White Heather: A Novel (Volume 2 of 3)

At the same moment Meenie Douglas was in her own little room, engaged on a work of art of a not very ambitious kind. She had lying before her on the table a pencil-sketch in outline of such features of the landscape as could be seen from the window – the loch, the wooded promontories, Ben Clebrig, and the little clump of trees that sheltered the inn; and she was engaged in making a smaller copy of this drawing, in pen and ink, on a paper-cutter of brown wood. She was not much of an artist, perhaps; but surely these simple outlines were recognisable; and if they were to be entitled 'A Souvenir,' and carried away to the south as a little parting present, might they not in some idle moment of the future recall some brief memory of these northern wilds? So she was at work on this task – and very careful that the lines should be clear and precise – when she heard the sound of voices without – or rather one voice, which presently she recognised to be Ronald's: she could not easily mistake it. And if she were to go to the window and get him to stop for a minute, at the gate, and show him the sketch that she had just about finished – perhaps he would be pleased?

She went to the window – but instantly drew back. She had just caught a glimpse: it was the American young lady he was walking with – at a time when he was supposed to be so busy; and he was carrying her rod for her and her ulster as well as the salmon; and they were laughing and gaily talking together, like a pair of lovers almost on this clear spring day. Meenie went slowly back to the table – her face perhaps a trifle paler than usual; and she sate down, and began to look at the little drawing that she had been rather proud of. But her lips were proud and firm. Why should she give a drawing to any one – more especially to one who was so ready with his friendship and so quick to consort with strangers? The lines on the brown wood seemed cold and uninteresting; she was no longer anxious that they should suggest an accurate picture; nay, she pushed the thing away from her, and rose, and went back to the window, and stood idly gazing out there, her lips still proud, her mien defiant.

And then – well, Ronald was going away. Was it worth while to let pride or self-love come between them and becloud these last few days, when perhaps they might never see each other again? For well she knew of her mother's aims and hopes with regard to herself; and well she knew that – whatever she may have guessed from the verses of Ronald's which assuredly had never been meant for her to see – it was neither for him nor for her to expect that the harsh facts and necessities of the world should give place and yield to a passing fancy, a dream, a kind of wistful, half-poetic shadow of what otherwise might have been. But at least Ronald and she might part friends; nay, they should part friends. And so she returned to the table – overmastering her momentary pride; and she took up the discarded little drawing and regarded it with gentler eyes. For, after all (as she could not forget) Ronald was going away.

CHAPTER VI

POETA … NON FIT

It soon became obvious that the salmon-fishers from the other side of the Atlantic had got into a long spell of deplorably fine weather; and a gentle melancholy settled down upon the souls of the gillies. In vain, morning after morning, the men searched every quarter of the heavens for any sign of even a couple of days' deluge to flood the rivers and send the kelts down and bring the clean salmon up from the sea. This wild and bleak region grew to be like some soft summer fairyland; the blue loch and the yellow headlands, and the far treeless stretches of moor lay basking in the sunlight; Ben Loyal's purples and browns were clear to the summit; Ben Clebrig's snows had nearly all melted away. Nor could the discontented boatmen understand how the two strangers should accept this state of affairs with apparent equanimity. Both were now provided with a book; and when the rods had been properly set so as to be ready for any emergency, they could pass the time pleasantly enough in this perfect stillness, gliding over the smooth waters, and drinking in the sweet mountain air. As for Miss Carry, she had again attacked the first volume of Gibbon – for she would hot be beaten; and very startling indeed it was when a fish did happen to strike the minnow, to be so suddenly summoned back from Palmyra to this Highland loch. In perfect silence, with eyes and attention all absented, she would be reading thus —

'When the Syrian queen was brought into the presence of Aurelian, he sternly asked her, how she had presumed to rise in arms against the Emperor of Rome? The answer of Zenobia was a prudent mixture of respect and firmness' – when sharp would come the warning cry of Malcolm – 'There he is, Miss! – there he is!' – and she would dash down the historian to find the rod being violently shaken and the reel screaming out its joyous note. Moreover, in this still weather, the unusual visitor not unfrequently brought some other element of surprise with him. She acquired a considerable experience of the different forms of foul-hooking and of the odd manoeuvres of the fish in such circumstances. On one occasion the salmon caught himself on the minnow by his dorsal fin; and for over an hour contented himself with rolling about under water without once showing himself, and with such a strain that she thought he must be the champion fish of the lake: when at last they did get him into the boat he was found to be a trifle under ten pounds. But, taken altogether, this cultivation of literature, varied by an occasional 'fluke' of a capture, and these placid and dreamlike mornings and afternoons, were far from being as satisfactory as the former and wilder days when Ronald was in the boat, even with all their discomforts of wind and rain and snow.

By this time she had acquired another grievance.

'Why did you let him go, pappa, without a single word?' she would say, as they sate over their books or newspapers in the evening. 'It was my only chance. You could easily have introduced yourself to him by speaking of the shooting – '

'You know very well, Carry,' he would answer – trying to draw her into the fields of common sense – 'I can say nothing about that till I see how mother's health is.'

'I am sure she would say yes if she saw what the place has done for you, pappa; salmon-fishing has proved better for you than bromide of potassium. But that's not the trouble at all. Why did you let him go? Why did you let him spend the evening at the Doctor's? – and the next morning he went about the whole time with Ronald! My only chance of spurning a lord, too. Do they kneel in this country, pappa, when they make their declaration; or is that only in plays? Never mind; it would be all the same. "No, my lord; the daughter of a free Republic cannot wed a relic of feudalism; farewell, my lord, farewell! I know that you are heart-broken for life; but the daughter of a free Republic must be true to her manifest destiny."'

'Oh, be quiet!'

'And then the girls at home, when I got back, they would all have come crowding around: "Do tell, now, did you get a British nobleman to propose, Carry?" "What do you imagine I went to Europe for?" "And you rejected him?" "You bet your pile on that. Why, you should have seen him writhe on the floor when I spurned him! I spurned him, I tell you I did – the daughter of a free Republic" – '

'Will you be quiet!'

'But it was really too bad, pappa!' she protested. 'There he was lounging around all the morning. And all I heard him say was when he was just going – when he was on the mail-car, "Ronald," he called out, "have you got a match about you?" – and he had a wooden pipe in his hand. And that's all I know about the manners and conversation of the British nobility; and what will they say of me at home?'

'When does Ronald go?' he would ask; and this, at least, was one sure way of bringing her back to the paths of sanity and soberness; for the nearer that this departure came, the more concerned she was about it, having some faint consciousness that she herself had a share of the responsibility.

And in another direction, moreover, she was becoming a little anxious. No message of any kind had arrived from the Chicago Citizen. Now she had written to Miss Kerfoot before she left for Paris; her stay in the French capital had extended to nearly three weeks; there was the space occupied in going and returning; so that if Jack Huysen meant to do anything with the verses it was about time that that should appear. And the more she thought of it the more she set her heart on it, and hoped that Ronald's introduction to the reading public would be a flattering one and one of which he could reasonably be proud. Her father had it in his power to secure his material advancement; and that was well enough; but what if it were reserved for her to confer a far greater service on him? For if this first modest effort were welcomed in a friendly way, might he not be induced to put forth a volume, and claim a wider recognition? It need not interfere with his more practical work; and then, supposing it were successful? Look at the status it would win for him – a thing of far more value in the old country, where society is gradated into ranks, than in her country, where every one (except hotel clerks, as she insisted) was on the same plane. He would then be the equal of anybody – even in this old England; she had at least acquired so far a knowledge of English society. And if he owed the first suggestion and impulse to her? – if she were to be the means, in however small and tentative a fashion, of his ultimately establishing his fame? That he could do so if he tried, she never thought of doubting. She saw him every day, and the longer she knew him the more she was certain that the obvious mental force that seemed to radiate from him in the ordinary conversation and discussion of everyday life only wanted to be put into a definite literary channel to make its mark. And was not the time ripe for a poet? And it was not Edinburgh, or Glasgow, or London that had nowadays to decide on his merits, but two great continents of English-speaking people.

At length came the answer to her urgent prayer – a letter from Miss Kerfoot and a copy of the Chicago Citizen. The newspaper she opened first; saw with delight that a long notice – a very long notice indeed – had been accorded to the verses she had sent; and with a proud heart she put the paper in her pocket, for careful reading when she should get down to the lake. Miss Kerfoot's letter she glanced over; but it did not say much; the writer observed that Mr. Jack Huysen had only seemed half pleased when informed of Carry's extraordinary interest in the phenomenal Scotch gamekeeper; and, referring to the article in the Citizen, she said Jack Huysen had entrusted the writing of it to Mr. G. Quincy Regan, who was, she understood, one of the most cultured young men in Chicago, and likely to make quite a reputation for himself ere long. There were some other matters mentioned in this letter; but they need not detain us here.

Miss Carry was in very high spirits as she set forth from the inn with her father to walk down to the boats. They met Ronald, too, on their way; he was accompanied by the man who was to take his place after his leaving; and Miss Carry could not help comparing the two of them as they came along the road. But, after all, it was not outward appearance that made the real difference between men; it was mental stature; she had that in her pocket which could show to everybody how Ronald was a head and shoulders over any of his peers. And she took but little interest in the setting up of the rods or the selection of the minnows; she wanted to be out on the lake, alone, in the silence, to read line by line and word by word this introduction of her hero to the public.

The following is the article:

'A REMARKABLE LITERARY DISCOVERY – OUR FELLOW-CITIZENS ABROAD – ANOTHER RUSTIC POET – CHICAGO CLAIMS HIM. It may be in the recollection of some of our readers that a few years ago a small party of American tourists, consisting of Curtis H. Mack, who was one of our most distinguished major-generals in the rebellion, and is now serving on the Indian frontier; his niece, Miss Hettie F. Doig, a very talented lady and contributor to several of our best periodicals; and John Grimsby Patterson, editor of the Baltimore Evening News, were travelling in Europe, when they had the good fortune to discover an Irish poet, Patrick Milligan, who had long languished in obscurity, no doubt the victim of British jealousy as well as of misrule. Major-General Mack interested himself in this poor man, and, in conjunction with William B. Stevens, of Cleveland, Ohio, had him brought over to this country, where they were eventually successful in obtaining for him a postmastership in New Petersburg, Conn., leaving him to devote such time as he pleased to the service of the tuneful nine. Mr. Milligan's Doric reed has not piped to us much of late years; but we must all remember the stirring verses which he wrote on the occasion of Colonel George W. Will's nomination for Governor of Connecticut. It has now been reserved for another party of American travellers, still better known to us than the above, for they are no other than our esteemed fellow-citizen, Mr. Josiah Hodson and his brilliant and accomplished daughter, Miss Caroline Hodson, to make a similar discovery in the Highlands of Scotland; and in view of such recurring instances, we may well ask whether there be not in the mental alertness of our newer civilisation a capacity for the detection and recognition of intellectual merit which exists not among the deadening influences of an older and exhausted civilisation. It has sometimes been charged against this country that we do not excel in arts and letters; that we are in a measure careless of them; that political problems and material interests occupy our mind. The present writer, at least, is in no hurry to repel that charge, odious as it may seem to some. We, as Americans, should remember that the Athenian Republic, with which our western Republic has nothing to fear in the way of comparison, when it boasted its most lavish display of artistic and literary culture, was no less conspicuous for its moral degeneracy and political corruption. It was in the age of Pericles and of Phidias, of Socrates and Sophocles, of Euripides and Aristophanes and Thucydides, that Athens showed herself most profligate; private licence was unbridled; justice was bought and sold; generals incited to war that they might fill their pockets out of the public purse; and all this spectacle in striking contrast with the manly virtues of the rude and unlettered kingdom of Sparta, whose envoys were laughed at because they had not the trick of Athenian oratory and casuistry. We say, then, that we are not anxious to repel this charge brought against our great western Republic, that we assign to arts and letters a secondary place; on the contrary, we are content that the over-cultivation of these should fatten on the decaying and effete nations of Europe, as phosphorus shines in rotten wood.'

Now she had determined to read every sentence of this article conscientiously, as something more than a mere intellectual treat; but, as she went on, joy did not seem to be the result. The reference to Patrick Milligan and the postmastership in Connecticut she considered to be distinctly impertinent; but perhaps Jack Huysen had not explained clearly to the young gentleman all that she had written to Emma Kerfoot? Anyhow, she thought, when he came to Ronald's little Highland poem, he would perhaps drop his Athenians, and talk more like a reasonable human being.

'That the first strain from the new singer's lyre should be placed at the services of the readers of the Citizen, we owe to the patriotism of the well-known and charming lady whose name we have given above; nor could the verses have fallen into better hands. In this case there is no need that Horace should cry to Tyndaris —

O matre pulchrâ filia pulchrior,Quem criminosis cunque voles modumPones iambis, sive flammâSive mari libet Hadriano.

Moreover, we have received a hint that this may not be the last piece of the kind with which we may be favoured; so that we have again to thank our fair fellow-townswoman for her kindly attention. But lest our readers may be growing weary of this prolegomenon, we will at once quote this latest utterance of the Scottish muse which has come to us under such favourable auspices:'

Here followed Ronald's poor verses, that perhaps looked insignificant enough, after this sonorous trumpet-blaring. The writer proceeded:

'Now certain qualities in this composition are so obvious that we need hardly specify them; we give the writer credit for simplicity, pathos, and a hearty sympathy with the victims of the tyrannical greed of the chase-loving British landlord. But it is with no intent of looking a gift-horse in the mouth (which would be a poor return for the courtesy of the lady who has interested herself in the rustic bard) if we proceed to resolve this piece into its elements, that we may the more accurately cast the horoscope of this new applicant for the public applause. To begin with, the sentiment of nostalgia is but a slender backbone for any work of literary art. In almost every case it is itself a fallacy. What were the conditions under which these people – arbitrarily and tyrannically, it may have been – were forced away from their homes? Either they were bad agriculturists or the land was too poor to support them; and in either case their transference to a more generous soil could be nothing but a benefit to them. Their life must have been full of privations and cares. Forsan et haec olim meminisse juvabit; but the pleasure ought to lie in thinking of the escape; so that we maintain that to base any piece of literary work on such a false sentiment as nostalgia is seen to be, leads us to suspect the veracity of the writer and calls upon us to be on our guard. Moreover, we maintain that it is of the essence of pastoral and idyllic poetry to be cheerful and jocund; and it is to be observed that sadness prevails in poetry only when a nation has passed its youth and becomes saturated with the regret of old age. We prefer the stories told

Where Corydon and Thyrsis metAre at their savoury dinner set;

and the lyrist when he sings

Dulce ridentem Lalagen amabo,Dulce loquentem;

and we hold that when the poets of a nation are permeated by a lackadaisical sentiment – when they have the candour to style themselves the idle singers of an empty day – when the burden of their song is regret and weariness and a lamentation over former joys – then it is time for such poets and the nation they represent to take a back seat in the lecture halls of literature, and give way to the newer and stronger race that is bound to dominate the future.'

She read no farther; and it is a great pity that she did not; for the writer by and by went on to say some very nice things about these unlucky verses; and even hinted that here was a man who might be benefited by coming to stay in Chicago, – 'the future capital of the future empire of the world,' – and by having his eyes opened as to the rate of progress possible in these modern days; and wound up with a most elaborate compliment to the intellectual perspicacity and judgment of Miss Carry herself. She did not read beyond what is quoted above for the simple reason that she was in a most violent rage, and also extremely mortified with herself for being so vexed. She tore the newspaper into shreds, and crushed these together, and flung them into the bottom of the boat. Her cheeks were quite pale; her eyes burning; and through all the anger of her disappointment ran the shame of the consciousness that it was she who had exposed Ronald to this insult. What though he should never know anything about it? Her friends in Chicago would know. And it was the man whom she wanted to glorify and make a hero of who had, through her instrumentality, been subjected to the pedantic criticism, the pretentious analyses, and, worst of all, the insulting patronage of this unspeakable ass. Suddenly she regretted the destruction of the newspaper; she would like to have looked at it again, to justify her wrath. No matter; she could remember enough; and she would not forget Jack Huysen's share in this transaction.

She was very silent and reserved at lunch time; and her father began to believe that, after all, in spite of her repeated assurances, their ill-luck with the fishing was weighing on her spirits.

'You know, Carry,' said he, 'it is not in the nature of things that weather like this can last in the Highlands of Scotland. It is notoriously one of the wettest places in the world. There must be rain coming soon; and then think of all the fish that will be rushing up in shoals, and what a time we shall have.'

'I am not disappointed with the fishing at all, pappa,' she said. 'I think we have done very well.'

'What is the matter, then?'

'Oh, nothing.'

And then she said —

'Well, I will tell you, pappa. I asked Jack Huysen to do me a very particular favour; and he did not do it; and when I next see Jack Huysen, I think he will find it a very cold day.'

The words were mysterious; but the tone was enough.

And all the afternoon she sate in the stern of the coble and brooded, composing imaginary letters to the editor of the New York Herald, to the editor of the Nation, to the editor of the Chicago Tribune, to the editor of Puck, and a great many other journals, all of these phantom epistles beginning 'As an American girl I appeal to you,' and proceeding to beg of the editor to hold up to merciless scorn a certain feeble, shallow, and impertinent article (herewith enclosed) which had appeared in the Chicago Citizen. And on the way home, too, in the evening, she began to question her father as to his personal acquaintance with editors and journalists, which seemed to be of the slightest; and she at length admitted that she wanted some one to reply – and sharply – to an article that had been written about a friend of hers.

'You let that alone,' her father said. 'It's not very easy for any one to meddle in the politics of our country without coming out more or less tattooed; for they don't mind what they say about you; and you are very well to be out of it.'

'It isn't politics at all,' she said. 'And – and – the article is written about a friend of mine – and – I want to have the writer told what a fool he is.'

'But probably he would not believe it,' her father said quietly.

'He would see that some one else believed it.'

'I am not sure that that would hurt him much,' was the unsatisfactory answer.

When they drew near to Inver-Mudal she found herself quite afraid and ashamed at the thought of their possibly meeting Ronald. Had she not betrayed him? He had sought for no recognition; probably he was too proud or too manly and careless about what any one might write of him; it was she who had put him into that suppliant attitude, and brought upon him the insolent encouragement of a microcephalous fool. This was the return she had made him for all his kindness to her father and to herself. Why, he had told her to burn the verses! And to think that she should have been the means of submitting them to the scrutiny and patronage of this jackanapes – and that Mr. J. C. Huysen should as good as say 'Well, this is what we think of your prodigy' – all this was near bringing tears of rage to her eyes. For Miss Carry, it must be repeated, was 'a real good fellow,' and very loyal to her friends, and impatient of injustice done them; and perhaps, unconsciously to herself, she may have felt some of the consternation of the wild animal whose duty it is to protect her mate with her superior feminine watchfulness, and who, through neglect or carelessness, allows the destroyer to come in and slay. In any case, it certainly promised to be 'a very cold day' for Mr. Jack Huysen when these two should meet in Chicago.

That night, after dinner, father and daughter went out for a stroll; for by this time the moon was drawing to its full again; and all the world lay peaceful and silent in the wan clear light. They had not emerged from the trees in front of the inn on to the white pathway of the road when a sound in the distance caught Miss Carry's ears, and instantly she touched her father's arm and drew him back into the shadow. She wanted to hear what song this was that Ronald was singing on his homeward way.