Donald Ross of Heimra (Volume 1 of 3)

William Black

Donald Ross of Heimra (Volume 1 of 3)

CHAPTER I.

GODIVA

"Well, Mary, it is a pretty plaything to have given you – a Highland estate! – and no doubt all your fine schemes will come right. But you will have to change three things first."

"Yes?"

"And these are human nature and the soil and climate of Scotland."

"Avaunt, Mephistopheles! – and go and give that porter a shilling."

The two speakers were on the platform of Invershin station, on the Highland line of railway. One of them was a tall young woman of distinguished presence and somewhat imperious carriage, as you could gather at a first glance; but the next second, if she happened to turn her face towards you, you would have perceived that her expression meant nothing but a bland gentleness and a prevailing and excellent good-humour. Perhaps it was the dimple in her cheek that did it – a dimple that came there readily whenever she regarded any one, and that seemed to say she was very willing to be pleased and to please: at all events, she found it easy, or had hitherto found it easy, to make friends. For the rest, she was of an erect and elegant figure; her complexion fair; her eyes grey-green, and full of light; her abundant hair of a sunny brown; her features regular enough and fine enough for all practical purposes. It was of this young woman that her friend and now her travelling companion, Kate Glendinning, was in the habit of saying —

"There's one thing I will confess about Mary Stanley: she's not quite honest. She is too happy. She is so happy in herself that she wants every one she meets to share in her content; and she is apt to say clever and flattering little things that are not quite true. It is for no selfish purpose; quite the reverse: still – you mustn't believe all that Mary says to you."

Thus Kate Glendinning of her dearest friend; but if any one else had ventured to say similar things in her presence – then, and right swiftly, there would have been pretty tempests and flashes of eye-lightning.

And now there came up to Miss Stanley a short, stumpy, red-haired and red-bearded man of extraordinary breadth of shoulder and bulk of frame. He had a massive head despite his diminutive height; his mouth, drawn heavily down at each end, betokened a determined will, not to say a dogged obstinacy; and his small, clear, blue eyes, besides being sharp and intelligent, had a curious kind of cold aggressiveness in them – that is to say, when he was not talking to one whom it was his interest to propitiate, for then he could assume a sort of clumsy humility, both in manner and speech. This was Mr. David Purdie, solicitor, of Inverness. An Troich Bheag Dhearg– that is to say, the Little Red Dwarf – the people out at Lochgarra called him; but Mr. Purdie did not know that.

"The carriage is quite ready, Miss Stanley," said he, in his slow, deliberate, south-country accent; and therewithal the three of them passed round to the back of the station and entered the waggonette, Mr. Purdie modestly taking a seat by the driver. The two young ladies were well wrapped up, for it was in the beginning of April, and they had fifty miles before them, out to the Atlantic coast. Kate Glendinning, in looking after her companion's abundant furs and rugs, rather affected to play the part of maid; for this shrewd and sensible lass, who was in rather poor circumstances, had consented to accept a salary from her friend who was so much better off; and she performed her various self-imposed duties with a tact and discretion beyond all praise.

And as they drove away on this clear-shining afternoon, Mary Stanley's face was something to study. She was all eagerness and impatience; the colour mantled in her cheeks; her brain was so busy that she had scarcely a word for her neighbour. For she had heard a good deal and read much more, in Parliamentary debates and elsewhere, of the sufferings of the crofters, of the iniquities that had been practised on them by tyrannical landlords and factors, of the lamentations of the poor homeless ones thrust forth from their native shores; and now, in this little bit of the world that had so unexpectedly become hers, and in as far as she was able, wrong was to be put right, amends were to be made, and peace and amity, and comfort and prosperity were to be established for ever and ever. Perhaps the transcendental vision of the prophet Isaiah was hunting her: "The wilderness and the solitary place shall be glad … and the desert shall rejoice, and blossom as the rose." And if she were to summon back the poor exiles who had been banished – banished to the slums of Glasgow, perchance, or to the far plains of Manitoba?.. "And the ransomed of the Lord shall return, and come to Zion with songs and ever-lasting joy upon their heads: they shall obtain joy and gladness, and sorrow and sighing shall flee away." To be sure, as they now drove along the wide and fertile valley that is penetrated by the Kyle of Sutherland, she did not meet with much evidence of the destitution she had been led to expect. She had heard of bleak wastes and sterile altitudes, of ruined huts and dismantled steadings; but here, under the softly-wooded hills, were long and level stretches of arable land, the ploughmen busy at their work; the occasional crofts were very far indeed from being hovels; and the people whom they saw, in the bits of gardens, or tending the cattle, looked well-clothed and well-fed. She ventured to hint something of this to her companion; and Kate, glancing at her, began to giggle.

"I really believe you are disappointed, Mary! Is there not enough misery for you? But never fear. If it's misery you're in search of, you have seldom far to go for it, in this world. Only I must tell you this – if you're so eager to relieve distress – that there is more of wretchedness, and crime, and squalor, and piteous human suffering in a single square mile of the slums of London or New York than you'll find in the whole of the Highlands of Scotland."

"That may be," said Miss Stanley, in her calm and equable fashion. "But you see, Käthchen, I have no call that way. I do not feel a direct responsibility, as I do in this case —

"It is a responsibility you are making for yourself," her friend said. "You know very well it was not for that your uncle left you the property. It was merely to spite your father and your brothers."

"There was a little more," was the good-natured reply (for she did not seem to resent this reference to her amiable relative). "I think it was to spite the people out there as well. My uncle and they never could get on; and he was not a man who liked to be thwarted. And of course he imagined that I, being a woman, would not interfere; that I would leave the estate to be managed by Mr. Purdie, and simply receive the rents. Well," she continued, and here she lowered her voice somewhat, and there was a touch of colour in her face that was perhaps the expression of some definite resolve, "I may allow Mr. Purdie to manage the estate, or I may not. But if he does continues to manage the estate, it will be under my direction."

Käthchen looked at her, and laughed a little.

"I don't think Mr. Purdie knows whom he has got to deal with," said she, under her breath.

They stopped that night at Oykel Bridge. Miss Stanley invited Mr. Purdie to dine with them; but he declined on the ground that he had business in the neighbourhood – an odd excuse, for the inn and its dependencies constitute the remote little hamlet. The two young women passed the evening by themselves, and talked: the one with generous ardour entering into all her wonderful schemes, the other (who knew the country, and the people) interposing now and again with a little modifying information. But really Käthchen was not unsympathetic. Her eyes, which were the attractive feature of her face, sometimes expressed a trifle of demure amusement; but she was not a quarrelsome or argumentative creature; and besides there is something about all fine humanitarian projects that one would rather believe in and welcome.

Next morning they resumed their drive, and very soon entered a much wilder country than that of the preceding day. Wilder but nevertheless beautiful – with its range upon range of russet hills, wine-stained here and there with shadow; its woods of leafless birch of a soft dark rose-lilac; its long undulations of waste moorland, yellow and brown; with now and again the sudden blue scythe-sweep of the river. For now they were traversing the lonely district of upper Strath-Oykel. Far ahead of them rose the giant bulk of Ben More, Assynt, its higher shoulders a solid mass of white. The sunlight around them was cheerful, no doubt; and yet there was a strange sense of solitariness, of voicelessness; and Mary, who was less concerned about the beauty of the landscape than about certain problems haunting her mind, called out to Mr. Purdie, who was again up beside the driver —

"Mr. Purdie, why are there no people living in this country?"

"Because there's nothing for them to live on," was the laconic answer. "It's fit for nothing but grazing sheep – and for grouse."

"Yes – the hills, perhaps," said she. "But look along the valley – by the side of the river."

"Ay, it's fine land, that," said he, grimly, – "for a wheen pesewepes!" And indeed the plovers were the only visible living things, jerking about in the air, dipping suddenly to the ground and swiftly rising again, with their curious squeaking call, and the soft velvet fluffing of their wings.

However, all that was nothing. By and by they had left the Oykel strath, and had entered upon a far higher and bleaker region, the desolation of which appalled her. There was not even the solitary shepherd's cottage they had seen down in the other valley; here was nothing but a wilderness of brown and ragged moorland, with deep black clefts of peat, and an occasional small tarn, without a bush along its shores, its waters driven a deep blue by the wind. Away in the west they could make out the spectral shapes of the Assynt mountains – Coul Beg, Coul More, and Suilven – remote and visionary through the universal haze of the heather-burning; but here, all around them, were these endless and featureless and melancholy undulations; and the silence was now unbroken even by the curious bleating of the plovers: once, and once only, they heard the hoarse and distant croak of a raven.

"Käthchen," said Mary, in a sort of piteous dismay, as she looked abroad over those sombre solitudes, "you have been all along the Ross and Cromarty coast; is it like that?"

"Plenty of it is worse," was the reply.

"And – and – my place: is it like that?"

"I have never been in to Lochgarra."

"But – but if it is like that – what am I to do for my people?"

"The best you can," said Käthchen, cheerfully.

It seemed an interminable drive. And then, in the afternoon, a premature darkness came slowly over; the mountains in the north gradually receded out of sight; and heavy, steady rain began to fall. The two girls sat huddled underneath one umbrella, listening to the pattering footfalls of the horses and the grinding of the wheels on the road; and when they ventured to peep forth from their shelter they beheld but the same monotonous features in the landscape: masses of wet rock and dark russet heather, black swamps, low and bare hills, and now and again the grey glimmer of a stream or tarn. It was a cheerless outlook; continually changing, and yet ever the same; and hour after hour the rain came down wearily. There was hardly a word said between those two: whither had fled Mary Stanley's dreams of a shining blue sea, a sunny coastline, and a happy peasantry busy in their fields and gardens, their white cottages radiant in the morning light? Käthchen, on the other hand, was inclined to laugh ruefully.

"Isn't it a good thing, Mary, that duty brought us here? If it had been pleasure, we should be calling ourselves awful fools."

But quite of a sudden this hopeless resignation vanished, and a wild excitement took its place.

"Miss Stanley," Mr. Purdie called to her, "we've come to the march."

"The what?"

"The march – the boundary of your estate."

Instantly she had the carriage stopped, and nothing would do but that she must get out and set foot on her own land: moreover, when Käthchen took down the umbrella, they found that the rain had ceased, and that the western skies were lightening somewhat.

"That is the march," said Mr. Purdie, pointing to a low, irregular, moss-grown wall – obviously a very ancient landmark; "and it goes right over the hill and down again to the Garra."

Leaving the highway, she stepped across the ditch, and stood on the moist, soft peat land.

"And this is mine!" she said to Käthchen, with an odd expression of face. "This is absolutely mine. Nobody can dispute my possession of it. This piece of the solid world actually belongs to me."

"And I suppose your rights extend as deep as ever you like," said Käthchen. "You might go all the way through, and have a walk in the streets of Melbourne, and get dry, and come back."

But Mary's quick eye had caught sight of what was to her the most important feature of the surrounding landscape. It was a cottage perched on a knoll above a burn – or, rather, it was the ruins of a cottage, the gables standing roofless, the thatch long ago blown away by the winds, the beams and fallen stones lying among the withered nettles, altogether a melancholy sight.

"Now, isn't it shameful!" she exclaimed, in hot indignation. "Look at that! The very first thing I meet with! Do you wonder that people should talk about the Highland landlords? Some poor wretch has been driven away – perhaps at this very moment, in Canada or in Australia, he is thinking of the old home, and forgetting all the rain and discomfort there used to be, Mr. Purdie!"

"Yes, ma'am?" said he, coming a bit nearer; and Käthchen looked on, wondering if his doom was about to be pronounced.

"Who lived in that house?" Miss Stanley demanded.

"The schoolmaster," was the reply.

"The schoolmaster? And where is he now?"

"He's in his own house," the factor said. "We built him a new one and a better one, to be nearer the school and the village; and when he moved it was hardly worth while keeping the old one in repair."

"Oh," said she, a little disconcerted. "Oh, really. Then no one was sent away – from that cottage?"

"No, no – not at all – not at all," said he; and he followed her to the waggonette and politely shut the door after her – while Käthchen's face maintained an admirable gravity.

As the drove on again, the afternoon seemed inclined to clear; the skies were banking up; and there were faint streaks of lemon-yellow among the heavy purple clouds in the west. And very soon the road made a sweep to the left, bringing them in sight of the Connan, a small but turbulent tributary of the Garra. Here, also, they encountered the first signs of the habitations of men – little clumps of buildings clustered together just over a stretch of flat land that had clearly been recovered from the river-bed. Crofts, no doubt: each slated cottage surrounded by its huddled dependency of thatched barns and byres.

As the waggonette drew near to the first of these rude little settlements, the women disappeared into the outhouses, and the children hid behind the peat-stack; but there remained standing at the door of the cottage an elderly man, who regarded the strangers with a grave and perhaps rather sullen curiosity.

"Mr. Purdie," said Mary, in an undertone, "is that one of my tenants?"

"Yes, certainly – that is James Macdonald."

"I wish to make his acquaintance," said she; and she stopped the carriage, and got out.

There was no sort of fear, or unnecessary bashfulness, about this young woman. She walked right up the bank to the door of the cottage. The short thick-set man standing there had something of a Russian cast of countenance, with a heavy grey beard, shaggy eyebrows, and small, suspicious eyes. His clothes were weather-worn as to colour and much mended; but they were not in the least squalid; and he had a red woollen comforter round his neck.

"Good evening!" said she, with a most winning smile.

But the propitiating dimple, that had hitherto been all-conquering, was of no avail here. He looked at her. He did not raise his cap.

"Cha 'n 'eil beurla agam," said he, with a sort of affected indifference.

She was taken aback only for a moment.

"What does he say?" she asked of Mr. Purdie, who had followed her.

"He says he has no English," the factor answered; and then he added, vindictively: "But he would have plenty of English if he wanted to tell you of his grievances – oh, ay, plenty! Start him on that, and he'll find plenty of English! He's one of the most ill-condeetioned men in the whole place – and I suppose he has enough English to understand that!"

"Tell him who I am," said she, rather disappointedly; for she had set out with the determination to get to know all the circumstances and wants and wishes of her tenants, especially of the poorer ones, without the intervention of any factor.

Hereupon Mr. Purdie, in unnecessarily severe tones, as it seemed to her, addressed a few sentences in Gaelic to the stubborn-looking old man, who, in turn – and with no abatement of his hostile attitude – replied in the same tongue. But to Mary's surprise, he suddenly added – fixing morose eyes upon her —

"She – no my laird! Ross of Heimra – my laird. Young Donald – he my laird. She no my laird at ahl!"

"Oh, but that is absurd, you know," Mary said, eagerly, and with a quick delight that she could enter into direct communication with him. "You forget – you are mistaken – my uncle bought the estate from the late Mr. Ross of Heimra. Surely you understand that? Surely you know that? The whole place was bought in open market. Mr. Ross sold the land, and all the rights belonging to it – yes, and the obligations, too; and my uncle bought it. Don't you understand?"

The man turned away his eyes, and sulkily muttered something in Gaelic.

"What is it?" asked Mary, compelled to appeal once more to the factor.

"Like the scoundrel's impertinence!" said the Little Red Dwarf, darting an angry look at the crofter. "He says the Englishman – that is your uncle, Miss Stanley – the Englishman bought the land but not the hearts of the people."

"And that is quite right!" Mary exclaimed. "That is quite right and true. Tell him I quite agree with him. But tell him this – tell him that if my uncle did not buy the hearts of the people, I mean to win them – "

"Oh, Mary," Käthchen struck in, rather shamefacedly, "don't talk like that! They won't understand you. Be practical. Ask him what complaint he has to make about his farm – ask him what he wants – "

"I can tell ye that beforehand!" said Mr. Purdie, in his irascible scorn. "He wants more arable land, and he wants more pasture; and both for nothing. And no doubt he would like a steam plough thrown in, and maybe a score or two o' black-faced wethers – "

But Mary interrupted. She had formed for herself some idea, before she came to this country, as to how she meant to proceed.

"Mr. Purdie," said she, in her clear, firm way, "I wish you to ask this man if he has anything to complain of; and I wish you to tell me precisely what he says."

The Troich Bheag Dhearg, being thus ordered, obeyed; but he scowled upon the stubborn crofter – and it was apparent there was no love lost on the other side either. At the end of their brief, and unwilling, conversation, the factor made his report.

"Well, there are many things he would like – who could doubt that? – but in especial he wants the pasture of Meall-na-Cruagan divided amongst the crofters of this district, and the tax for the dyke taken off the rent. But Meall-na-Cruagan never did belong to the crofters at any time; and it is part of Mr. Watson's sheep-farm – he has it under lease."

"I will look into that afterwards," said she. "What is the tax you mentioned?"

"Well, when the dyke along there – the embankment," said the factor, "was built to keep the river from flooding the land, the interest of the money expended was added on to the rents of the crofts, as was natural – and that's what they call a tax!"

"How long have they been paying that tax?" she asked.

"It is about thirty years since the dyke was built."

"Thirty years!" she said. "Thirty years! These poor people have been paying a tax all this time for an embankment built to improve the property? Really, Mr. Purdie! – "

"They get the value of it!" he said, as testily as he dared. "The land is no longer flooded – "

"Tell this man," said she, with some colour mounting to her face, "that the tax for the dyke is abolished – here and now!"

"Godiva!" said Käthchen, in an undertone, with a bit of a titter.

And the factor would have protested from his own point of view. But this young woman's heart was all aflame. She cared nothing for ridicule, nor for any sort of more practical opposition. Here was some definite wrong that she could put right. She did not want to hear from Mr. Purdie, or from anybody else, what neighbouring landlords might think, or what encouragement it might give the crofters to make other and more impossible demands.

"I don't care what other landlords may say!" said she with firm lips: "You tell me that I improve my property – and then charge these poor people with the cost! And for thirty years they have been paying? Well, I wish you to say to this man that the tax no longer exists – from this moment it no longer exists – it is not to be heard of again!"

The factor made a brief communication: the taciturn crofter answered not a word – not a word of recognition, much less of thanks. But Mary Stanley was not to be daunted by this incivility: as she descended to the waggonette, her face wore a proud look – right and justice should be done, as far as she was able, in this her small sphere: the rest was with the gods.

And again they drove on; but now was there not some subtle softening of the air, some moist odour as of the sea, some indication of the neighbourhood of the Atlantic shores? Clearly they were getting down to the coast. And unhappily, as they went on, the land around them seemed to be getting worse and worse – if there could be a worse. A wilderness of crags and knolls – of Hebridean gneiss mostly; patches of swamp, with black gullies of peat; sterile hills that would have threatened a hoodie crow with starvation: such appeared to be Miss Stanley's newly found property. But a very curious incident now occurred to withdraw her attention from these immediate surroundings – an incident the meaning of which she was to learn subsequently. They had come in sight of a level space that had evidently at one time been a lake, but was now a waste of stones, with a touch of green slime and a few withered rushes here and there; and in the middle of this space, on a mound that had apparently been connected with the mainland, was a heap of scattered blocks that looked like the tumbled-down ruins of some ancient fort.

"What is that, Mr. Purdie?" she called out, still anxious for all possible information.

A malignant grim came over the face of the Little Red Dwarf.

"That," said he, "was once Castle Heimra; and then it was Castle Stanley; and now it is nothing!"

He had scarcely uttered the words when the driver slashed at the neck of one of the horses; and both animals sprung forward with a jerk – a jerk so sudden and violent that Mr. Purdie was nearly pitched headlong from his seat. He threw a savage glance at the driver; but he dared not say anything – the two ladies were within hearing. Later on that evening Mary recalled this little incident – and seemed to understand.

Behold, at last, the sea! – a semi-circular bay sheltered by long black headlands; beyond that the wide grey plain, white-tipped with flashing and hurrying waves; and out towards the horizon a small but precipitous island, a heavy surge springing high along its southern crags. But she had time only for the briefest glance, for here was the village – her own village! – with its smithy, its schoolroom, its inn, its grocery store that was also a post-office, and thereafter a number of not very picturesque cottages scattered about amid bits of poor garden, just above the shore. Nay, at the same moment she caught sight of Lochgarra House – her home that was to be: an odd-looking building that seemed half a jail and half a baronial castle, but was prettily situated among some larch-woods on a promontory on the other side of the bay. Of course they had driven through the little township almost directly; and now she could turn to the sea again – that looked strangely mournful and distant in the wan twilight.