indignity.
And he lashed his pride with a new-found humbleness, and railed at himself. I can hear his words on that day I brought Margaret to be seeing him, and she had many dainty dishes to be describing.
"It is very kind of you indeed," said he, "to be minding a poor body like me, and kind of your people to be allowing you to visit my mother and myself."
And at the sound of these words the poor lass was red and white time about, and at last fell all aback like a little ship in the wind's eye.
"Oh, Bryde," cried she, "what is this talk of my people? Are not my people your own people also?"
"I have my mother's word for it," said he, with his arm over his eyes, and the dark blood surging upwards over throat and cheeks.
The lass was on her knees by his bedside at that.
"Do you think," she cried—"do you thinkthatwould weigh with me; I have kent that long syne."
"It was news to me," said he, turning his face away; "bonny news to me."
"This will be news to me also," said she, her face hidden, "for I would be thinking in the night-time—in the dark—I would be thinking it would maybe bemeyou differed over.
"You, Mistress Margaret," cried he. "What could I ever be to such as you—but a servant?"
"Bryde McBride, do you ken what there is in my heart to be doing to you," and her eyes were all alight, and her breath coming fast—her face close to his and her arms round him: "I could be kissing your hurt till it was healed. I am wanting your headhere, here at my heart, for I am yours—I will be yours—I will be yours."
"Some day," said Bryde in a soft whisper, with amazement in his tones—"some day you will find a man worthy of that great love. . . ."
But she was at her wheedling now.
"Will you tell me, Bryde—will you tell me truly?" and she put her lips to his ear. "I love you, Bryde—did ye not know? Am I not a shameless lass?"
"There never was maiden like you before, Margaret," said he. "I am always loving you, always. . . ."
"But tell me," she cried—"tell me," and she put her ear close to his mouth, and her eyes were closed and a smiling gladness on her face.
"Love you," he cried in a great voice. "The good God will maybe be knowing the love in my heart for you," and his face was grey with pain, but at his words she pressed her face to his gently.
"Now," she said, "I will be happy again."
And when I came into the room there was the lass standing very proud with her hand on his brow.
"Is he not a restless boy, our Bryde?" said she, and there was pride and love and tears and laughter in her tones, and she left us together.
"Hamish," said he, "you will not be bringing her here again ever—I will not be strong enough lying here . . ." and then in a lower voice, "My mother has a ring," said he. "I could not be asking her, my mother, and who is there to turn to but you," and I told him of the messenger who came from the Low Countries with Dan's letters and his mother's ring.
"And your baby fist closed on the sword," said I.
"The sword," said he. "Where is my father's gift?"
At that I went to the old byre where the heathen had sat that day, and I digged the cobbles from a corner of a biss close to the trough, and there, wrapped in a sheep's skin in a box, was the sword as I had buried it long ago, and I brought it to Dan's son.
He took it with a kind of joy, and his eyes all lit up.
"My father would be knowing," said he, and drew the blade. "This will clear the tangles."
There were flowers very beautifully let into the blade in thin gold. "Is she not a maiden richly dowered?" said Bryde—"a slim grey maiden, a faithful maiden, who will be lying at my side, and fierce to be defending me?"
Belle hated that sword from the first day, but Bryde had it by him at his bedside always.
There were many folk coming and going these days, and Ronny McKinnon and McGilp would be sitting with Bryde, and they would have the great tales of ships and the sea, and whiles Ronny would have his fiddle and play, and whiles it would be the old stories they would be telling.
There was a day too when Hugh McBride and Helen came a-riding on the moors, and the thought came to me that both were a little sobered, and the lass had not the same gaiety about her; but I was thinking maybe she would be anxious about the Laird of Scaurdale, for there was word that he would not be keeping so very well of late.
There was a sternness about Hugh as of a man that would be carrying a grim load, but Bryde made very much of him always, and I am thinking that was not the least of his troubles, for there were some words between us after the fight.
"Yon was a dirty business," said Hugh. "I am not fit to stand in the same park with my cousin, and I will have told him that," for his mother would aye be warning Bryde never to lay hands on Dol Beag all his days.
HELEN AND BRYDE McBRIDE REST AT THE FOOT OF THE URIE.
There was a long time that Bryde was lame and weak, for he had lost much blood, but his strength came back to him, and it is droll to think that he had grown in his bed. When he was out he could not be having enough of the hills, and the fields and the sun. He would be talking to the very beasts about the place in his gladness, and Hugh would be giving him an arm, and they would often be at the laughing like brothers; but for long was Margaret, his sister, cold to Hugh.
And in the month of May, Bryde came down to the big house, and the Laird and his Lady welcomed him at the door, and Margaret behind them very sedate by her way of it.
And the Laird gave Bryde a good word that day in my hearing.
"You will not be minding that tale, my lad," said he, with his hand on Bryde's shoulder. "We will whiles be a little careless in the marrying, our folk," said he, "but the blood is strong enough, and we hold together."
But for all that I kent that there would be something strange about Dan's son since he rose from his bed, and I think that Margaret kent it too, for I would be seeing a wistful look in her eyes when no one would be near her.
And then there was a day when Hugh brought Helen to the house, and she was closeted a long time with Margaret.
"Your cousin Bryde will be leaving us ver' soon," said she.
I will never be the one to deny that Mistress Helen came fast to the bit.
"Will Hugh have been telling you that?" said Margaret in a certain tone.
"Hugh—no. I meet Bryde ver' often. He is good to be meeting—there is a fire and dash about him," and at that she spread out her white hands with a fine gesture, and took a turn to the window, her riding-switch at her teeth.
Now there was an intolerance about Margaret which you will find often with a proud spirit, and that Bryde should be happy away from her hurt her like a lash. The women maybe will have a name for it, for there was a smile in Helen's eyes as Margaret spoke—
"I am glad," said she, "he will have so good a friend as you. Maybe he will be staying if you were to ask him."
"And you, Margaret?"
"I do not come of folk who ask," said Margaret, with great unconcern; then for no reason seemingly (but maybe thinking of a certain time when she all but asked) her neck and face and forehead grew dark with mantling blood.
"Is he then not of your people who are slow to ask—favours?" said Helen. "I think so, yes. Do you remember I ride with him a little way from Scaurdale? There is a moon, and the hills ver' clear and we gallop."
"I am minding," said Margaret.
"'It is Romance,' I say to him, and he will be carrying me away off to the hills, and he is laughing.
"'An unwilling captive,' he says.
"'Not ver' unwilling,' I say, for he looked ver' gallant.
"'But a willing captive, she would kiss me,' said Bryde, your cousin, and then I make no movement of my head, but my eyes are looking at his laughing down at me—asking favours, ma belle, and still I not move, and he throw back his head (comme ça), and say—
"'I do not beg—even kisses,' very proudly he looks, ma belle, and his blue eyes laughing. . . ."
"I am remembering that the charm was working, Helen," said Margaret, in a voice like the north wind for coldness.
"Ah oui," cried Helen, "backwards it work—I kisshimla la," and she laughed like silver bells a-tinkle.
Now that was a daftlike tale to be telling, but Margaret was for ever cleaving me with Helen after that. "She is beautiful," she would tell me, "and merry and a great lady, and I think any man will be loving her," but there were many nights when Margaret lay wide-eyed, for all that she drove Bryde from her with jest and laughter. But I think it was well that she never kent of the meeting of Bryde and Helen Stockdale at the ford in the burn yonder at the foot of the Urie.
On a summer morning that was, with the heat-haze hardly lifted and long slender threads of spider webs clinging to the leaves of the birches by the burnside, and the bracken green and strong, with the white cuckoo spittals on them that will leave a mark like froth on the knees of a horse. To the pebbly ford above the "Waulk Mill" came Bryde, riding loosely with slack rein, for he was thinking much these days. In the burn his horse halted to drink, and then rested a little from the water—his head high and his ears forward—Bryde looking to his path for the South End, for he was on some errand of grazing beasts. Then there came that fine sound, the distant neigh of a horse, and the horse in the burn answered gallantly, and came splashing on, passaging and side-stepping a little, with curved crest. And there by the burnside they met, Bryde and Helen.
Their words at the meeting were formal enough, for there were houses at a little distance from the crossing; but you will only be seeing the founds of them now, and the plum-trees gone to wood, and the straggling hawthorns and the heather growing to the very burnside by the Lagavile.[1] But at the meeting there was a rich glowing colour in the face of the maid, and her lips were parted in a little smile, and her great eyes, sombre often, but now alight with love a-laughing in them, rested on the man like a caress.
"Ha, well met, my swarthy dragoon," said she, "or are we sailors this merry morning?"
"There's aye the night for dreams, Mistress Helen, but in the daytime I will be but a plain farming body, concerned about bestial. . . ."
"Bestial," quo' she, as they rode in the old track by the burnside that you'll see yet from the other road, "my horse is a-lathered, and I too am concerned about bestial. We will let us down," said she, "in the shade yonder, and rest the horses, and be good farmers together—yes?"
Bryde slacked the girths and tied the horses, and then joined the lass on a little mound of green like a couch.
"And now," cried Helen Stockdale—"now, sir, here are we in the green wood with neither page nor groom—squire and dame—and I am loving it," said she, and her little brown capable hand took one of his great hard ones.
[1] Laga vile=hollow of the tree.
"You have fine hands, M'sieu Bryde," said she, her fingers over his to be comparing them, "great and strong and well-tried."
And there fell a silence between them, and as both strove to break that silence their eyes met, and there came a quick changing of colour on the face of Helen, and Bryde's hand closed over hers. And as she sat by his side her eyes lowered, and the curling lashes sweeping her cheek, it came to the man how very beautiful she was, her pride all forgotten. He felt her hand trembling in his, and then she raised her head with a questioning little sound at her lips, and looked at him, and smiled, pouting.
"And mustIbeg," she whispered.
"I think," said Bryde, "that the horses are rested."
The light left her eyes, as the sea darkens when a cloud comes over the sun. Red surged the blood over throat and face and brow. She sprang to her feet, twisting her whip in her brown hands. By the horses she turned—
"Am I lame, or blind, or ugly?" she cried. "Oh, man, I could kill you . . . but some day, Monsieur, some day I shall laugh when that proud Mistress Margaret flouts your love . . ." She laughed, mocking.
"'It will be no concern of mine whether Bryde McBride goes or stays,' says the Lady Margaret. 'I do not beg—and what is he to me.'"
"You are a droll lass," said Bryde, with a frown on his face—"a droll lass, and very beautiful—so Mistress Margaret . . ." but Helen broke into his talk.
"Am I beautiful to you, M'sieu? I am honoured," but her eyes were soft—"but what would the proud Margaret say to that?"
"We will forget her, Mistress Helen—what have I to be doing except to be a loyal kinsman to her?" and here the drollest laughing came over Helen.
"I am sure she will be lovingthat," said she, "a loyal kinsman."
And although her breath was still flurried with her swift rage, her eyes were laughing at the man.
"I can never be in anger with you, Bryde," said she. "I wish it were not so."
"Are you wishing to be angry with me now?" said he in a deep voice, with one great arm round her shoulder, and his face bent to her. And as she looked at him a sort of fierceness came over Helen. She flung her arms round the man, and stood on tiptoe to be reaching up to him.
"Some day I will be forgetting my convent teaching," said she, "and then I will make you love me, and you will be minealtogether."
"There will be something in that," said Bryde, and laughed a loud ringing laugh, as the drollness of the business came on him. And when he looked down, there was the lass all humbled, and tears standing in her eyes, and a pitiful little mouth on her.
"You are laughing at me, Bryde," said she in a little voice, shakily.
"No, dear, no," said he, "I would be thinking of the Laird of Scaurdale if he kent, and me with a name to be making. Do not be greetin'," said he, "there will be nothing at all to be greeting for," and he set her on her horse gently, and they rode on by the burnside, and watched the brown trout flash in below the boulders, and darting across the amber pools, just as they do to-day.
I mind that there was a good back-end that year, as we say, with plenty of keep for the beasts, and the stacks under thatch of sprits by the end of September, and I would be standing in the stackyard as a man will, just pleased to be seeing things as they were, and swithering if I should be taking a step to the Quay Inn, when the halflin lad from Bryde's place came up to me.
"He is not yonder," said he, in a daft-like way. "He will not be in his own place any more."
And then I got at him with the questions.
"The mother will be sitting all day and not greeting terrible," says he, "and Betty will be oching and seching like a daith in the house; and I came to be telling you—and he will have the thin sword with him."
And the lad lisped and boggled at the English, till I shook the Gaelic into him—and there was the story.
It would be two nights ago that Bryde McBride came into the loft where the halflin was sleeping, and bade him dress.
"He would be all in his good claes," said the lad, "and the sword on him," and he told me how the two of them had carried a kist through the hill and down behind the Big House—"there would still be a light in the young leddy's chamber," for Bryde McBride had stood looking at it, and talking in the Gaelic. "And," said the lad, looking over his shoulder half fearfully, "he said, 'If ever there is a word comes out of your mouth about this, Homish, I will be ramming three feet o' blue steel through your gizzard,' and we would be carrying the kist down to the herrin' slap (Bealach an agadan) and to the shore. There was a skiff lying there all quiet and three men waiting, and when we would be among them they took the kist, and wan of the sailors wass saying they would be in Fowey soon, but the master turned on me, and he had money for me.
"'You will be minding the place until I come back to you,' he said, 'or I'll reive the skin from you for a bridle,' and he made me go away from the rocks and to be going back, but I lay among the trees, and I would be seeing the men put the kist on board, and then they rowed away with the master sitting at the stern and looking back, for I would be seeing his face white in the moon," and at that the poor lad was so near the greetin' that I took him to the kitchen for a meal of meat, and it all came plain to me as I sat there among the serving bodies and the dogs.
I minded the way the boy had taken the sword from me, as he lay in his bed. "This will be clearing the way," he had said, and now he would be started to the clearing, and then there was Margaret.
"You will not be bringing her here again, for I am not strong enough lying here."
That would be at the time he would be lying with Hugh's sword-stroke in his thigh, and calling himself a misbegot, and not fit to be speaking to decent folk. And I minded the pride of him, and kent the very feelings that had sent him away, but I was wishing he could have stayed for all that, for his mother's sake.
At that time I had no word of what had happened at the ford of the burn at Lagavile, or that Mistress Helen in her rage had turned Margaret's words to her own purpose, but that I got later from Margaret herself.
Well, I went into the house and told them, and there was the tiravee; and Margaret like to go out at the rigging, for indeed she was a little spoiled. And Hugh it was that got the rough edge of her tongue, until "I will go and fetch him back," said he.
"You!" says she, "you! As well might the hoodie-craw bring back the kestrel," and at that the mother bridled.
"What kind of talk is this in my house?" said she, "and to your brother. Mend your manners, mistress. What is this fly-by-night (to say nothing worse) to you?"
"He will be all the man ever I will have," said Margaret, standing up, and her eyes flashing, and at that her father, roused by her bravery, laughed aloud.
"Capital," he cried, "capital,"—and then, "Hoot, my wee lass," said he, "you're young yet. Come away wi' me," and she went out with him, leaving us sitting mumchance.
"The best thing that could have happened," said the mistress, and made her way to the kitchen, for if things were not right she must have some work on her hands.
The very next day I made my way to the stable and found Margaret's horse gone.
"She is away like the devil spinning heather," said old Tam. "She'll be at Bothanairidh by noo," and so it was, for when I came to the farm on the moor there was Margaret, thrang at the talking to the halflin, and looking blither than I had thought to see her; and thinks I to myself, he will have been telling her about Bryde and the lighted window—and that I was right I know, although Margaret would never be telling me what it was that Bryde said that night; and the halflin I would not be asking, but I would be telling the lass about the three feet of blue steel in the lad's gizzard, and at that she would laugh at me.
"I will be giving him a golden guinea for every foot o' blue steel," said she, "and when I will have Bryde back he will be giving him the double of it, for telling me these good words," and I believe the daft lassie did just that.
But Belle would be fit for nothing but sitting and mourning. "Oh, why did I leave my own folk and the tents and the horses, the laughter o' the little ones, and the winding roads, to be left desolate on this weary moor—desolate, desolate, and mourning like the Israelitish women—the father is not, and now is the son gone from me."
And when Margaret would have comforted her, "Are not you of the same folk, maiden?" she cried, turning her eyes bright and hard and dry on the lass, "the same cruel proud breed"; and then again, "He was a good son—there never was woman blessed with such a son, kind and brave and loving, the very beasts would come to his whistle."
"But this will not be the finish," said I; "the dogs are not howling," and at that old Betty brisked herself.
"Yess, yess, the dogs will not be greeting Belle, woman, and that is a sure sign," said she, wonderfully cheered. "Bryde will be coming back a great man, and bringing old Betty a silk dress and good whisky—yess."
"Where is Fowey, Hamish?" said Margaret.
"On the coast of England, a place the smugglers frequent," said I.
"Bryde will be with the smuggling laads," cried Betty, clapping her hands. "Is he not the brisk lad, and he will be bringing the whisky sure—maybe it will be brandy moreover."
And we left them a little cheered that day, and Margaret still looked happy with her thoughts.
It was in October, the fair day, that Mistress Helen came to visitMargaret, and Hugh had carried her the news of Bryde's going.
"Your cousin has gone to his tall ships," said she to Margaret, "the tall ships and the black cannon and the cutlasses, you remember, ma belle."
"Bryde has gone away truly," said Margaret, and then the two retired to their confidences. But the next day it was that Margaret told me of the meeting by the ford.
"I am hating that woman, Hamish," said she, "with her bravery and her beauty, and her charms that will be working backwards. . . ."
"Who was it that started these same spells?" says I. "Was it not in your mind to be trying these havers on Bryde yourself?"
"It was not in my mind that Helen Stockdale should be trying them on him," said she, "at any rate."
And at my laughing she left me in a pet, but not long after she would be telling me—
"There is something fine and brave about that woman, too, Hamish," she would say, "for she would be telling lies to Bryde McBride of what I had said about his going, and yet she told me all these lies. I could not be doing that," said Margaret. "No, I could not be owning to a thing like that—myself."
I RIDE AGAIN TO McALLAN'S LOCKER.
There came a weariness of the spirit over me that long dreary winter, and all nature was there to be seconding my dismal thoughts. For months never did I awake but my first thought would be, "What is there not right?" and then I would be remembering that Bryde was not any more on the moorlands.
It seemed to me that always there was a drizzle of soft rain and a blanket of cold mist, that would be half hiding the friendly places, that the very hills were become the abode of strange uncanny beasts instead of decent ewes and fat wethers, and that the mists would be hiding the revels of the folk a man does not care to be speaking of. The trees would be dreary and sad—the sea always grey and gurly and ochone, the very roads had the look of bareness and emptiness, as though all a man's friends had marched over them, never to return.
Margaret, the Flower of Nourn, had taken to walking alone in the rain, under the trees by the burnside, or maybe I would be seeing her on the shore, and looking to the sea, and her songs were sad—ay, when she tried to be at her gayest. And once I am minding, when she was with me on the shore-head watching the men at the wrack-carting—
"I am wondering," said she, dipping her hands in the little waves, "I am wondering if these little waves will maybe once have swirled under the forefoot of his ship," and I had not the heart to be giving her a lesson on physics, and a little understanding of the laws that will be governing the waves.
And Hugh that was the gallant would be interesting himself in all the matters of farming, and seldom riding out with his clean stirrups and polished leathers, and there were times when I was sore put to it to be keeping my hands off him, because he would be so douce and agreeable.
I would be trying the drink often, and took my glass with the Laird, my uncle, but it would not be bettering me any, and a man that drink will not be making merrier company of is in no good way.
At the farm in the hills the halflin would be doing finely—a little lavish with the feeding, as a body will be when the keep is not his own, but the beasts would be looking well, and the steading clean and tidy. Belle, it seemed to me, was a little dazed for many a long day, and whiles I would be finding her with some wee childish garb of Bryde's, and greeting and laughing at it in her hands, and old Betty yammering by the fireside, mixing her stories of bawkins and wee folk, and the ploys she would be having in her young days at the peats.
There was a moon at the New Year, I mind, and me standing in front of Belle's house, and Belle herself at the open door, with the light behind her, when there came to my ears the sound of a shod beast walking, and, thinks I to myself, this will be a horse broke loose. Then I saw the beast, and after a little wheedling and coaxing I was able to get my hand on his bridle. He was a great horse, bigger than any of ours, and a weight-carrier; but it was the gear on him that I could not be understanding, for there was on him a heavy saddle with a high pommel and cantle, and his bridle would have strange contrivances on it, but especially a spare curb chain strapped to the headpiece, and the bit was altogether new to me, resembling the bit with the long curving bars that the old crusaders would be using long ago.
He was thin and drawn up at the belly, but his eye was full and fiery, and I kent this was no serving-man's beast, but I took him to the stable and gave him a stall, with dry bracken for a bedding, and a measure of corn and peas, and the halflin came from the loft and got at the rubbing of him down, gabbling all the time about pasterns and withers, and Belle watched me, saying no word.
"There will be word for him in the morning," said I; "this will surely be a beast from the Castle," and at that Belle went into the house, and I left the halflin still watching the strange horse and made my way on foot across the hill. The peewits were circling over me with eerie cries, and now and then on the moor-side the curlews would be crying into the night—lonely as I was lonely; and in every heather tussock I would be seeing shapes, and dreading the thought of the Nameless Man and his brindled hunter, till my hair was like to rise on my head, and I would feel it in my legs to be running, but that I kent my folk, dead and gone, would be laughing at me, in their own place, for our past folk are not so much dead as just away, and maybe watching; and maybe I would be comforting myself with the thought that the Killer would be dead long syne in the course of nature—he and his great dog—but for all that I had a twig of rowan in my hand, for the night was not canny. And there came a kind of lifting of my spirit when I got the glint of the lights of the Big House, and kent there would be folks to be talking to and dogs to give a man heart.
When I was come to the stable door, there was old Tam, thrang with his bottles of straw for the horses' last bite (a thing to bring a man to himself it is to listen to horse beasts riving at straw and crunching into turnips), but Tam laid down his bundle and came close to me.
"There was a man here," says he, "in the gloaming after you would be leaving for your ceilidhing, and he would be giving me afestner," says he, with a toothless grin and his old eyes gleaming; "ay, a noblefestner," says he, "from the bottle. He would be wanting speech with you."
"Whatna man was he?" said I.
"A red-faced man and very clean," says he, "and his face shining like a wean's. Och, he might be wan of the Elect but for the glint in the eyes o' him and free wi' the bottle—a greatperformerwith the bottle."
"Would he be leaving any word?" said I, for I would be wearying to come at the man's business.
"He kind o' let on tae some knowledge o' a place McEilin's Locker or that," says Tam. "Ye would be expected there the night. I am minding he would be calling himself McNeilage—the mother o' him was Sassenach."
"Would he be speaking o' theGull?" said I.
"No, man, but a party told me," said the old rascal, "a party told me that the skiffs were below Bealach an sgadan before the moon was up, and Tam is thinking that there will be some fine, fine water on the mainland side before the morning—afore the more-nin," says he.
There was a strange thumping at my ribs when I had the garron at the door, and would be tramping the long yellow straw from his forefeet, and I led him out of the yard and we were on the shoulder of the black hill when the moon was beginning to go down. And now there were no thoughts of ghosts or bawkins in my head, and I would be laughing when the moor-birds would be rising with a quick whirring of wings under the horse's feet in the heather. At a long loping canter we crossed the peat hags, and slithered into the valley on the other side and made the burn. I mind I stood the horse in the burn to his knees, and he cooled a little, and then started to be pawing at the water, and snoring at it glinting past his legs, and tinkling and laughing down the glen. The heather was dark and withered, and at the banks of the stream I am seeing yet the long tufts of white grass, like an old man's beard, shaking with a dry rustle, and there was the sparkle of the last of the moon making a granite boulder gleam into jewel points, and then we made our way to the Locker. I was not very sure of the place, but I made the three long whistles on my fingers that the boys will be using when there is help needed. From the hillside I got the answer, clear and piercing like a shepherd's, and then all would be silent except for the swishing of the heather and the thumping at the ribs of me, for I would be sure now that Bryde was in the Locker on some mad ploy. When I was come near the entrance I dismounted and left the beast loose, for I kent he would make his way home to his stable. As I was clambering up the last of it, a voice came to me.
"Oh man, Hamish, hurry," and it was not the voice of Bryde, but I kent the voice, and the eagerness of it and the gladness.
"Dan," I cried, "och, Dan," and after that I am not remembering. How I came to be sitting in the Locker with Dan beside me, and the smoke eddying up, and the droll-shaped pond and the queer carving all there, as it would be yon daft night twenty years ago, I am not remembering.
But there was Dan McBride with a sabre slash from his ear to the point of his chin, and a proud set to his head, and a way of bending from his hips like a man reared in the saddle. A great martial moustache curled at the corners of his mouth. Dan McBride that was away for twenty years, and mair. He was arrayed in some outlandish soldier rig, with great boots and prodigious spurs.
"The lass," says he at the first go-off, "what came o' the lass that will be my wife?" says he, with a great breath. "Is all things right with Belle?"
"Finely," says I; "you will be seeing her with the daylight."
"Man, I will have been needing that word," says he.
"What am I to be calling ye, man?"
"Hooch," says he, and his words were sharper and fiercer than of yore. "My father's rank will be good enough for me, but ye will call me Dan McBride and naething else. Major I was in the Low Countries, and the warrant's in my saddle-bags," says he. "Wae's me, for I've lost that, horse and all."
But I had a word to say to that.
"The horse will be sleeping in the stable," said I, "and I will be the man that's put him there," and told him about the strange horse.
"Yon crater, Dol Beag, didna just dee," says he after a while.
"Nor a drop out of his lug," says I, "if ye will be overlooking a crooked back. I sent ye that word with the heathen."
"The heathen—the skemp—yon was the last o' the heathen—hilt or hair o' him that I saw, and me mixed up wi' daftlike wars—it was a packet that reached me—in Dantzig," says he, "after lying a year, frae some sensible wench calling hersel' Helen Stockdale. . . ."
I was dumb at that, but I was remembering the lass asking of the Scot that took the Pagan to the mouth of the Rouen river. "Ay, a priest gave the packet to a Scots friend o' mine in Rouen, and then it came to me at a tavern in Dantzig. I didna bide long there. I was landed wi' the smugglers at Fowey," says he, "and McNeilage put me ashore last night at the Point and was to leave word for ye. It was a thought gruesome here," says he, "wi' McAllan and the dog among the bones ben there—deid? Ay, deid twenty years, Hamish, by the look o' things. Tell me about Belle," said he, "Belle and the boy, Hamish. The lass that wrote had a great word o' the boy, and she wanted me hame. I am not sure why—weemen are such droll . . . Is she religious?" says he.
"Ye'll be seeing," says I.
And then again, "I had to have a crack wi' ye, Hamish, before I could be doing anything; it's no' canny coming in on folk after a matter o' twenty years."
All that night we sat before a fire with no other light, and many a time I would be thinking of the Killer dying in there in the dark, and the dog beside him; the Nameless Man was not in Dan's mind, but the length of the night.
"Belle and the boy—'a likely lad,' ye say. Hoch, he'll come hame,Hamish, never fear—the lasses will be taking him hame at his age."
And when we were stretched before the red glow of the fire he would still be at the talking, and the last I am minding was his voice.
"I will have lain beside the fire on the battlefield and seen the eyes o' the wolves glowering through the lowes, Hamish; but, man, it was a king to this weary waiting, a king to this."
It was at the drakes' dridd that Dan roused me, and we left McAllan's Locker behind us with its gruesome keepers, and came down the hillside to the burn. I mind that there was a raven above us in the morning air, and his vindictive croak-croak was the only living sound that came to us as we marched.
At the burn I saw the track of the garron where he had crossed in the night, and at the burnside Dan stopped.
"Many a time have I wearied for the sight o' a burn, Hamish, cold and sweet and clean, when we would be drinking water that was stinking," and he made preparations to splash his face; and it was droll to see the bronze of his face stop at the throat, and the skin below like a leek for whiteness.
There were many things to be telling the wanderer—that he had got some notion of from McNeilage of theSeagull, but for the most part it was hard to talk to a man walking fast.
We came up over the last of the three lonely hills, with bare moorlands and peat hags fornent us, and away below the sea, and I held on for the house on the moor that once was McCurdy's hut. The first beast we saw was a raddy, a droll sheep with four daft-like horns, and there came a great crying of curlews; and then, when we came near to the house without yet seeing it, there was a look of wonder in Dan's face.
"There was nae grass here when I left hame," says he; "this will be your work, Hamish. Ye were aye a great hand for grass."
As he spoke, it seemed to me that the voice was the same voice that I kent when I was a boy, but I was at the walking now and hurried him on.
"Grass," said I; "look at yon," and I pointed to the parks and the steading, with the smoke rising straight from the lums into the frosty morning air.
"That was the young lad's work," said I.
"He will be a farmer at all events . . ." and there was on Dan's face as he spoke a look of pride and pity all mixed.
"Belle will not be knowing you are here."
"Ay, but she will that, Hamish—ye don't ken Belle; look, man, look, she's at the doorstep now." And if ever a man had it in his bones to run it was Dan, and at the door they met—the very door where the woman had kissed her man and smote him on the cheek, when I lay in the heather, and the Laird of Scaurdale rode with the wean in the crook of his arm—the same Helen that had brought them there then, had brought also this happy meeting. It was a picture I would be aye wishing I could be painting—Belle, her dark face flushed, her eyes suffused, the pride, the love, the longing of her, and her hands twisting and clasping, and her lips trembling, without words coming to them. The heaving breast and the little flutter at the delicate nostril, what man can be telling of these things; and Dan, his brows pulled down, and the scar red on his cheek, and his arms half outstretched—Dan took his woman into his arms as a man lifts a wean, and I saw his head bend to her face, and the wild clasp of her arms round him, and her lips parting as she raised them to his.
I did a daftlike thing then, for I put the saddle on the great horse—and he was a mettle beast, with many outlandish capers—and I rode through the hill to the kirk, and left word that the minister would be doing well to ceilidh at the house on the moor.
And indeed it was well on in the afternoon when that grave man dismounted a little stiffly from his pony, and I made bold to search for Dan and Belle, and tell my errand. It would maybe be a chancy business, but these two were like bairns then—and on the doorstep they were married. And when the minister's little pony was on its road home, and the sun still red to the west, and we three still standing at the door, Belle with with her two hands on Dan's arm, said he—
"I had clean forgot, my dear, but Hamish would always be remembering the due observances o' the sacraments."
A wedding, it seems to me, will be waking the devil of speech in all women, and old Betty would be havering like all that.
"What would I be telling ye?" she would say. "Has he not had the wale of all the weemen, and never the wan could be keeping him but you. And you a young thing yet—there will be time for a scroosch of weans; it is Betty that kens, and Bryde the lad will be daidlin' his brother on his knee.
"Ye could have been waiting," says she, "till the lad would be home, and standing under his mother's shawl before the minister, but ye would be that daft to be at the marrying—hoot, toot."
* * * * * *
Dan came back to his farming as a boy returns to his play, and it was droll whiles at the head-rig to see him straighten his back from the plough stilts, with also a quick far-seeing look to right and left of him, and an upward tilt to his chin that brought back the soldier in a moment; and then ye would hear the canny coaxing to get the horses into the furrow again, and the lost years were all forgotten.
My uncle took the news of the wedding finely.
"I'll not be denying Belle is a clever woman," says he, "a managing two-handed lass—imphm. There might have been more of a splore," says he, "and no harm done—a wheen hens and a keg would not have been out of place."
But my aunt was not in his way of thinking.
"There would surely be no occasion," said she (when Margaret was not there), "the woman was well enough done by already."
"You would not have him live there in open scandal?" said I.
"An old song now," says she; "we always kind of put a face on things, but if Dan would be making a decent woman of Belle, there is nothing to be said."
I rode with Hugh and Margaret to be seeing Dan for the first time, and he had his soldier garb on him when we sat down to meat; and Margaret kept close to him at the table, and their talk was of the Low Countries and a soldier's life, and yet for all that he would be telling her how the lassies would be dressing themselves, or the manner of the braiding of their hair, and for Hugh and me he would be giving a great insight into the working of soils and manures, and the different kinds of cattle beasts and horse; and very little talk of war we got from him, unless, maybe, it would be a story he would be telling that would give us an inkling of the business. He would aye be harping on the waste of land, and indeed if there was nothing else to be doing, he would be having good red earth carted from useless places and scattered on his own fields, which I think the old monks would be doing round their monasteries long ago, a practice maybe learned from Rome in the early days, but I have no sure knowledge of it.
It was that day that Helen came to the moor house, and among us, with word from John of Scaurdale for Dan to be coming to see him, and I saw that the very sight of her made a difference; for the face of Hugh flushed as he stood to greet her, and Margaret took to the talking in a vivacious manner that was not like her.
And Dan had many words for his visitor. "For," says he, in a grand fashion, "were it not for you, madam, I might be finding myself lying in harness, with the half o' Europe between me and this bonny place;" and again, after a quizzing look, "I will not be the one to think you will be overly religious either"; but I am thinking I was the only one that would be getting the meaning of that saying.
"But why did you not return—many years?" said Helen.
"Just precisely that I would never be the one to see one o' my name dangling at the end o' a cart tether," said Dan, "or jingling at a cross-roads on a wuddy. Many a night I would be at this place," says he, with a smile to his wife, "but there was no word for me, and the years came and went, and there would be fighting to be going on with—och, it was a weary waiting when there was no little war somewhere, but it's by wi' now, the great thing is that it's by with. . . ."
Hugh and Mistress Helen went their own road, and we watched them from the doorstep, and Dan himself put the saddle gear on Margaret's little horse, and walked a bit of the way with us on the home road.
"I am liking that man too," said Margaret, when we were alone, "but I am thinking there was a liking for the wandering, and the fighting in him, or else he had been back long syne."
"He would have his happy days these twenty years," said she, "in new towns and among new folk, and Belle kind of chained to the moor here—it is that silent woman I will be liking the best of all, Hamish."
"My dear," said I, "you are not understanding the pride of your ain folk. Yon was the God's truth and nothing else he told Mistress Helen; the hangman's rope is no decent to be coiled about a man's folk. It's just the cleverness of Helen Stockdale I will be made up with—the simple sending of a screed of news; what beats me is why she did it."
"And that's easy to me," says Margaret. "It would just be a gift toBelle, Hamish."
"To Belle," says I.
"There are maybe more ways o' killing a cat than choking it with butter," said the lass, "but that will be a very effective way, and even the cat might like it, I am thinking. Ye'll mind, Hamish, that Belle is the mother o' Bryde McBride, and what could not but be pleasing to the mother, would be like enough to please the lad, that doted on her a' his days."
"I think I am seeing it," said I.
"Ay, but Helen never would be seeing it like that, Hamish. She saw it like a flash, and sent the letter that brought back Dan, and I am not sure but Bryde would be here yet, if the mail had but come to hand sooner."
"Margaret," said I, "are there none among the young sparks coming about the place that you could be tholing about ye?"
"No," says she, with a smile; "there is a word among the kitchen wenches that whiles comes into my mind, Hamish."
"The kitchen wenches' conversation will be doing finely for me," saysI, a little put out.
"It is none such a bad saying either, Hamish. This is it," said she, "and there's no great occasion to be in a black mood with a lass—
"A clean want, Hamish, is better than a dirty breakfast. That's what the lassies say, whiles, in the kitchen."
MARGARET McBRIDE KISSES HELEN.
It would always be a great pleasure for me to be watching Dan, the way he would be toiling against the heather, and draining in the moss in the seasons, and rearing his horses, for his great war-horse sired many foals, and maybe to this day you will see the traces of that breed in the little crofts where the horses and cattle beasts are as long bred as the names of the folk that own them. They were black for the most part, the breed of the war-horse, and very proud in their bearing, but bigger beasts than the native breed, and not so much cow-hocked (although that is a hardy sign), nor so scroggy at the hoof—ay, and they would trot for evermore. You will maybe hear to this day a farmer saying of a mare of that strain: "She is one of the old origineels." But whiles the twenty years of his soldiering would come over the man, and ye would be hearing him at his camp-songs in the French language, and there would come a prideful swing to his body, and a quick way of speech, and an overbearing look, as though maybe the common work was galling, and the sheep and beasts nothing better than for boiling in a soldier's camp-kettle. These times would maybe be after a fair or a wedding, and indeed he was not to be interfered with except by his own native folk, for he would ride at a ganger or an exciseman for the pleasure of seeing them run like dafties when the mood was on him—or a drop too much in him—and for no ill-nature whatever; but it was fearsome to see the big black horse stretch to the gallop, with flying mane and wicked eye a-rolling. But Belle could tame her man, and she kent his every mood and his every look. It was droll and laughable too to see her hand his little son to Dan (for old Betty was right: there was another son to Belle—not a "scroosch," as the old one said, but one boy, and they put Hamish on him for a name: Hamish Og they called him, and he ruled that house).
"Here is your son to be holding for a little, my man," that dark womanBelle would be saying, and Dan, in his big moods, would be answering—
"Have I not held the sword in my hand for twenty years, and what were weans to me in these days?"
"Very little—I am hoping, Dan," his wife would answer with a straight dark look, and the beginning of a laugh in her eyes, for always Dan would be remembering the first boy this wife of his had reared in those years, and a kind of shame would come over him, and Belle would laugh for that she had her man back, and her laughter was a thing to gladden the heart, and Dan would never be tired of hearing it. So the big mood would pass, and the hard-fighting farmer would be at work again; but whiles, after the laughing, the old longing, half-fierce look would be in Belle's eyes, and I kent it was not Dan or Hamish Og she was thinking of, but her first-born, Bryde.
And as the years wore on there was another thing to be watching in Belle. She would take the wean in a shawl swathed round her limber figure, and only the little head of him outside of it, and his eyes seeing things, like a young bird, and she would walk to the rise where old John of Scaurdale's man waved the lanthorn to McGilp on the night when I chased the deer, and there she would stand for long, looking seaward and crooning to the wean. This she would be doing every night before the gloaming.
"He will come on yon road," she would sometimes be telling Hamish Og, and point to the grey sea away to the suthard.
Now these freits are very catchy, and will follow folks that put faith in them, and there are many such folk to this day; and even Margaret McBride would always be putting great faith in the crowing of a cock—a noble fellow he was, of the Scots Grey breed. At the feeding-time Margaret would be thrang with her white hands in a measure of grain, and I would be hearing her speaking to the chanticleer. If he would be crowing once, it was not good, and she would be coaxing him.
"Have you not better word than that?" she would flyte at him at the second cry; and if the bird would crow the three times, she would be lavish with the feeding and grow cheerful. And there was a time when Mistress Helen was with her at this task, and curious at all the talking.
"If he will cry three times—is it that something happens?" said Helen.
"It will be good news."
"Perhaps a lover comes?"
"I am not to have a man, it seems," says Margaret.
"If my lover comes," murmured Helen softly, with her slow smile, "I will know—another way."
"In what way?" says Margaret, throwing the last of the grain to the fowls about her feet.
"Something willleap uphere, ma belle, where my heart is."
And for some reason Margaret, the Flower of Nourn, dropped her grain dish and kissed her guest.
Now there is little to be telling when little things only are in the memory, and yet the days with little to be remembering are the happy days, that go past quickly like youth, and leave but vague memories of sunshine and laughter—of nights, and song, and dance. And there were great nights of happiness, for in these days the folk had the time to be knowing one the other, and neighbourly. And maybe in an evening there would be gathered at Dan's place all the old friends of his youth. You would be seeing Ronald McKinnon and Mirren, sitting in the circle round the fire, thrang at the knitting—both man and wife—kemping as they called it: that is, each would tie a knot in the worsted and make a race of it, who would be finished first. And Jock McGilp too would be there, standing off and on, between the stories of his wild seafaring days and the ghost stories of his youth; and Robin McKelvie and his sister that met us on the shore head of the isle that night the Red Laird passed; and there was no Red Roland in her mind these days, for she had weans to her oxter. And maybe, perched on a table like a heathen god, the tailor would be working; and if there were young lassies with their lads, ye would have the fiddle going, and the hoochin' and the dancing.
And even in the cottars' houses the good-wife would have a meal on such a night, and it would be pork and greens, or herring and potatoes; and then when it was bedtime in the morning, the ceilidhers would take the road, with maybe a piper at the head of them, and it would be at another house they would be meeting on the next night. Wae's me, these days are fast going, and there are bolts and bars on the doors now. The story of a winter's ceilidhing would be a great book for fine stories.
And into a meeting of this kind, when the evening was well on, came Hugh McBride, and there was the great scraping of chairs and stools back from the fire, and Belle would have been putting a fire in a better room; but Dan had been too long in the field for these capers, for all that Hugh would be Laird and very grand above common folk. Dan waved him to a chair in his polite way, and made him very welcome. But Hugh was not seeing chairs that night, much less sitting quietly. There was a sparkle in his eye and a flush on his cheeks, and his smile was for everybody, and when the lave of the folk were on the road he told us the news.
"Mistress Helen will be having me," says he. "Och, I will have been singing every love-song I was remembering since I left the gate at Scaurdale."
And we made a great "to-do" about it, and we were not any the better maybe for what we drank to his luck, and the lass's luck; and on the hill-road home he was at the singing again.
"She is a fine lass, Hamish—my wife that will be; is she no'?"
"A fine lass."
"For a while—a long while the night,—it was in my mind that she would not be caring to have me, for she has the wale of brisk Ayrshire lads to pick from, and she swithered long."
"'We were babies together,' says she, 'in your mother's house?'
"I heard tell of that from my mother."
"'And Bryde, he was not born yet—Bryde, your relative?'"
"He was born in the hill house yonder, beside the 'three lonely ones,'Helen."
"'Three lonely ones, Hugh,' said she, very low—'three lonely ones. I feel it in my bones that always there will be three lonely ones.'
"Till the frost and the rain of a million years level the hills," saidI.
"'A million years, Hugh! It is long to wait.'
"It will not be so long as I have waited, Helen; and she smiled at that, Hamish, and then—
"'You have a very old name in this place, my guardian says.'
"Ay, an old name, Helen.
"'Then,' said she, 'I think—I think I will be, what they say, "all in the family."'"
"What would she mean by that, Hugh?"
"I am not sure," said he, "but I ken that John o' Scaurdale and my father are set on a weddin', and the lass kens it too, and I am thinking it is the land she is thinking of; it will be all in the family when we make a match of it."
"Just that," said I; but in my mind there was another thought that I never was telling, and this was it—
Mistress Helen was thinking that Bryde would never have Margaret, because of a fault that was none of his making, and that would leave two lonely ones; and maybe, too, she was thinking that she herself would never be having Bryde (for another reason), and that would make three lonely ones. As for being all in the family—well, if she could not be having Bryde, she could be having his cousin, and I'm thinking that not the half of an acre of land was even in her mind at all. But it would not do to be telling that to a man that would just have left his trysted wife.
When Margaret had the word there were tears standing in her eyes.
"I am wondering if there would be something to leap up when Helen promised herself to our Hugh," said she.