White Heather: A Novel (Volume 2 of 3)

'DEAREST EM,' she wrote – after having studied a long while as to how she should begin – 'would it surprise you to know that I have at last found my fate in the very handsome person of a Scotch gamekeeper? Well, it aint so; don't break the furniture; but the fact is my poor brain has been wool-gathering a little in this land of wild storms and legends and romantic ballads; and to-morrow I am fleeing away to Paris – the region of clear atmosphere, and reasonable people, and cynicism; and I hope to have any lingering cobwebs of romance completely blown out of my head. Not that I would call it romance, even if it were to happen; I should call it merely the plain result of my father's theories. You know he is always preaching that all men are born equal; which isn't true anyhow; he would get a little nearer the truth if he were to say that all men are born equal except hotel clerks, who are of a superior race; but wouldn't it be a joke if I were to take him at his word, and ask him how he would like a gamekeeper as his son-in-law? But you need not be afraid, my dear Em; this chipmunk has still got a little of her senses left; and I may say in the words of the poet —

"There is not in this wide world a valet so sweet" —

no, nor any Claude Melnotte of a gardener, nor any handsome coachman or groom, who could induce me to run away with him. It would be "playing it too low down on pa," as you used to say; besides, one knows how these things always end. Another besides; how do I know that he would marry me, even if I asked him? – and I shouldhave to ask him, for he would never ask me. Now, Em, if you don't burn this letter the moment you have read it, I will murder you, as sure as you are alive.

'Besides, it is a shame. He is a real good fellow; and no such nonsense has got into his head, I know. I know it, because I tried him twice for fun; I got him to tie my cap under my chin; and I made him take my pocket-handkerchief out of my breast-pocket when I was fighting a salmon (I caught five in one day– monsters!), and do you think the bashful young gentleman was embarrassed and showed trembling fingers? Not a bit; I think he thought me rather a nuisance – in the polite phraseology of the English people. But I wish I could tell you about him, really. It's all very well to say he is very handsome and hardy-looking and weather-tanned; but how can I describe to you how respectful his manner is, and yet always keeping his own self-respect, and he won't quarrel with me – he only laughs when I have been talking absolute folly – though papa and he have rare fights, for he has very positive opinions, and sticks to his guns, I can tell you. But the astonishing thing is his education; he has been nowhere, but seems to know everything; he seems to be quite content to be a gamekeeper, though his brother took his degree at college and is now in the Scotch Church. I tell you he makes me feel pretty small at times. The other night papa and I went along to his cottage after dinner, and found him reading Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire– lent him by his brother, it appeared. I borrowed the first volume – but, oh, squawks! it is a good deal too stiff work for the likes of me. And then there is never the least pretence or show, but all the other way; he will talk to you as long as you like about his deerstalking and about what he has seen his dogs do; but never a word about books or writing – unless you happen to have found out.

'Now I'm coming to business. I have never seen any writing of his until this morning, when, after long goading, he showed me a little poem which I will copy out and enclose in this letter when I have finished. Now, darling Em, I want you to do me a real kindness; the first time you see Jack Huysen – I don't want to ask the favour of him direct – will you ask him to print it in the Citizen, and to say something nice about it? I don't want any patronage: understand – I mean let Jack Huysen understand – that Ronald Strang is a particular friend of both my father and myself; and that I am sending you this without his authority, but merely to give him a little pleasant surprise, perhaps, when he sees it in print; and perhaps to tempt him to give us some more. I should like him to print a volume, – for he is really far above his present station, and it is absurd he should not take his place, – and if he did that I know of a young party who would buy 500 copies even if she were to go back home without a single Paris bonnet. Tell Jack Huysen there is to be no patronage, mind; there is to be nothing about the peasant poet, or anything like that; for this man is a gentleman, if I know anything about it; and I won't have him trotted out as a phenomenon – to be discussed by the dudes who smoke cigarettes in Lincoln Park. If you could only talk to him for ten minutes it would be better than fifty letters, but I suppose there are attractions nearer home just at present. My kind remembrances to T.T.

'I forgot to say that I am quite ignorant as to whether newspapers ever pay for poetry – I mean if a number of pieces were sent? Or could Jack Huysen find a publisher who would undertake a volume; my father will see he does not lose anything by it. I really want to do something for this Ronald, for he has been so kind and attentive to us; and before long it may become more difficult to do so; for of course a man of his abilities is not likely to remain as he is; indeed, he has already formed plans for getting away altogether from his present way of life, and whatever he tries to do I know he will do – and easily. But if I talk any more about him, you will be making very very mistaken guesses; and I won't give you the delight of imagining even for a moment that I have been caught at last; when the sad event arrives there will be time enough for you to take your cake-walk of triumph up and down the room – of course to Dancing in the Barn, as in the days of old.'

Here followed a long and rambling chronicle of her travels in Europe since her last letter, all of which may be omitted; the only point to be remarked was that her very brief experiences of Scotland took up a disproportionately large portion of the space, and that she was minute in her description of the incidents and excitement of salmon-fishing. Then followed an outline of her present plans; a string of questions; a request for an instant reply; and finally —

'With dearest love, old Em,

'Thine,

'Carry.'

And then she had to copy the verses; but when she had done that, and risen, and gone to the window for a time, some misgiving seemed to enter her mind, for she returned to the table, and sate down again, and wrote this postscript:

'Perhaps, after all, you won't see much in this little piece; if you were here, among the very places, and affected by all the old stories and romantic traditions and the wild scenery, it might be different. Since I've been to Europe I've come to see what's the trouble about our reading English history and literature at home; why, you can't do it, you can't understand it, unless you have lived in an atmosphere that is just full of poetry and romance, and meeting people whose names tell you they belong to the families who did great things in history centuries and centuries ago. I can't explain it very well – not even to myself; but I feel it; why, you can't take a single day's drive in England without coming across a hundred things of interest – Norman churches, and the tombs of Saxon Kings, and old abbeys, and monasteries, and battlefields, and, just as interesting as any, farm-houses of the sixteenth century in their quaint old-fashioned orchards. And as for Scotland, why, it is just steeped to the lips in poetry and tradition; the hills and the glens have all their romantic stories of the clans, many of them very pathetic; and you want to see these wild and lonely places before you can understand the legends. And in southern Scotland too – what could any one at home make of such a simple couplet as this —

"The King sits in Dunfermline town,Drinking the blude-red wine;"

but when you come near Dunfermline and see the hill where Malcolm Canmore built his castle in the eleventh century, and when you are told that it was from this very town that Sir Patrick Spens and the Scots lords set out for "Norroway o'er the faem," everything comes nearer to you. In America, I remember very well, Flodden Field sounded to us something very far away, that we couldn't take much interest in; but if you were here just now, dear Em, and told that a bit farther north there was a river that the Earl of Caithness and his clan had to cross when they went to Flodden, and that the people living there at this very day won't go near it on the anniversary of the battle, because on that day the ghosts of the earl and his men, all clad in green tartan, come home again and are seen to cross the river, wouldn't that interest you? In America we have got nothing behind us; when you leave the day before yesterday you don't want to go back. But here, in the most vulgar superstitions and customs, you come upon the strangest things. Would you believe it, less than twenty miles from this place there is a little lake that is supposed to cure the most desperate diseases – diseases that the doctors have given up; and the poor people meet at midnight, on the first Monday after the change of the moon, and then they throw a piece of money into the lake, and go in and dip themselves three times, and then they must get home before sunrise. Perhaps it is very absurd, but they belong to that same imaginative race of people who have left so many weird stories and poetical legends behind them; and what I say is that you want to come over and breathe this atmosphere of tradition and romance, and see the places, before you can quite understand the charm of all that kind of literature. And perhaps you don't find much in these verses about the poor people who have been driven away from their native strath? Well, they don't claim to be much. They were never meant for you to see. But yes, I do think you will like them; and anyhow Jack Huysen has got to like them, and treat them hospitably, unless he is anxious to have his hair raised.

'Gracious me, I think I must hire a hall. I have just read this scrawl over. Sounds rather muzzy, don't it? But it's this poor brain of mine that has got full of confusion and cobwebs and theories of equality, when I wasn't attending to it. My arms had the whole day's work to do – as they remind me at this minute; and the Cerebral Hemispheres laid their heads, or their half-heads together, when I was busy with the salmon; and entered into a conspiracy against me; and began to make pictures – ghosts, phantom earls, and romantic shepherds and peasant-poets, and I don't know what kind of dreams of a deer stalker walking down Wabash Avenue. But, as I said, to-morrow I start for Paris, thank goodness; and in that calmer atmosphere I hope to come to my senses again; and I will send you a long account of Lily Selden's marriage – though your last letter to me was a fraud: what do I care about the C.M.C.A.? This letter, anyhow, you must burn; I don't feel like reading it over again myself, or perhaps I would save you the trouble; but you may depend on it that the one I shall send you from Paris will be quite sane.

'Second P.S. – Of course you must manage Jack Huysen with a little discretion. I don't want to be drawn into it any more than I can help; I mean, I would just hate to write to him direct and ask him for a particular favour; but this is a very little one, and you know him as well as any of us. And mind you burn this letter – instantly – the moment you have read it – for it is just full of nonsense and wool-gathering; and it will not occur again. Toujours a toi. C.H.'

'What have you been writing all this time?' her father said, when she rose.

'A letter – to Emma Kerfoot.'

'It will make her stare. You don't often write long letters.'

'I do not,' said she, gravely regarding the envelope; and then she added solemnly: 'But this is the record of a chapter in my life that is now closed for ever – at least, I hope so.'

CHAPTER III

HESITATIONS

The waggonette stood at the door; Miss Carry's luggage was put in; and her father was waiting to see her off. But the young lady herself seemed unwilling to take the final step; twice she went back into the inn, on some pretence or another; and each time she came out she looked impatiently around, as if wondering at the absence of some one.

'Well, ain't you ready yet?' her father asked.

'I want to say good-bye to Ronald,' she said half angrily.

'Oh, nonsense – you are not going to America. Why, you will be back in ten days or a fortnight. See here, Carry,' he added, 'are you sure you don't want me to go part of the way with you?'

'Not at all,' she said promptly. 'It is impossible for Mary to mistake the directions I wrote to her; and I shall find her in the Station Hotel at Inverness all right. Don't you worry about me, pappa.'

She glanced along the road again, in the direction of the keeper's cottage; but there was no one in sight.

'Pappa dear,' she said, in an undertone – for there were one or two onlookers standing by – 'if Ronald should decide on giving up his place here, and trying what you suggested, you'll have to stand by him.'

'Oh yes, I'll see him through,' was the complacent answer. 'I should take him to be the sort of man who can look after himself; but if he wants any kind of help – well, here I am; I won't go back on a man who is acting on my advice. Why, if he were to come out to Chicago – '

'Oh no, not Chicago, pappa,' she said, somewhat earnestly, 'not to Chicago. I am sure he will be more at home – he will be happier – in his own country.'

She looked around once more; and then she stepped into the waggonette.

'He might have come to see me off,' she said, a little proudly. 'Good-bye, pappa dear – I will send you a telegram as soon as I get to Paris.'

The two horses sprang forward; Miss Carry waved her lily hand; and then set to work to make herself comfortable with wraps and rugs, for the morning was chill. She thought it was very unfriendly of Ronald not to have come to say good-bye. And what was the reason of it? Of course he could know nothing of the nonsense she had written to her friend in Chicago.

'Have you not seen Ronald about anywhere?' she asked of the driver.

'No, mem,' answered that exceedingly shy youth, 'he wass not about all the morning. But I heard the crack of a gun; maybe he wass on the hill.'

And presently he said —

'I'm thinking that's him along the road – it's two of his dogs whatever.'

And indeed this did turn out to be Ronald who was coming striding along the road, with his gun over his shoulder, a brace of setters at his heels, and something dangling from his left hand. The driver pulled up his horses.

'I've brought ye two or three golden plover to take with ye, Miss Hodson,' Ronald said – and he handed up the birds.

Well, she was exceedingly pleased to find that he had not neglected her, nay, that he had been especially thinking of her and her departure. But what should she do with these birds in a hotel?

'It's so kind of you,' she said, 'but really I'm afraid they're – would you not rather give them to my father?'

'Ye must not go away empty-handed,' said he, with good-humoured insistence; and then it swiftly occurred to her that perhaps this was some custom of the neighbourhood; and so she accepted the little parting gift with a very pretty speech of thanks.

He raised his cap, and was going on.

'Ronald,' she called, and he turned.

'I wish you would tell me,' she said – and there was a little touch of colour in the pretty, pale, interesting face – 'if there is anything I could bring from London that would help you – I mean books about chemistry – or – or – about trees – or instruments for land-surveying – I am sure I could get them – '

He laughed, in a doubtful kind of a way.

'I'm obliged to ye,' he said, 'but it's too soon to speak about that. I havena made up my mind yet.'

'Not yet?'

'No.'

'But you will?'

He said nothing.

'Good-bye, then.'

She held out her hand, so that he could not refuse to take it. So they parted; and the horses' hoofs rang again in the silence of the valley; and she sat looking after the disappearing figure and the meekly following dogs. And then, in the distance, she thought she could make out some faint sound: was he singing to himself as he strode along towards the little hamlet?

'At all events,' she said to herself, with just a touch of pique, 'he does not seem much downhearted at my going away.' And little indeed did she imagine that this song he was thus carelessly and unthinkingly singing was all about Meenie, and red and white roses, and trifles light and joyous as the summer air. For not yet had black care got a grip of his heart.

But this departure of Miss Carry for the south now gave him leisure to attend to his own affairs and proper duties, which had suffered somewhat from his attendance in the coble; and it was not until all these were put straight that he addressed himself to the serious consideration of the ambitious and daring project that had been placed before him. Hitherto it had been pretty much of an idle speculation – a dream, in short, that looked very charming and fascinating as the black-eyed young lady from over the seas sate in the stern of the boat and chatted through the idle hours. Her imagination did not stay to regard the immediate and practical difficulties and risks; all these seemed already surmounted; Ronald had assumed the position to which he was entitled by his abilities and personal character; she only wondered which part of Scotland he would be living in when next her father and herself visited Europe; and whether they might induce him to go over with them for a while to the States. But when Ronald himself, in cold blood, came to consider ways and means, there was no such plain and easy sailing. Not that he hesitated about cutting himself adrift from his present moorings; he had plenty of confidence in himself, and knew that he could always earn a living with his ten fingers, whatever happened. Then he had between £80 and £90 lodged in a savings bank in Inverness; and out of that he could pay for any classes he might have to attend, or perhaps offer a modest premium if he wished to get into a surveyor's office for a short time. But there were so many things to think of. What should he do about Maggie, for example? Then Lord Ailine had always been a good master to him: would it not seem ungrateful that he should throw up his situation without apparent reason? And so forth, and so forth, through cogitations long and anxious; and many a half-hour on the hillside and many a half-hour by the slumbering peat-fire was given to this great project; but always there was one side of the question that he shut out from his mind. For how could he admit to himself that this lingering hesitation – this dread, almost, of what lay await for him in the future – had anything to do with the going away from Meenie, and the leaving behind him, and perhaps for ever, the hills and streams and lonely glens that were all steeped in the magic and witchery of her presence? Was it not time to be done with idle fancies? And if, in the great city – in Edinburgh or Glasgow, as the case might be – he should fall to thinking of Ben Loyal and Bonnie Strath-Naver, and the long, long days on Clebrig; and Meenie coming home in the evening from her wanderings by Mudal-Water, with a few wild-flowers, perhaps, or a bit of white heather, but always with her beautiful blue-gray Highland eyes so full of kindness as she stopped for a few minutes' friendly chatting – well, that would be a pretty picture to look back upon, all lambent and clear in the tender colours that memory loves to use. A silent picture, of course: there would be no sound of the summer rills, nor the sweeter sound of Meenie's voice; but not a sad picture; only remote and ethereal, as if the years had come between, and made everything distant and pale and dreamlike.

The first definite thing that he did was to write to his brother in Glasgow, acquainting him with his plans, and begging him to obtain some further particulars about the Highland and Agricultural Society's certificates. The answer that came back from Glasgow was most encouraging; for the Rev. Alexander Strang, though outwardly a heavy and lethargic man, had a shrewd head enough, and was an enterprising shifty person, not a little proud of the position that he had won for himself, and rather inclined to conceal from his circle of friends – who were mostly members of his congregation – the fact that his brother was merely a gamekeeper in the Highlands. Nay, more, he was willing to assist; he would take Maggie into his house, so that there might be no difficulty in that direction; and in the meantime he would see what were the best class-books on the subjects named, so that Ronald might be working away at them in these comparatively idle spring and summer months, and need not give up his situation prematurely. There was even some hint thrown out that perhaps Ronald might board with his brother; but this was not pressed; for the fact was that Mrs. Alexander was a severely rigid disciplinarian, and on the few occasions on which Ronald had been their guest she had given both brothers to understand that the frivolous gaiety of Ronald's talk, and the independence of his manners, and his Gallio-like indifference about the fierce schisms and heart-burnings in the Scotch Church were not, in her opinion, in consonance with the atmosphere that ought to prevail in a Free Church minister's house. But on the whole the letter was very friendly and hopeful; and Ronald was enjoined to let his brother know when his decision should be finally taken, and in what way assistance could be rendered him.

One night the little Maggie stole away through the dark to the Doctor's cottage. There was a light in the window of Meenie's room; she could hear the sound of the piano; no doubt Meenie was practising and alone; and on such occasions a visit from Maggie was but little interruption. And so the smaller girl went boldly towards the house and gained admission, and was proceeding upstairs without any ceremony, when the sudden cessation of the music caused her to stop. And then she heard a very simple and pathetic air begin – just touched here and there with a few chords: and was Meenie, tired with the hard work of the practising, allowing herself this little bit of quiet relaxation? She was singing too – though so gently that Maggie could scarcely make out the words. But she knew the song – had not Meenie sung it many times before to her? – and who but Meenie could put such tenderness and pathos into the simple air? She had almost to imagine the words – so gentle was the voice that went with those lightly-touched chords —

'The sun rase sae rosy, the gray hills adorning,Light sprang the laverock, and mounted on hie,When true to the tryst o' blythe May's dewy morning,Jeanie cam' linking out owre the green lea.To mark her impatience I crap 'mong the brackens,Aft, aft to the kent gate she turned her black e'e;Then lying down dowilie, sighed, by the willow tree,"I am asleep, do not waken me."'2

Then there was silence. The little Maggie waited; for this song was a great favourite with Ronald, who himself sometimes attempted it; and she would be able to tell him when she got home that she had heard Meenie sing it – and he always listened with interest to anything, even the smallest particulars, she could tell him about Meenie and about what she had done or said. But where were the other verses? She waited and listened; the silence was unbroken. And so she tapped lightly at the door and entered.

And then something strange happened. For when Maggie shut the door behind her and went forward, Meenie did not at once turn her head to see who this was, but had hastily whipped out her handkerchief and passed it over her eyes. And when she did turn, it was with a kind of look of bravery – as if to dare any one to say that she had been crying – though there were traces of tears on her cheeks.

'Is it you, Maggie? I am glad to see you,' she managed to say.

The younger girl was rather frightened and sorely concerned as well.

'But what is it, Meenie dear?' she said, going and taking her hand. 'Are you in trouble?'