A Darkening of the Heart

by Margaret Thomson-Davis

  The midnight hour was almost upon them and, a merry bunch now, they filled their glasses with whisky and hurried out into the hall where the large golden hand of the grandfather clock was clicking and jerking away the seconds.

  Then on the stroke of twelve, everyone cried out ‘Happy 1781’ and raised their glasses. Susanna felt quite giddy with it all, with the alcohol and with her new-found interest and excitement. It was all mixed up with her wild imaginings. She could never quite remember if she’d fainted or if Neil Guthrie had kissed her, or if both events had taken place.

  But in the end there was no doubt that it was her brother’s strong arms that led her away and delivered her, after a horrendous coach ride home, into the not very tender care of Mysie.

  ‘Drunk as an auld fishwife,’ the servant bawled. ‘An’ Ah’ll warrant yer auld mither’ll be the same. Well, tae hell wi’ her! Once Ah’ve got you put doon, Ah’m goin’ tae ma bed.’

  Then Susanna remembered no more.

  4

  Dawn’s pale light slowly brought life to the farm. Robert heard the impatient crowing of the rooster alerting the farmyard to the break of day. His breath misted gently in the crisp cold. His feet crunched through a thin glaze of ice that rimmed the puddles dotted across the muddy farmyard.

  His mind was far away from his bleak surroundings. He was thinking first of all of the book in his pocket that he had fallen asleep reading the night before. He was never without a book – night or day. Books were his closest companions. Digging his calloused hands deep into the hay bale, he grunted as he swung it up on to the rack in front of the stalls, pushing the eager heads away as he tried to spread the feed down to allow the beasts access. Watching them, he sighed. Come spring, they were usually so weak they had to be carried out.

  He gave one of them a pat on the head before turning away. Soon he was lost in thought again, working automatically, even as he strained himself to his physical limits. He thought of his father, for whom he had a great deal of respect, as well as love. He could not look on his father’s tall, gaunt figure and proud, stern face without his heart aching with tenderness. William Burns, his eldest son believed, was an excellent teacher of his children, although he never spoke to them as children, but discussed any subject with them, even as they worked side by side in the fields, as if they were men. Out of necessity, because they could afford no servants or labourers, they also had to work as men. As far back as Robert could remember, he had risen early and returned late.

  His childhood had been one of unceasing and dreary toil in which he worked every day to the utmost of his strength and beyond. The only companions during most of the long days were his father and his brother, Gilbert. His father conversed with them both as if they were men and on all subjects that would increase their knowledge and confirm their virtuous habits.

  As well as the physical difficulties and symptoms of fatigue he had suffered and still suffered, Robert experienced a terrible anguish of mind. He was worried about his father growing old and in increasing poverty, despite all his hard labour.

  Yet, no matter how he showed his concern, his respect or his love, no matter how hard he worked and how diligently he listened to his father reading from the Bible, and studied his father’s pamphlet, The Manual of Religious Belief, his open-hearted emotions were never returned. His father was an austere man, not given to showing emotions – except perhaps irascibility.

  Then, after he’d gone against, indeed openly defied, his father’s wishes and taken up dancing lessons, he had been saddened and distressed by the dislike his father seemed to harbour against him. It had been the only time he’d been disobedient. Desperation, however, had made him remain firm against the anger, the icy fury. He could not bear to look into the future and see nothing but the cheerless slavery that had always been his lot. His spirit refused to be defeated.

  He needed to expand his social horizons and learn some of the polite manners of society. He thought his father would be pleased at any idea of improving himself. But no.

  The only release from backbreaking toil was on the Sabbath. Only then, at the kirk, did they see any others of their fellow men. But for Robert, there was no release of the spirit in the kind of Sabbath that his father insisted on. Five or six hours in the kirk listening to a preacher telling them that they were all sinners destined to burn in Hell only made him feel bitter and harbour sarcastic thoughts against the minister and his pious elders.

  These elders were among the minister’s men who walked the streets on the Sabbath intent on catching people and reporting them for standing about in gardens or fields or – sin of sins – looking out of windows.

  After the hours in church, people were supposed to spend the remaining hours of the day in becoming gloom, in hours of prayer and Bible study. Not even the comfort of a decent meal was allowed. No hot meal must be eaten until well into the evening.

  As soon as Robert heard about the dancing lessons in a barn in Dalrymple, his heart skittered wildly with excitement and gratitude. He could have wept with relief at the mere idea of such an escape route. It was then, not for the first time, that Robert found he had a streak of the same pride and stubbornness as his father. At first he tried to reason with the old man. When that didn’t work, he looked his father in the eye and announced in a strong, firm voice that he was going to Dalrymple to start weekly dancing lessons, and that was that. He regretted of course having to defy his father, but oh what joy he felt at the dancing lessons. How he loved the sight of the fiddler leaping and prancing about the room, his coat tails flying as he sawed wildly and energetically with his bow. How glorious it was to dance around the room with other young people, feverish eyed, laughing and sweating. There were other, more dignified dances too and Robert felt he was learning a very valuable social skill.

  Now the Bachelors’ Club in Tarbolton was a blessed exhilaration too. He walked on air even as he strode to the club. He came to thrilling life there. He discovered how wonderfully stimulating, how fascinating life could be. He revelled in it. It took him hours to calm down again and readjust himself to the drudgery of his existence on the farm with the deep depression and dull headaches that so often accompanied it.

  The only other glimpse he’d had of light in the darkness of life was his love of the female sex. He’d been fifteen when he’d first discovered this joy. It was the custom to be coupled during the labours of the harvest, and he had to work that year with a female partner called Nell. For more than one reason, he would never forget her. Firstly she’d introduced him to what he now regarded, despite disappointments and heartaches, as the first of human joys, and dearest pleasure here below. At the time he didn’t know why he liked so much to loiter with her when returning in the evenings from their labours. It was a mystery to him why her voice made his heart thrill and his pulse beat so furiously when he looked and fingered over her hand to pluck out nettle stings and thistles.

  She was a sweet, sonsie lass and he remembered how he’d heard her sing a song that apparently had been composed by a local lord’s son. A rush of pride had convinced him that he could do as well as any gentry. As a result, she had been the means of introducing him to poetry. In a wild enthusiasm of passion, he’d written his first song. His heart never failed to melt in remembrance of it.

  Oh once I loved a bonnie lass.

  An’ aye I love her still

  And whilst that virtue warms my breast,

  I’ll love my handsome Nell …

  He’d written better poetry and songs and he’d fallen in love more than once since, but that first love and that first effort remained dear to him.

  He had another joy. He loved to read. He had a passion for reading. He had been lucky in this respect. Books were very difficult – in many cases, especially in the country, impossible – to come by. But his father, despite the fact that he could little afford it, had subscribed to the private library housed in the burgh school in Ayr, which had been founded not so long ago. His father had also arra
nged for a young man by the name of John Murdoch to come and teach him and Gilbert and some of the other farm children. He had been six years of age at the time and had eagerly devoured all the books that Murdoch had supplied during the short time he had been their teacher. The first two books he’d ever read were The Life of Hannibal and The History of Sir William Wallace. Hannibal had stirred his young imagination so much, he used to strut up and down in raptures after the recruiting drum and bagpipes and wish he was old enough to be a soldier. The story of Wallace poured a Scottish prejudice into his veins that would, as he said, ‘boil along there until the floodgates of life shut in eternal rest’.

  Only one book had repulsed him. It was a play that Murdoch elected to read aloud to the family before leaving it as a parting gift. It had been the tragedy of Titus Andronicus and his childish mind and emotions reached an anguish of unbearable distress when a female in the play had her hands chopped off and her tongue cut out and was ravished. He had cried out for Murdoch to stop the reading at once and told him that if he didn’t take the book away, he’d burn it.

  Before his father had a chance to sternly reprimand him for his ingratitude and impertinence, Murdoch said, ‘I like to see so much sensibility.’ And he left School for Love instead.

  He had been a good teacher and Robert remembered him with fondness despite the painful beltings he’d suffered. These punishments had been for not singing the hymns in tune like Gilbert. This was where his streak of stubbornness had shown itself, even at that early age. He did not like the mournful hymn tunes. He had more than enough of them on the Sabbath every week. Murdoch could thrash him as much as he wished. Let him praise Gilbert as much as he liked in comparison and insist that Gilbert was the brightest and had the best ear for music and he had no ear at all. He did not care. He hated the mournful, sanctimonious hymns.

  Murdoch held no grudge against him however, nor he against Murdoch. Indeed, when he was fourteen and reunited with him for a brief few weeks in Ayr, to have tuition in English and French, it was like an oasis in a wilderness. His life all too often was the cheerless gloom of a hermit with the unceasing moil of a galley slave. One of his fellow scholars with Murdoch, whom he’d become friendly with, was John Tenant. He’d met him again recently and during their friendly conversation, Tenant had remembered, ‘Robert, your familiarity with the Bible never ceased to astonish me. And still does to this day. You had a better command of the New Testament even than our tutor.’

  Thinking of the Bible Robert marvelled at how the minister and all his cronies could ignore so many of the texts in it.

  ‘Do not be over-righteous’, for instance and more importantly, ‘God is love’. Their God was one of hatred who was determined to cast everyone into the fire of Hell. Everyone, according to them, was doomed from birth. But he’d studied the Bible, and quite a few books about it – Stockhomes New History of the Holy Bible from the Beginning of the World to the Establishment of Christianity, for instance – and come to a different conclusion. His favourite books however were still Hannibal and the life of William Wallace. He enjoyed fantasising about the characters and imagining himself escaping from his dreary life by going to be a soldier. It inspired him, comforted him even, and increased the stubborn, sturdy something in his nature. ‘One day I’ll be a soldier,’ he kept thinking.

  That visit to Ayr also gave him the opportunity to meet other youngsters who had better advantages than he had ever known. He came into contact with the young noblesse and gentry and saw to his intense interest and dismay the difference in attitude. Also the difference in dress between them. He became acutely conscious of his ragged ploughboy clothes. He saw their self-confidence and sense of superiority when mixing with ordinary village or country lads. It wasn’t that they verbally insulted him or any of the others in his class. They simply had an unnoticing disregard for lads like himself, some of whom had been born in the same village as them.

  He experienced boiling resentment and desperate pride in the face of these attitudes, and a detestation of the haughty class system that never left him. At the same time, he couldn’t help being fascinated to observe his so-called superiors, and having to part with them was about as sore an affliction as having to part with Murdoch. He returned very reluctantly to life as a hermit and to the headaches and the now frightening palpitations that went with it.

  The only other short respite he’d had in his youthful years was when his father sent him to Kirkoswald to learn Mensurating, Surveying and Dialling at Dominie Hugh Rodger’s school. Knowing the sacrifice and effort in money it had cost his father, he applied himself as diligently as possible. Although he kept trying to concentrate his interest on geometry and trigonometry, he had to admit to himself that, even more than in Ayr, he made a greater progress in the knowledge of mankind.

  In Kirkoswald smuggling was the interest of most of the inhabitants. It was a very rough place and he viewed drunken rabbles with as much, if not more, fascination as he had the gentry he’d met with at Ayr. Even on the Sabbath, there was so much drunkenness that the kirk session there ruled that no innkeeper should sell on that day more than two pints of ale to a company of three persons.

  He’d had his first initiation into an ale house there because he’d been told that it was customary when enrolling at the school to take the dominie into the tavern for a liquid refreshment. The dominie, Hugh Rodger, unlike Robert’s previous teacher Murdoch, had a limited grasp of any matters outside his field of specialisation. He was a very sarcastic man and he quickly tried to ridicule and demolish a habit Robert and a friend, Willie Niven, had formed. Instead of kicking a ball around or playing at other games in their two-hour midday break, they tried to improve their minds as they strolled to the outskirts of the village conversing on all kinds of subjects. Eventually they hit on a plan to have disputations or debates, one taking one side of the argument and the other the opposite, regardless of their personal opinions on the subject. Their whole object was to sharpen their intellect. They asked several of the sixty other pupils at the school to take a side in their debates but not one other person would do so. They only laughed at the serious young debaters.

  It eventually came to the dominie’s ear and one day in the classroom he set about ridiculing the two boys in front of all the other pupils. The class laughed uproariously at the master’s sarcastic wit. Eventually Willie Niven spoke up. He said he was sorry if he and Robert had given offence. He was also surprised.

  ‘I would have thought, sir, that you would have been pleased to know of our endeavours to improve our minds.’

  Rodger sneered at this and asked what today’s subject was for debate.

  Niven said, ‘Whether is a great general or a respectable merchant the most valuable member of society.’

  Rodger laughed uproariously at the silliness of this question and said there would be no doubt of the correct answer.

  ‘Well,’ said Robert, ‘if you think so, I will be glad if you take any side you please, and allow me to take the other, and let us discuss it before the whole school.’

  Rodger immediately agreed and started the argument confidently on the side of the general.

  Robert answered with points in favour of the merchant and very soon showed an obvious superiority over his teacher. Rodger tried to get back at him with reply after reply but without success. Soon, everyone could see the teacher’s hands shaking, then his voice trembled until he became in such a pitiable state of vexation, he had to dissolve the school. It was too late to save his face or his reputation, however. He had been defeated and shamed by a sixteen-year-old.

  Willie remarked to Robert afterwards, ‘You were brilliant, Robert, but I’m afraid you’ve made an enemy for life there.’

  Robert knew that Willie was right but he’d enjoyed the stimulating exercise of his mind far too intensely to care.

  5

  ‘Oh, I think they are splendid, Alexander.’ His sister enthusiastically clapped her hands. ‘I am proud of you. You must read your
poems in as many drawing rooms in Edinburgh as possible. I’m sure the literati there will give you every praise and encouragement.’

  Alexander gave a little bow. ‘Thank you, my dear. My poetry means a great deal to me. More than my efforts at doctoring, I confess. And it seems that a few of the people in Tarbolton and the surrounding estates feel the same. I’ve given a reading in the ale house as well as in a few drawing rooms recently, and on each occasion, I was applauded. I believe I’m fast becoming recognised as the village bard.’ He gave a rueful smile. ‘As you know, my doctoring more often than not meets with the reverse of approbation. Even the minister refuses me in favour of my father. At least we can be thankful that the church, as well as representing the law, no longer acts as doctors as well.’

  ‘That minister’s a long-visaged, melancholy idiot!’

  ‘My dear sister,’ Alexander said with mock seriousness, ‘I beg you to be more careful of how you speak of the minister or he’ll damn you forever and a day.’

  ‘What a bore he is. How he manages to be so boring for hours on end every Sabbath without fail truly amazes me.’

  ‘Yes,’ Alexander sighed. ‘I suppose we can’t be too surprised at the wild excesses of the inhabitants during the week after having to suffer the reverend gentleman every Sabbath. I’m beginning to indulge rather more than usual myself. The odd glass of wine with a meal was all I ever used to have when I was abroad. The people there were so much more civilised.’

  ‘It will be different in Edinburgh. Oh, if only we lived permanently in the capital city.’

  ‘I fear the customs there are no different, perhaps worse as far as bacchanalian excesses are concerned. However, I have been, I confess, thinking of some day taking up residence in Edinburgh. I cannot see a future and certainly not a fortune here as a doctor.’