“All these anxieties will be good for you. They all go to the making of a man—calling out that God-dependence in him which is the only true self-dependence, the only true strength.”—Letters of Charles Kingsley.
During the first month Theophilus Skoot’s Company prospered as well as could be expected. A week at Glasgow and a week at Edinburgh, with full houses, cheered every one; but after that, as they went northward, the days of dearth began. It was now past the middle of March, and the old proverb,
“As the light lengthens
The cold strengthens,”
was fulfilling itself in very bitter fashion. Perhaps people were disinclined to turn out of their comfortable homes on such bleak evenings; at any rate, the week at Stirling proved a dead failure, and Perth was wrestling with the influenza demon, and had little leisure to bestow on strolling players.
It was here that one evening Ralph, for the first time, learnt what it is to work without a salary.
He was sitting on a basket, waiting for his cue, with “Pendennis” to cheer him into forgetfulness of fatigue and cold, when Dudley returned to the dressing-room, with an odd look lurking about the corners of his mouth.
“The ghost walks,” he said, in sepulchral tones.
“What do you mean?” said Ralph, laughing.
“It’s all very well to laugh. You won’t be able to do that long. There’s no treasury to-morrow, my boy. ‘The manager regrets,’ etc., etc.”
“No treasury!” echoed Ralph, blankly.
“I’m not surprised,” said Dudley; “I was always doubtful whether Skoot would hold out long. But we may have better luck at Dundee.”
“And if not, how are we to live?” asked Ralph, recollecting how small a sum he had to fall back upon.
“Why, my dear boy, we must live like the birds of the air, who eat other folk’s property, and then fly away.” Ralph looked gloomy.
“Well, after all,” he said, “the debts will virtually be Skoot’s, not ours. And, as you say, other places may not be so bad as Perth has been.”
This was exactly what the manager observed as they journeyed on from town to town. He was always apologetic, always bland and pleasant; but not another penny was ever forthcoming. In other respects, however, the tour was less unpleasant than at first. The rehearsals were shorter, and Mrs. Skoot did not venture to irritate them quite so much, but solaced herself instead with whisky. Moreover, their common trouble formed a sort of bond of union between the members of the Company; they grumbled together, and cheered each other up; they were extraordinarily kind in helping one another; all the little jealousies and quarrels were forgotten in the general anxiety and distress. As to Myra Kay, she was like another being altogether; she nursed Ivy through a long and tedious cold, she forgave Ralph for his friendship with Dudley, and she discussed ways and means in the most helpful fashion. Her experience and good advice were of considerable use to Ralph, while, when their prospects were at the darkest, Ivy managed to extract comfort from dreams about the future, and would listen by the hour to Myra’s plans for the summer, and to discussions about her wedding and her trousseau.
And so the weary weeks dragged on, until at last, towards the end of April, they found themselves at Inverness. By this time they were all beginning to grow desperate for want of money, and Ralph, after a hard struggle with himself, conquered his pride and wrote to old Mr. Marriott, telling him of the plight he was in. It was not until the last day of their engagement at Inverness that the reply, bearing the name of the firm on the envelope, was placed in his hands. He tore it open eagerly and turned pale as he read the contents:
“Basinghall Street, E. C.
“21th April.
“Dear Sir,
“With reference to your letter of the 25th inst., I beg to inform you that Mr. Marriott has been very dangerously ill with influenza, and to recruit his health he has been ordered to take a voyage to Australia. I regret that in his absence I do not feel myself at liberty to make you any advance. I am, dear sir, yours truly,
“W. G. Maunder.”
The next day they moved on to Elgin. The manager looked miserable and depressed; Mrs. Skoot, though not quite sober, read novels more assiduously than ever, and among the actors there were loud complaints, and angry threatenings of a strike. At Elgin the audiences were better than might have been expected, and the Skoots seemed to revive a little as they moved on to the neighbouring town of Forres. But the luckless Company still toiled unpaid.
Ralph’s patience was now almost exhausted. Ivy had received piteous letters telling of her grandfather’s difficulties, and every day it seemed less and less probable that they would ever again receive their salaries from the manager.
Forres certainly did not look like a place where they would attract large audiences, and an indescribable feeling of hopelessness stole over him as he gazed at the old gabled houses and at the one long, irregular street which formed the chief part of the town. How much longer could he possibly endure the weary, distasteful life? The halls with their miserable accommodation behind the scenes—for in few towns had they found a proper theatre;—the cheap lodgings with their dirty rooms; the daily marketing under difficulties; and the revolting spectacle of Mrs. Skoot drowning her discomfiture in drink—all these had become intolerable.
“Let us go for a walk,” said Ivy, despairingly. “At any rate out of doors we can have air and sunshine—we shall have enough of our wretched rooms later on.”
“Come and see the river,” said Myra Kay. “They say there are lovely views by the Findhorn.”
Ralph consented, and the three walked out together into the country, and did their best to forget the troubles that hemmed them in, as they wandered among the flowery fields, where Ivy gathered violets and primroses to her heart’s content. Presently by the river, among the soft early green of the bushes, they came to a fallen tree, and here they established themselves while Ralph read to them. They had indulged in two or three of Dickens’ novels at an old bookstall in Edinburgh in their days of plenty, and when fortune frowned upon them these shabby volumes had proved a perfect godsend. They had solaced many a cold journey and brightened many a dreary lodging-house, and they helped now to distract them from the thought of their daily increasing troubles.
It seemed to Ivy when she looked back afterwards, that this afternoon by the Findhorn was the last really happy day she was ever to know. She sat cosily ensconced on the tree trunk with her lap full of flowers which she delighted in arranging; and Ralph lay on the grass at her feet with his head propped against the smooth surface of the fallen beech tree. She noticed how the short waves of his crisp, brown hair contrasted with the silver-grey of the bark, and how the careworn look which had grown upon him during the tour was entirely banished now as flashes of mirth passed over his face, caused by the sayings of Grip the Raven.
Myra Kay sat just beyond him; she was knitting socks for herfiancé, listening at times to the reading, but more often dreaming of her own future. Everywhere there was that sense of hope and joyous expectation that seems to belong to the spring-time: the birds sang as Ivy had never heard them sing before; the lambs frisked delightfully in the soft, green meadows near their somewhat uninteresting mothers; and into her half-taught, eager mind there somehow floated new ideas of the meaning of “green pastures and still waters,” and a firmer confidence in a Shepherd who would not forget even the members of a travelling company in grievous straits up in the north of Scotland.
“Oh don’t let us go just yet!” she exclaimed, as Ralph closed the book. “It can’t be time to go back to those stuffy rooms.”
“I’m in no hurry,” said Ralph, stretching himself, and falling back into a more comfortable attitude.
He could not see Ivy’s face, but he could see her little, slender fingers as they pulled the petals off a daisy. The result seemed to displease her; she threw away the remains of the flower, and gathering another diligently pulled off each pink-tipped petal, but again threw the stalk from her with a little impatient gesture. Then she began upon a third, and had become absorbed in her counting, when suddenly she felt Ralph’s hand lay hold of hers.
“Caught in the act,” he said, laughing. “Don’t you know that fortune-telling is illegal?”
“Not if you tell your own,” said Ivy.
Something in her voice made him look at her, and for the first time in her little childish face he detected an expression which made him clearly understand that he was not dealing with a mere girl but with a woman. Long ago he had realised that her hard experience of life had robbed Ivy of the innocent ignorance which had kept Evereld so young; but he had naturally fallen into the habit of treating her as he would have treated any other girl of fifteen with whom he was brought into constant companionship. Thinking it over now it suddenly occurred to him that during the Scotch tour Ivy had lost her brisk, managing way, that she was very different from the independent little being who ordered the Professor’s affairs for him, that she had become unnaturally fond of being helped and protected. An uncomfortable fear crossed his mind, but he thought it best to laugh and try to change the subject.
“Are you doing the old thing that Evereld and I used to be fond of!—‘Tinker, tailor, soldier, sailor?’ And have you always been fated to wed the thief that you throw away one daisy after another?”
“That’s a silly old rhyme,” said Ivy. “Of course I should never think of marrying any one who wasn’t in the profession.”
“Oh, that’s quite a mistake,” said Ralph, lightly, determined that he must be cruel only to be kind. “Two of a trade seldom agree, you know. You should marry a dreamy philosopher who needed waking up, and being looked after.”
Ivy blushed, and was silent, and Ralph was not sorry to be taken to task by Myra Kay for his rash assertion that two of a trade never agreed. They fell into a merry bantering discussion during which Ivy recovered herself.
After all, she reflected, why should she be unhappy because he had teased her a little? His words no doubt meant nothing at all; she would not spoil this happy afternoon by tormenting herself.
“To-morrow’s my birthday,” she said, gaily, as they walked back to Forres. “I’m going to be sixteen. There’s no rehearsal, and I vote that we three have a real picnic.”
“Carried unanimously,” said Ralph. “We might go as far as this Heronry they speak of. The longer we are out of our dismal diggings the better.”
The play that night was “Macbeth,” and anything more unlike the arrangements at Washington’s theatre it would be impossible to conceive. Mr. Skoot was apologetic, Mrs. Skoot endeavoured to be very affable, and the Company with that readiness to perceive fun, and the real good-nature which never failed them in an emergency, made the best of the many discomforts. They dressed behind screens, they laughed and joked, they had wild hunts for lost belongings, and they chattered incessantly between the acts under cover of the noisiest piano-playing which could be produced by one of the ladies, who, with a waterproof cloak over her costume, did duty as the entire orchestra.
A choice selection of Scotch airs was being hammered out at the close of the Fourth Act, when Ralph, who was groping in a heap of miscellaneous garments in hopes of rescuing the wig he had worn as first murderer, and had hastily thrown off during a desperately hurried change intoMalcolm’sattire, found himself close to Dudley.
“The manager is positively enjoying himself,” said the comedian. “Skoot is after all a wonderful man. I shouldn’t wonder if he was persuading himself that this confounded tour will prove a success. That fellow lives on dreams. His wife is the one for business.”
At that moment Mrs. Skoot, in the most elegant of stage nightdresses, and with her taper all ready to be lighted at the right moment, appeared for the sleep-walking scene. Ralph often wondered what effect she had at a distance; the near view of her was appalling.
“I am afraid you have a great deal to put up with,” she said, in unusually gracious tones, smiling in a ghastly way beneath her paint. “But we must all learn to take the fortune of war. Our next place will be comfortable enough.”
They were joined just then by Myra Kay in the costume of theGentlewoman-in-Waiting.
Mrs. Skoot, who, as a rule, was at daggers drawn with her, accosted her now pleasantly enough.
“I hear that you and Ivy have planned an excursion for to-morrow?” she said. “Come and breakfast with us at nine o’clock before the start. And you, too, Mr. Denmead.”
They accepted the invitation in some surprise, and as the curtain was rung up Mrs. Skoot requested Dudley to light her taper, and presently sailed on to the stage for her great scene, leaving them in astonishment at her unwonted good-humour.
The next day Ralph went, as he had promised, to the manager’s rooms in time for breakfast. He was within a few yards of the door when he came upon the heavy man, and his son, a young and very indifferent actor who usually played four or five small parts.
“Have you heard the news?” they exclaimed. “The Company’s dried up.”
“What?” said Ralph, in dismay.
“The manager has absconded,” said the heavy man, pompously. “Went off by the first train this morning. It seems that last night when we were all safely out of the way the baggage man took everything to the station. Then Skoot and his wife stole out of their lodgings early this morning without rousing a soul, and here we are landed high and dry in the north-east of Scotland. Pleasant prospect, isn’t it?”
Ralph felt indeed that they were in a desperate plight. He moved on mechanically to the open door of the manager’s rooms, and caught sight of a little group in the entrance passage.
The landlady, shrill-voiced and indignant, was telling the whole story to Myra Kay; and Ivy, with an open letter in her hand, and traces of tears on her little, piquant face stood close by.
She was the first to catch sight of him, and hastened forward to greet him.
“Oh, Ralph, I’m so glad you have come!” she exclaimed, piteously. “What am I to do? What can I do?”
“Who bides his time—he tastes the sweet
Of honey in the saltest tear;
And though he fares with slowest feet,
Joy runs to meet him, drawing near;
The birds are heralds of his cause,
And like a never-ending rhyme
The roadsides bloom in his applause,
Who bides his time.”
J. W. Riley.
Have you had bad news from home?” asked Ralph, taking the letter which Ivy held towards him.
“Yes,” she said, in a broken voice. “They have had to move my grandfather to the hospital.”
It was but too clear, as Ralph at once perceived from the letter, that the old Professor was never likely to recover, and that Ivy’s home had ceased to exist. The landlady wrote to demand rent, and since it was impossible to pay this, there would doubtless be a sale of the Professor’s few belongings.
And here was this pretty girl of sixteen, stranded, without a penny in her possession, in a remote Scotch town, where it was impossible to meet with an engagement.
“What am I to do?” she said, lifting her piteous eyes to his with an appeal that moved him more than he quite liked. He wished that he had not guessed her secret on the previous day, and that he could treat her once more in the matter-of-fact-elder-brotherly fashion which he had once adopted. But this was no longer possible; nay, he felt an almost irresistible longing to say to her: “I will take care of you. We will set the world at defiance, and bear our troubles together.”
Fortunately he thought of Evereld, and instantly tried to picture her in the same plight. How would he have felt towards a man who had taken advantage of her poverty and helplessness to place her in a position which must, more or less, have compromised her?
He folded the letter and gave it back.
“Don’t worry yourself more than you can help,” he said, kindly. “I will talk things over with the others, and we will manage somehow to get you back to London.”
But discussion threw very little light on the main difficulty of how to raise the necessary money. Every member of the company was desperately poor, and although Myra Kay offered to take charge of Ivy as far as London, she had only just enough money to pay for her own railway ticket. Some intended to go back to Inverness, others were setting out for Edinburgh or Glasgow, and all were grumbling loudly, and anathematising the Skoots who could scarcely have chosen a more inconvenient place than Forres for their flight.
He had counted a good deal on Dudley’s good nature; but the comedian proved the most unsatisfactory adviser of all.
“Oh don’t worry your head about Ivy Grant,” he said. “Depend upon it such a pretty girl will win her way somehow or other. It’s much more to the point what you and I are to do.”
Ralph did not stay to argue the question. Myra Kay was to leave by the next train for the south, and he was determined that somehow or other Ivy must go with her. He went up to his room, threw most of his possessions into a portmanteau, and went to try his fortune at the pawnbrokers. It was broad daylight, but he had long ago ceased to feel any shame at being reduced to such straits. He went to-day, however, with a heavy heart; for he was only too well aware that he could not hope to raise much money on the few shabby clothes, and the wigs, shoes, and such like, which had supplemented the theatrical costumes provided by Skoot. Many weeks before, his father’s watch and chain had been parted with, so that he had nothing of much value, and his spirits sank lower and lower as the pawnbroker checked off the garments one by one at terribly small prices.
In the very atmosphere of the shop there seemed something depressing; tales of sordid misery seemed woven in with the shabby rugs and carpets, the stacks of heterogeneous clothing; and tragedies seemed bound up with the workmen’s tools, the musical instruments, the relics of household furniture.
“Twenty-five shillin’s and saxpence,” said the master of the shop, “Will I be makin’ oot the teeckets?”
“What’s the price of a third single to London?” asked Ralph. “I must raise enough for that.”
“Ye canna do it, sir, not with these, it’s juist beyon’ ony man’s contrivin’. Why I’m thinkin’ the teecket to London will be a matter of twa punds.”
He appealed to his assistant.
“It’s preceesely forty-two shillin’ and saxpence,” said the young man, regarding the actor with some interest.
“There’s still the portmanteau,” said Ralph.
It was an old one of the rector’s, solid and good of its kind.
“I’ll gie ye a couple o’ shillin’s for it,” said the pawnbroker. “But ye’ll no be gettin’ to London, sir, upon twenty-seven and saxpence.”
“It must be done,” said Ralph, with a determined look which took the Scotchman’s fancy. “Make out those tickets, and I’ll be with you again in five minutes.”
“The laddie’s weel-bred,” said the old man to himself. “He’ll win his way depend on it, there’s grit in him. Yon’s none of your false French polishin’; it’s sound, good breedin’ and grit.”
Ralph, true to his word, appeared again in a few minutes carrying a Gladstone bag, an overcoat, and a mackintosh. The bag with the change of linen in it which he had hoped to keep, went for a little more than he had expected, and with the overcoat brought in enough money for the journey, and ninepence to spare. He decided not to part with the mackintosh, and gathering up his sheaf of tickets, bade the old Scotsman good-day, and went at once to the manager’s deserted rooms.
Ivy had grown tired of talking to the landlady, and being in spite of her troubles exceedingly hungry, had taken her place at the forlorn breakfast table, and was trying to find comfort in a cup of cold coffee.
“Come, that’s a good idea,” said Ralph, cheerfully. “And now I think of it, I, too, am hungry. Why should we not eat? After Mrs. Skoot’s pressing invitation it’s a clear duty!”
Ivy smiled, and began to fill his cup for him.
“What do the rest of the company think I had better do?” she asked, anxiously.
“They all agree that you had better go back to London with Miss Kay. She will not be able to take you home with her, but I’ve been thinking it over, and I’m sure your best way will be to go to my old landlady Mrs. Dan Doolan. She is the soul of good-nature and as long as they have a crust in the house they will share it with you.”
“But I don’t know them, and I can’t go and beg,” said Ivy, with an air of distaste.
“I will write a letter to them which will explain everything,” said Ralph. “They are good, trustworthy people who will see that no harm happens to you; they will, I daresay, house you while you look for another engagement.”
“How am I to get the money for my ticket?”
“I will see to that for you.”
“But you have no money?”
“Are you so sure of that?” said Ralph, smiling as he rattled the coins in his pocket cheerfully.
The girl’s face brightened. “You have enough for both of us?”
“I am going to stay in Scotland. I shall keep enough to get along with, you needn’t be anxious.”
But this was quite too much for Ivy, she hid her face and burst into tears.
“I can’t go alone,” she sobbed. “I won’t take your money, and leave you behind in this horrid place. Oh, please, please let us stay together.”
For a minute he wavered—the sight of her tears was almost more than he could endure; the sunshine streaming in through the uncurtained window turned her brown hair to gold, and revealed in a way that half-dazzled him the wonderful grace of every line of her figure. With an effort, he turned away, and began doggedly to pace the room till he recovered himself, and, with that instinct for straightforward dealing which always characterised him, frankly answered her suggestion.
“That would never do: you will see if you think for a minute. You are no longer a child, and people would say horrible things about you.”
“But you always say we are not to trouble about slanders. You don’t like conventional people, and yet here you would have me made miserable, for fear unkind tongues should talk.”
“We can’t throw aside all conventions,” said Ralph; “many of them are good and useful in their way. Are you and I so superhuman that we can afford to do without all safeguards? I know you think me hard-hearted, but some day you’ll thank me for persuading you to go with Miss Kay.”
Ivy shook her head. “It’s because you don’t really like me; you mean to be kind, just kind and nothing more. I hate your kindness!”
All the grief and love and passion that was pent up in her heart seemed to break loose into this wild, little speech.
Ralph began to pace the room again, he understood her only too well, and he was sorely perplexed as to what he should do. At last he came to the somewhat original determination to treat her as he would have liked in her place to be treated. He sat down by her, and said quietly:
“We are all of us unhinged this morning, but I want you, Ivy, to try and see things as they really are. I’m going to tell you what not another soul in the world knows, for it will help you to see how we stand. I have a friend in England who is as yet only my friend, but I’m presumptuous enough to dream—to hope that some day she will be my wife.”
“Then very naturally you can’t care much what happens to other girls,” said Ivy, perversely.
“I care a hundred times more,” said Ralph. “It is just through her that I have learnt to reverence all women. Were she in your plight up here in Forres should I not think any man a brute who risked her good name, who didn’t do his utmost to shield her and help her unselfishly?”
Ivy did not reply; her wistful blue eyes were fixed on his now with the questioning look of a child who is trying to grasp some quite new idea. She had seen all through her precocious childhood and girlhood a great deal that called itself love, but was only selfishness and animal passion, and now through her sorrow and disappointment she was beginning faintly to perceive another kind of love altogether, a love that was divine and ennobling. It was just a far-away glimpse such as she had gained of the landscape one day, when, in spite of cloudy weather, they had climbed Moncrieffe Hill, and as the mist every now and then cleared off for a few minutes, they had seen the sun shining on lovely scenery far far in the distance. She had the same sense now that the glimpse of love she had gained was real and true, and that the mist was a mere passing discomfort.
“I am sorry I was angry,” she exclaimed. “I don’t mean what I said, then. I like you to be my friend and to help me—at least if it’s right for me to let you.”
“Of course it’s right,” said Ralph. “Didn’t your grandfather trust me to take you down to Scotland and place you with Mrs. Skoot? I owe it to him since she has deserted you, to see you safely back in London, and I will write a line at once to Mrs. Dan Doolan explaining things.”
“Thank you,” she said, in a sad, meek little voice. And as he began to write, her little, sensible, managing ways came back to her and she began to cut thick slices of bread and butter and wrap them up for the journey. She then consoled the landlady with her travelling trunk, packed her few possessions into the smallest compass possible, and by the time Myra Kay called for her, was waiting ready dressed, looking, indeed, very pale, but with an air of determination about her firm little mouth which Ralph could not help admiring.
There was a great bustle of departure, but when he had posted his letters and had taken Ivy’s ticket and stood alone outside the railway carriage with nothing more to do, a sense of loneliness began to steal over him. For the first time it occurred to any one to ask what plans he had made for himself.
“Where are you going, Mr. Denmead?” said Myra Kay.
“I’m going to take a walking tour,” said Ralph, lightly; “probably I shall work my way down to Glasgow, and try for an engagement there. By-the-bye, where is Macneillie’s Company now?”
“Just dispersed,” said Myra, cheerfully, as she reflected that her lover would be in London to meet her. “Macneillie generally winds up soon after Whitsuntide and starts again at the beginning of August. He has promised to take me on again then.”
“If he has an opening you might say a word for me,” said Ralph, “and Ivy, let me have a line to say how you get on. I shall have to call for letters at the Stirling post-office, for I hope to hear of an engagement by that time.”
Just at that moment he was hailed by a familiar voice from a smoking carriage, and looking round he saw Dudley leaning out of the window.
“So you are off to the south, too!” he said. “Lucky fellow, how did you manage it?”
The train had already begun to move, but the comedian with a beaming face still leant out of the window describing to the last moment the extraordinary run of luck he had had at billiards.
“Go and play the same game,” he counselled; “it’s the only way to raise the wind. Good-bye, my boy! Meet again in better times.”
He waved his hand cheerfully and was borne away, but the thing which lingered longest in Ralph’s sight was Ivy’s wistful, little face, as to the very last she gazed back at him.
“And forth into the fields I went,
And nature’s living motion lent
The pulse of hope to discontent.
“I wonder’d at the bounteous hours
The slow results of winter showers;
You scarce could see the grass for flowers.
“I wonder’d while I paced along;
The woods were fill’d so full with song,
There seem’d no room for sense of wrong.”
“The Two Voices,” Tennyson.
It was just ten minutes past eleven by the station clock when Ralph, having parted with his companions, found himself outside in the highroad. He felt horribly desolate, and stood for a minute or two dismally contemplating a flaming red and yellow placard of a scene in “Cramond Prig,” which they had invariably played after “East Lynne.” Wretched as his experiences with the Company had been, they had at least been less dreary than solitude. He sorely missed Ivy’s bright face, and the comedian’s cheerful companionship. There was a certain bitterness too in the reflection that no one had taken much thought of what was to become of him, and that even Dudley, who had been kind and friendly enough in the past, had never dreamt of foregoing his journey to London and of taking two tickets to Glasgow.
With a last look at Forres he turned his steps southward and somewhat drearily set off on the first stage of his journey. He meant to reach Grantown that evening, and Grantown appeared to be at least two and twenty miles off. Fortunately the weather was all in his favour: it was one of those mornings of early May when the sun is bright and warm and the air deliciously fresh, and he had not gone far along the uphill road before his spirits revived. After all he was young and in good health, and there was something not altogether unpleasant in entire independence. He reflected with a laugh that although a change of clothes might be desirable, a knapsack would have been heavy to carry, that the great coat though useful on a cold night would have been unbearable at the present moment, and that the sixpence left to him after stamping the letter to his landlady and letters to the managers of an Edinburgh and a Glasgow theatre, would at any rate keep him for a few days from actual starvation. Then for a while he forgot his difficulties altogether in sheer enjoyment of the country. The lovely outline of the Cluny hills, the glimpses of the river Findhorn, the beautiful parks surrounding many stately houses, looked their very best on this perfect spring morning. He caught the glowing sunlight through the young leaves just unfolded and thought that the delicate tracery of dark boughs seemed as though ablaze with emeralds. He had walked for about two hours when he came to a little country church and burial ground, and paused partly to rest, partly to look up at the beautiful viaduct which at a great height spanned the river Divie.
“Ay, ay,” said a voice, that seemed to rise from one of the graves. “There are many tourists that stop to admire yonder seven-arched work of man’s devising, but few—very few that pay much heed to the works of the Almighty.”
There was a strong northern accent about the words; and the careful, precise English showed that the speaker was better used to reading than to speaking the language.
Ralph had started a little at the suddenness with which the silence had been broken, and on turning round, he saw a venerable-looking old man with bushy grey hair and beard, and shrewd yet kindly glance. Evidently he was the minister of this place. Ralph raised his hat, and smiled a little.
“May not the skill of man be taken as one of God’s works?” he said.
“No doubt, no doubt,” replied the minister. “When rightly applied that is to say. But railways, sir, are the devil’s own weapon; they desolate and mar the country they enter; they bring to the country folk all the evil of the towns and cities. You have a prophet in your own land that has told you this in plain words, but you will not heed him, but go on multiplying the works of evil to your own undoing.”
“On such a day as this I am all in favour of walking,” said Ralph, amused at the minister’s earnestness.
“Sir! it’s a grand exercise, you’ll not be finding a better; there are your bicycles that bend a man’s back like an overstrung bow, and your tricycles that are no light diversion to push up our Scottish hills, and there are those works of the evil one which whirl you through creation at such a pace that you are no wiser at the end of a journey than you were at the beginning of it. But a man that walks, sir, must be blind and deaf if he’s not a better man after his walk than he was before.”
“Well, I shall be able to test your theory,” said Ralph. “For I am walking as far as Glasgow.”
“And which way will you be taking?” asked the minister. “You should spend a few days among the Grampians, if you are anything of a mountaineer.”
“I must push on as fast as I can,” said Ralph; “and by the most direct route. They told me at Forres that after Grantown I had better make for Kingussie.”
“If you’ll come into the Manse, I will show you on the map the very route I have often travelled myself in past days,” said the minister. And Ralph, nothing loth, followed him into his house, and was soon poring over a big ordnance map, and receiving some very helpful information from the old man.
They were interrupted before long by a knock at the door, and the appearance of an aged housekeeper with a large, well-fed, tabby cat in her arms.
“The feesh is on the table, sir, and it’s a sair temptation for puss, puir wee thing, starving hungry as she is.” Ralph sprang up to take leave, glancing humourously at the fat tabby, who was in such haste for her food. The minister noted the glance; he noted, too, for the first time, the extreme shabbiness of his guest’s clothes, and certain signs of under-feeding about him.
“We’ll no keep puss waiting, Tibbie,” he said. “But just lay another place at the table, for I hope this gentleman has time to dine with me.” Then as Ralph hesitated to accept the hospitality he overruled all objections by adding: “You’ll be doing me a real kindness if you’ll stay, for it is not very often that I get a visitor to talk with in this country place.”
He led the way as he spoke into the adjoining room, a plainly-furnished parlour with nothing ornamental about it, but with a certain charm of its own, nevertheless, from its pure cleanliness and simplicity. Puss occupied a chair on her master’s right hand, and purred loudly through the somewhat long grace, and Tibbie, having provided for the wants of the visitor, left them to enjoy the meal in peace. For dinner at the Manse was not an affair with many courses, but just freshly-caught fish from the river, baps baked that morning by the housekeeper, a salad from the garden, and the remains of a cheese which had been a present to the minister on New Year’s day.
“Now the majority of travellers, as I was saying,” continued the minister, “are just hurried over the viaduct, causing us nothing but distraction and annoyance, but a pedestrian like yourself really sees the place, and cheers the day for us and brings us something to think about.”
“I spent the first thirteen years of my life in a country rectory,” said Ralph. “And remember what a quiet time we had.”
“And are you studying for the ministry?” asked the old man.
“No,” said Ralph. “My guardian gave me the chance of doing that, but I think you will agree that one can’t be a parson just for the sake of earning a living.”
“Certainly not, sir, certainly not. You are quite in the right. No man should take up such work without a clear call; far better seek some other profession.”
“That is what I did,” said Ralph, colouring a little. “But I know very well that you’ll not approve of my profession. I am an actor, and am on my way now to Stirling where I hope to hear of a fresh engagement either at Edinburgh or at Glasgow.”
Surprise, consternation, regret, were plainly visible in the old man’s face. He said nothing for a moment, it bewildered him to find that this young fellow with his straightforward manner and ingenuous modesty, should have anything to do with the stage.
“I am thinking that you will be asking me as you did of the viaduct—may not the skill of man be taken as one of God’s works?” he said, thoughtfully. “And I’m fain to confess that I have ever considered theatres as the highway to hell, and actors as so many servants of the devil. May God forgive me if I have failed in charity and dealt out harsh judgment to them.”
So they fell into talk together, and Ralph told of the landlady who had shut the door in his face, and assumed that he was no Christian. He told of some of the arrangements at the two theatres in London with which he was acquainted. He told more than one story which he had heard from Myra Kay of the good that Hugh Macneillie had done. And the old minister listened and pondered these strange sayings in his heart, looking all the time with a sort of wistfulness at the fresh, hopeful face opposite him—a face which somehow haunted him long after Ralph had left the Manse.
“He had been through a hard apprenticeship, and I doubt he had little enough in his pockets,” reflected the old man as he paced the bare, little parlour.
“He’d been defrauded of his pay and had looked on the evil as well as on the good, but still he pleaded like a born advocate for his calling—his art; and spite of his troubles there was a blithe look in his face which sore perplexes me.”
He walked to and fro many times, finally he took a Bible from the shelf and turned over the pages until he came to the words he sought. They were these: “The joy of the Lord is your strength.”
“It wasthathis look kept bringing before me,” he said to himself, and he sighed because he knew that there was too little of the element of joy in his life, and that he plodded on from day to day, considering religion a privilege and a duty, but somehow missing the gladness which might have been his. Ralph meanwhile, much refreshed by the rest and food and by his host’s kindly words, tramped on contentedly enough through the wild, desolate country which led to Grantown. The sun was just setting as he reached the village; workmen were making their way homeward, some children with little, dusty, bare feet were playing battledore and shuttlecock in the road, the ruddy light on their hair looked like burnished copper.
“Come awa bairns, it’s time ye were a’ in bed,” called a comely mother standing in the open doorway of one of the houses.
“Just a wee whilie,” pleaded the children.
“Ah!” she replied, yielding under protest, “You’re an awfu’ care to me!”
But there was love and pride in her eyes nevertheless, as she watched their play.
Ralph sighed a little as he tramped on. He was now both hungry and tired, and began to consider his plans; it was quite clear that he could not afford the price of a bed, and it was still too light to venture upon such shelter as might be found in barns or under hedges. He turned into a baker’s shop, secured a good-sized stale loaf, and then for want of anything better to do, found his way to the railway station where he amused himself by looking out trains which he had no money to travel by, after which, having had the good fortune to find aGlasgow Heraldin the waiting-room, left behind by some traveller, he read until it was quite dusk. The quiet little place roused into a sort of activity about a quarter past eight when two trains arrived, one from Perth, the other from Elgin, and Ralph sauntered on to the platform with a faint hope that he might see some face that he knew—he could almost in his loneliness have welcomed the Skoots! But very few passengers alighted, and directly they had been seen off the premises the porters began to lock up for the night—no more trains were expected.
“After all,” reflected Ralph, as he left the village behind him, and tramped along the highroad in the gathering gloom, “if I had gone out to the colonies I should think nothing of camping out for a night. There’s no more disgrace in it here than there. And luckily there’s no law, as there is in England, against sleeping under a hedge, I can’t be had up as a vagrant in Scotland. How, if only I had not been forced to sell Macneillie’s knife it would have been handy enough for cutting this loaf which must certainly have come out of the Ark.”
He wrenched off the top with difficulty and laughed to himself as he thought how horrified Lady Mactavish would be, could she see him now in the shabbiest of clothes, tramping a dusty road and munching stale bread as he went.
“Most certainly I should have Sir Matthew’s charitable dole of ten pounds thrust into my hand,” he said, with an exulting sense that come what would, he would never apply for that relief. “Rather than go to him for help, I would willingly turn into that Refuge for destitute men at Edinburgh, which we saw as we walked down the Canongate.” He shuddered a little as the recollection came to him of the sort of man he had seen seeking shelter there. At any rate out of doors he would have fresh air and no companions in misery.
He must have walked nearly five miles from the village, before he saw in the faint starlight a large farmhouse with many outbuildings. “This is the place for me,” he thought, making his way into the yard: but he had yet to learn the difficulties before him. The doors of a hopeful-looking barn were securely fastened, and, as he crossed the yard to some other outbuildings, up sprang a huge dog from his kennel, with angry growls and fierce barks. He walked up to the mastiff, with swift, light steps, patted its head, fondled its ears, and explained to it the situation. The dog was mollified, understood that the intruder’s intentions were honourable, and even licked his hand, which Ralph took very kindly.
Looking round searchingly, he made out, at last, a sort of open shed, near the stables, and moving across to this, had the good fortune to discover a cart with trusses of hay in it.
“This will exactly suit me my friend,” he said, with a farewell pat to the dog. “May you sleep as comfortably in that lordly kennel of yours!” And, so saying, he climbed up into the cart, stowed the remains of his loaf in a safe place, and with deft hands had soon made himself as warm a bed as could be desired, out of the hay.
He slept soundly, being healthily tired with his long walk—so soundly, indeed, that though cocks and hens and ducks and turkeys, all began, at an early hour, to blend their voices in a countrified, but scarcely musical chorus, he heard nothing. In his dream, Miss Brompton, in a waterproof, was thumping out “Scots wha hae,” between the acts; and presently, when certain strange rumblings slightly disturbed him, he dreamed that it was the thunder in the first scene of “Macbeth,” finally waking himself up by laughing at the comical sight presented by Mrs. Skoot as she vainly tried to drag him out of his witch’s cloak that he might appear as Malcolm. Her angry, impatient face convulsed him with mirth, and it was with no small bewilderment that he awoke to find himself straggling out of a heap of hay, while from above, the amazed face of a red-whiskered man gazed down upon him. The rustic’s round, light-grey eyes had a scared look, and Ralph suddenly remembered where he was, and began to apologise and explain. The cart no longer stood in the shed, but had rumbled out into the highroad, and the driver had evidently no intention of proceeding, while his uncanny visitant still remained among the hay.
“Gude preserve us!” he exclaimed, “I was thinkin’ the cart was bewitched when I harkened to yon fearsome laughter.”
Ralph shook off the hay and leapt lightly into the road; his agility and grace seemed to strike still deeper awe into the heart of the countryman, who stared like one fascinated.
“A doot you hef brought luck with you to the farm, sir,” he said, looking down into the comely face and laughing eyes of his astonishing guest. “And there would hef ben a bowl o’ milk set for you had you bin expeckit. But it will be a fery long time since the Brownies hef veesited us, and there’s bin nae luck aboot the farm for mony a year.”
“Great Scott! the man thinks I’m a ‘Robin Goodfellow’ or a warlock!” thought Ralph, highly amused. “And he’s far too much afraid of me to offer me a ride in his cart.”
“I’m just a wayfaring man,” he tried to explain. “Very grateful for the shelter of your hay-cart on a cold night.”
“Oh, ay,” said the carter, still evidently holding to his own opinion. “And it is fery glad we are to be seein’ you, sir. And a ken weel that it’s na for human bein’s to come into our place at night. Lassie wad bark till ilka soul in the hoose was wakened, and she will be flying at the thrapple o’ ony mortal man. But dogs hef aye descreemination to tell the Brownies when they see them. I will be wishin’ you gude day, sir.”
And so saying, he drove off hastily, leaving Ralph to trudge along in solitude, until catching sight of a stream at a little distance from the road, he reflected that the best things in life were to be had free of charge, and that a morning bath would freshen him for the day.
As for the driver he chanced to look back from a distance, and catching sight of his uncanny visitor just as he took a header into the water, was for ever confirmed in his opinion that he had seen and spoken with a Brownie.
The second day’s walk proved even more enjoyable than the first had done, except that there was no kindly old minister to provide a midday meal. But the sense of freedom, the bracing air, and the loveliness of the road beside the river Spey, with glimpses every now and then of the Cairn Gorm range, were things to be remembered through a lifetime. With Aviemore specially, he was delighted. He began to weave plans for the future, and to dream of wandering with Evereld among those exquisite hills with their craggy rocks cropping out here and there from between dark pines and delicately fresh birches, while beyond there stretched great pine woods, and mountains whose summits were still white with snow. Kingussie furnished him with bread and with a somewhat draughty sleeping apartment in the ruined castle which goes by the name of the Ruthven Barracks; but the night air was keen, and many a time he longed for the warmth and comfort of the hay-cart. There was something dreary, too, in the desolate shell of the old residence of the Comyns, and he awoke with a feeling of depression which was curiously foreign to him. The morning was cloudy, and the waters of the Spey felt icy cold as he plunged into them; however, the walk through Glen Tromie which the old minister had specially recommended to him soon made him warm enough, and the wild beauty of Loch Seilich, and its surrounding precipices fully justified the praises which his guide had bestowed on them. He rested for some little while by the loch, ate his last crust, and counted over, as a miser counts his gold, the three pence which must somehow carry him to Glasgow.
“I must certainly eat less,” he reflected, ruefully, having only dared the previous night to buy a pennyworth of bread. “The worst of it is this mountain air makes one so confoundedly hungry. I shall soon be reduced to eating birds’ eggs, or to singing in front of village alehouses in the hope of earning money.”
His reverie was interrupted by the falling of some heavy drops of rain; he set out once more on his walk seeing plainly enough from the threatening sky that a storm was at hand. It came indeed with a speed which surprised him. Clouds, which blotted out the landscape, hemmed him in; the rising wind roared through the wilds of Gaick, and the rain came down in sheets, blinding and drenching him, for no mackintosh yet invented could have stood the pitiless deluge which showed no sign of abating, but rather increased in violence. Worst of all, he missed his path so that there was not even the comfort of knowing that every step was bringing him nearer his destination. On the contrary, he began to fear that he had altogether lost himself.
The further he went the more hopeless he grew; he was wet to the skin, every bone in his body ached, and no sign of a track was to be found. It seemed to him that he was the only living creature in this vast solitude, and his delight was unbounded when at length, through the driving rain and mist, he caught sight of a figure approaching him. A collie sprang forward and barked, and was called back by its master, a tall, manly figure with a crook in his hand, and under his arm an ugly little black lamb, He seemed not unlike a picture of the Good Shepherd, and Ralph instantly felt confidence in the clear, kindly eyes which looked out at him in a friendly fashion from beneath the Scotch bonnet; there was something noble and winning in this dark-bearded Highlander.
“Can you put me into the track for Dalnacardoch?” asked Ralph, as he returned the shepherd’s greeting. “I have lost my way in the mist.”