‘Obey her, then, as is your bounden duty,’ said Traquair.
‘Ay, but wait till I tell ye,’ says the boy. ‘If I was to see you I was to hide.’
Montroymont sighed. ‘Well, and that’s good of her too,’ said he. ‘The less that I ken of thir doings the better for me; and the best thing you can do is just to obey her, and see and be a good son to her, the same as ye are to me, Francie.’
At the tenderness of this expression the heart of Francie swelled within his bosom, and his remorse was poured out. ‘Faither!’ he cried, ‘I said “deil” to-day; many’s the time I said it, and damnable too, and hellitsh. I ken they’re all right; they’re beeblical. But I didna say them beeblically; I said them for sweir words — that’s the truth of it.’
‘Hout, ye silly bairn!’ said the father, ‘dinna do it nae mair, and come in by to your supper.’ And he took the boy, and drew him close to him a moment, as they went through the door, with something very fond and secret, like a caress between a pair of lovers.
The next day M’Brair was abroad in the afternoon, and had a long advising with Janet on the braes where she herded cattle. What passed was never wholly known; but the lass wept bitterly, and fell on her knees to him among the whins. The same night, as soon as it was dark, he took the road again for Balweary. In the Kirkton, where the dragoons quartered, he saw many lights, and heard the noise of a ranting song and people laughing grossly, which was highly offensive to his mind. He gave it the wider berth, keeping among fields; and came down at last by the water-side, where the manse stands solitary between the river and the road. He tapped at the back door, and the old woman called upon him to come in, and guided him through the house to the study, as they still called it, though there was little enough study there in Haddo’s days, and more song-books than theology.
‘Here’s yin to speak wi’ ye, Mr. Haddie!’ cries the old wife.
And M’Brair, opening the door and entering, found the little, round, red man seated in one chair and his feet upon another. A clear fire and a tallow dip lighted him barely. He was taking tobacco in a pipe, and smiling to himself; and a brandy-bottle and glass, and his fiddle and bow, were beside him on the table.
‘Hech, Patey M’Briar, is this you?’ said he, a trifle tipsily. ‘Step in by, man, and have a drop brandy: for the stomach’s sake! Even the deil can quote Scripture — eh, Patey?’
‘I will neither eat nor drink with you,’ replied M’Brair. ‘I am come upon my Master’s errand: woe be upon me if I should anyways mince the same. Hall Haddo, I summon you to quit this kirk which you encumber.’
‘Muckle obleeged!’ says Haddo, winking.
‘You and me have been to kirk and market together,’ pursued M’Brair; ‘we have had blessed seasons in the kirk, we have sat in the same teaching-rooms and read in the same book; and I know you still retain for me some carnal kindness. It would be my shame if I denied it; I live here at your mercy and by your favour, and glory to acknowledge it. You have pity on my wretched body, which is but grass, and must soon be trodden under: but O, Haddo! how much greater is the yearning with which I yearn after and pity your immortal soul! Come now, let us reason together! I drop all points of controversy, weighty though these be; I take your defaced and damnified kirk on your own terms; and I ask you, Are you a worthy minister? The communion season approaches; how can you pronounce thir solemn words, “The elders will now bring forrit the elements,” and not quail? A parishioner may be summoned to-night; you may have to rise from your miserable orgies; and I ask you, Haddo, what does your conscience tell you? Are you fit? Are you fit to smooth the pillow of a parting Christian? And if the summons should be for yourself, how then?’
Haddo was startled out of all composure and the better part of his temper. ‘What’s this of it?’ he cried. ‘I’m no waur than my neebours. I never set up to be speeritual; I never did. I’m a plain, canty creature; godliness is cheerfulness, says I; give me my fiddle and a dram, and I wouldna hairm a flee.’
‘And I repeat my question,’ said M’Brair: ‘Are you fit — fit for this great charge? fit to carry and save souls?’
‘Fit? Blethers! As fit’s yoursel’,’ cried Haddo.
‘Are you so great a self-deceiver?’ said M’Brair. ‘Wretched man, trampler upon God’s covenants, crucifier of your Lord afresh. I will ding you to the earth with one word: How about the young woman, Janet M’Clour?’
‘Weel, what about her? what do I ken?’ cries Haddo. ‘M’Brair, ye daft auld wife, I tell ye as true’s truth, I never meddled her. It was just daffing, I tell ye: daffing, and nae mair: a piece of fun, like! I’m no denying but what I’m fond of fun, sma’ blame to me! But for onything sarious — hout, man, it might come to a deposeetion! I’ll sweir it to ye. Where’s a Bible, till you hear me sweir?’
‘There is nae Bible in your study,’ said M’Brair severely.
And Haddo, after a few distracted turns, was constrained to accept the fact.
‘Weel, and suppose there isna?’ he cried, stamping. ‘What mair can ye say of us, but just that I’m fond of my joke, and so’s she? I declare to God, by what I ken, she might be the Virgin Mary — if she would just keep clear of the dragoons. But me! na, deil haet o’ me!’
‘She is penitent at least,’ says M’Brair.
‘Do you mean to actually up and tell me to my face that she accused me?’ cried the curate.
‘I canna just say that,’ replied M’Brair. ‘But I rebuked her in the name of God, and she repented before me on her bended knees.’
‘Weel, I daursay she’s been ower far wi’ the dragoons,’ said Haddo. ‘I never denied that. I ken naething by it.’
‘Man, you but show your nakedness the more plainly,’ said M’Brair. ‘Poor, blind, besotted creature — and I see you stoytering on the brink of dissolution: your light out, and your hours numbered. Awake, man!’ he shouted with a formidable voice, ‘awake, or it be ower late.’
‘Be damned if I stand this!’ exclaimed Haddo, casting his tobacco-pipe violently on the table, where it was smashed in pieces. ‘Out of my house with ye, or I’ll call for the dragoons.’
‘The speerit of the Lord is upon me,’ said M’Brair with solemn ecstasy. ‘I sist you to compear before the Great White Throne, and I warn you the summons shall be bloody and sudden.’
And at this, with more agility than could have been expected, he got clear of the room and slammed the door behind him in the face of the pursuing curate. The next Lord’s day the curate was ill, and the kirk closed, but for all his ill words, Mr. M’Brair abode unmolested in the house of Montroymont.
CHAPTER III — THE HILL-END OF DRUMLOWE
This was a bit of a steep broken hill that overlooked upon the west a moorish valley, full of ink-black pools. These presently drained into a burn that made off, with little noise and no celerity of pace, about the corner of the hill. On the far side the ground swelled into a bare heath, black with junipers, and spotted with the presence of the standing stones for which the place was famous. They were many in that part, shapeless, white with lichen — you would have said with age: and had made their abode there for untold centuries, since first the heathens shouted for their installation. The ancients had hallowed them to some ill religion, and their neighbourhood had long been avoided by the prudent before the fall of day; but of late, on the upspringing of new requirements, these lonely stones on the moor had again become a place of assembly. A watchful picket on the Hill-end commanded all the northern and eastern approaches; and such was the disposition of the ground, that by certain cunningly posted sentries the west also could be made secure against surprise: there was no place in the country where a conventicle could meet with more quiet of mind or a more certain retreat open, in the case of interference from the dragoons. The minister spoke from a knowe close to the edge of the ring, and poured out the words God gave him on the very threshold of the devils of yore. When they pitched a tent (which was often in wet weather, upon a communion occasion) it was rigged
over the huge isolated pillar that had the name of Anes-Errand, none knew why. And the congregation sat partly clustered on the slope below, and partly among the idolatrous monoliths and on the turfy soil of the Ring itself. In truth the situation was well qualified to give a zest to Christian doctrines, had there been any wanted. But these congregations assembled under conditions at once so formidable and romantic as made a zealot of the most cold. They were the last of the faithful; God, who had averted His face from all other countries of the world, still leaned from heaven to observe, with swelling sympathy, the doings of His moorland remnant; Christ was by them with His eternal wounds, with dropping tears; the Holy Ghost (never perfectly realised nor firmly adopted by Protestant imaginations) was dimly supposed to be in the heart of each and on the lips of the minister. And over against them was the army of the hierarchies, from the men Charles and James Stuart, on to King Lewie and the Emperor; and the scarlet Pope, and the muckle black devil himself, peering out the red mouth of hell in an ecstasy of hate and hope. ‘One pull more!’ he seemed to cry; ‘one pull more, and it’s done. There’s only Clydesdale and the Stewartry, and the three Bailiaries of Ayr, left for God.’ And with such an august assistance of powers and principalities looking on at the last conflict of good and evil, it was scarce possible to spare a thought to those old, infirm, debile, ab agendo devils whose holy place they were now violating.
There might have been three hundred to four hundred present. At least there were three hundred horses tethered for the most part in the ring; though some of the hearers on the outskirts of the crowd stood with their bridles in their hand, ready to mount at the first signal. The circle of faces was strangely characteristic; long, serious, strongly marked, the tackle standing out in the lean brown cheeks, the mouth set and the eyes shining with a fierce enthusiasm; the shepherd, the labouring man, and the rarer laird, stood there in their broad blue bonnets or laced hats, and presenting an essential identity of type. From time to time a long-drawn groan of adhesion rose in this audience, and was propagated like a wave to the outskirts, and died away among the keepers of the horses. It had a name; it was called ‘a holy groan.’
A squall came up; a great volley of flying mist went out before it and whelmed the scene; the wind stormed with a sudden fierceness that carried away the minister’s voice and twitched his tails and made him stagger, and turned the congregation for a moment into a mere pother of blowing plaid-ends and prancing horses; and the rain followed and was dashed straight into their faces. Men and women panted aloud in the shock of that violent shower-bath; the teeth were bared along all the line in an involuntary grimace; plaids, mantles, and riding-coats were proved vain, and the worshippers felt the water stream on their naked flesh. The minister, reinforcing his great and shrill voice, continued to contend against and triumph over the rising of the squall and the dashing of the rain.
‘In that day ye may go thirty mile and not hear a crawing cock,’ he said; ‘and fifty mile and not get a light to your pipe; and an hundred mile and not see a smoking house. For there’ll be naething in all Scotland but deid men’s banes and blackness, and the living anger of the Lord. O, where to find a bield — O sirs, where to find a bield from the wind of the Lord’s anger? Do ye call this a wind? Bethankit! Sirs, this is but a temporary dispensation; this is but a puff of wind, this is but a spit of rain and by with it. Already there’s a blue bow in the west, and the sun will take the crown of the causeway again, and your things’ll be dried upon ye, and your flesh will be warm upon your bones. But O, sirs, sirs! for the day of the Lord’s anger!’
His rhetoric was set forth with an ear-piercing elocution, and a voice that sometimes crashed like cannon. Such as it was, it was the gift of all hill-preachers, to a singular degree of likeness or identity. Their images scarce ranged beyond the red horizon of the moor and the rainy hill-top, the shepherd and his sheep, a fowling-piece, a spade, a pipe, a dunghill, a crowing cock, the shining and the withdrawal of the sun. An occasional pathos of simple humanity, and frequent patches of big Biblical words, relieved the homely tissue. It was a poetry apart; bleak, austere, but genuine, and redolent of the soil.
A little before the coming of the squall there was a different scene enacting at the outposts. For the most part, the sentinels were faithful to their important duty; the Hill-end of Drumlowe was known to be a safe meeting-place; and the out-pickets on this particular day had been somewhat lax from the beginning, and grew laxer during the inordinate length of the discourse. Francie lay there in his appointed hiding-hole, looking abroad between two whin-bushes. His view was across the course of the burn, then over a piece of plain moorland, to a gap between two hills; nothing moved but grouse, and some cattle who slowly traversed his field of view, heading northward: he heard the psalms, and sang words of his own to the savage and melancholy music; for he had his own design in hand, and terror and cowardice prevailed in his bosom alternately, like the hot and the cold fit of an ague. Courage was uppermost during the singing, which he accompanied through all its length with this impromptu strain:
‘And I will ding Jock Crozer down
No later than the day.’
Presently the voice of the preacher came to him in wafts, at the wind’s will, as by the opening and shutting of a door; wild spasms of screaming, as of some undiscerned gigantic hill-bird stirred with inordinate passion, succeeded to intervals of silence; and Francie heard them with a critical ear. ‘Ay,’ he thought at last, ‘he’ll do; he has the bit in his mou’ fairly.’
He had observed that his friend, or rather his enemy, Jock Crozer, had been established at a very critical part of the line of outposts; namely, where the burn issues by an abrupt gorge from the semicircle of high moors. If anything was calculated to nerve him to battle it was this. The post was important; next to the Hill-end itself, it might be called the key to the position; and it was where the cover was bad, and in which it was most natural to place a child. It should have been Heathercat’s; why had it been given to Crozer? An exquisite fear of what should be the answer passed through his marrow every time he faced the question. Was it possible that Crozer could have boasted? that there were rumours abroad to his — Heathercat’s — discredit? that his honour was publicly sullied? All the world went dark about him at the thought; he sank without a struggle into the midnight pool of despair; and every time he so sank, he brought back with him — not drowned heroism indeed, but half-drowned courage by the locks. His heart beat very slowly as he deserted his station, and began to crawl towards that of Crozer. Something pulled him back, and it was not the sense of duty, but a remembrance of Crozer’s build and hateful readiness of fist. Duty, as he conceived it, pointed him forward on the rueful path that he was travelling. Duty bade him redeem his name if he were able, at the risk of broken bones; and his bones and every tooth in his head ached by anticipation. An awful subsidiary fear whispered him that if he were hurt, he should disgrace himself by weeping. He consoled himself, boy-like, with the consideration that he was not yet committed; he could easily steal over unseen to Crozer’s post, and he had a continuous private idea that he would very probably steal back again. His course took him so near the minister that he could hear some of his words: ‘What news, minister, of Claver’se? He’s going round like a roaring rampaging lion. . . .
THE GREAT NORTH ROAD
AN UNFINISHED NOVEL.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER I — NANCE AT THE ‘GREEN DRAGON’
CHAPTER II — IN WHICH MR. ARCHER IS INSTALLED
CHAPTER III — JONATHAN HOLDAWAY
CHAPTER IV — MINGLING THREADS
CHAPTER V — LIFE IN THE CASTLE
CHAPTER VI — THE BAD HALF-CROWN
CHAPTER VII — THE BLEACHING-GREEN
CHAPTER VIII — THE MAIL GUARD
CHAPTER I — NANCE AT THE ‘GREEN DRAGON’
Nance Holdaway was on her knees before the fire blowing the green wood that voluminously smoked upon the dogs, and only now and then shot forth a smothered f
lame; her knees already ached and her eyes smarted, for she had been some while at this ungrateful task, but her mind was gone far away to meet the coming stranger. Now she met him in the wood, now at the castle gate, now in the kitchen by candle-light; each fresh presentment eclipsed the one before; a form so elegant, manners so sedate, a countenance so brave and comely, a voice so winning and resolute — sure such a man was never seen! The thick-coming fancies poured and brightened in her head like the smoke and flames upon the hearth.
Presently the heavy foot of her uncle Jonathan was heard upon the stair, and as he entered the room she bent the closer to her work. He glanced at the green fagots with a sneer, and looked askance at the bed and the white sheets, at the strip of carpet laid, like an island, on the great expanse of the stone floor, and at the broken glazing of the casement clumsily repaired with paper.
‘Leave that fire a-be,’ he cried. ‘What, have I toiled all my life to turn innkeeper at the hind end? Leave it a-be, I say.’
‘La, uncle, it doesn’t burn a bit; it only smokes,’ said Nance, looking up from her position.
‘You are come of decent people on both sides,’ returned the old man. ‘Who are you to blow the coals for any Robin-run-agate? Get up, get on your hood, make yourself useful, and be off to the “Green Dragon.”’
‘I thought you was to go yourself,’ Nance faltered.
‘So did I,’ quoth Jonathan; ‘but it appears I was mistook.’
The very excess of her eagerness alarmed her, and she began to hang back. ‘I think I would rather not, dear uncle,’ she said. ‘Night is at hand, and I think, dear, I would rather not.’
‘Now you look here,’ replied Jonathan, ‘I have my lord’s orders, have I not? Little he gives me, but it’s all my livelihood. And do you fancy, if I disobey my lord, I’m likely to turn round for a lass like you? No, I’ve that hell-fire of pain in my old knee, I wouldn’t walk a mile, not for King George upon his bended knees.’ And he walked to the window and looked down the steep scarp to where the river foamed in the bottom of the dell.
Complete Works of Robert Louis Stevenson Page 266
