White Heather: A Novel (Volume 2 of 3)

'I don't know how to thank ye,' said he. 'It's when people are going away that they find out how many friends they are leaving behind.'

'In your case' said she, very modestly and prettily, 'it is not difficult to count – you have only to say the whole country-side.' And then she added: 'I heard of the lads that came all the way from Tongue.'

'The wild fellows! – they had a long tramp here and back home again.'

She looked at him rather hesitatingly.

'There will be a great many coming to see you off to-morrow morning, Ronald,' she said.

'I should think not – I should think not,' he said.

'Oh, but I know there will be. Every one is talking of it. And I was thinking – if it was not too much trouble – if you were not too busy – I was wondering if you would come along and say good-bye to my father and mother this evening – I would rather have that than – than – with a crowd of people standing by – '

'Oh yes, certainly,' he said, at once. 'When will I come? Now, if ye like.'

'And Maggie too?'

'Yes, yes, why not?'

'And about my album, Ronald?'

'Well,' said he, with not a little embarrassment, 'I have not written anything in it yet; but I will give it to you in the morning; and – and if there's nothing in it, then ye must just understand that I could not get anything good enough, and I will send something from Glasgow – '

'Indeed no,' said she promptly. 'Why should you trouble about a thing like that? Write your name in the book, Ronald, and that will be enough.'

The three of them now went outside, and the door was shut behind them. It was a beautiful night; the moon was slowly rising over the solitudes of Strath-Terry; and the lake was like a sheet of silver. They were rather silent as they walked along the gray highway; to-morrow was to make a difference to all of their lives.

When they reached the Doctor's cottage, and when Ronald and Maggie were ushered into the parlour, it was clear that the visit had been expected; for there was cake on the table, and there were plates and knives, and a decanter of sherry, and a number of wine-glasses. And not only was the big good-humoured Doctor as friendly as ever, but even the awe-inspiring little Dresden-china lady condescended, in these unusual circumstances, to be gracious. Of course the talk was all about Ronald's going away, and his prospects in Glasgow, and so forth; and Mrs. Douglas took care to impress him with the fact that, on the occasion of Lord Ailine having recently spent an evening with them, his lordship had distinctly approved of the step Ronald had taken, and hoped it might turn out well in every way.

'Will there be any office work, Ronald?' the Doctor asked.

'I suppose so, for a time.'

'You'll not like that, my lad.'

'I'll have to take what comes, like other folk,' was the simple answer.

How pretty Meenie was on this last evening! She did not say much; and she hardly ever looked at him; but her presence, then as ever, seemed to bring with it an atmosphere of gentleness and sweetness; and when, by chance, she did happen to regard him, there was a kind of magic wonder in her eyes that for the moment rather bedazzled him and made his answers to these good people's inquiries somewhat inconsecutive. For they were curious to know about his plans and schemes; and showed much interest in his welfare; while all the time he sate thinking of how strange Glasgow would be without the chance of catching a glimpse of Meenie anywhere; and wondering whether his dream-sweetheart – the imaginary Meenie whom he courted and wooed and won in these idle verses of his – would be nearer to him there, or would fade gradually away and finally disappear.

'In any case, Ronald,' said Mrs. Douglas – and she thus addressed him for the first time, 'you have a good friend in his lordship.'

'I know that.'

'I suppose I am breaking no confidence,' continued the little dame, in her grand way, 'in saying that he plainly intimated to us his willingness, supposing that you were not as successful as we all hope you may be – I say, his lordship plainly intimated to us that he would always have a place open for you somewhere.'

'Yes, I think he would do that,' Ronald said; 'but when a man has once put his hand to the plough he must not go back.'

And perhaps, for one feeble moment of indecision, he asked himself what had ever tempted him to put his hand to the plough, and to go away from this quiet security and friendliness and peace. But it was only for a moment. Of course, all that had been argued out before. The step had been taken; forwards, and not backwards, he must go. Still, to be sitting in this quiet little room – with the strange consciousness that Meenie was so near – watching the nimble, small fingers busy with her knitting – and wondering when she would raise those beautiful, deep, tender, clear eyes; and to think that on the morrow hour after hour would be placing a greater and greater distance between him and the possibility of any such another evening – nay, that it was not only miles but years, and perhaps a whole lifetime, that he was placing between her and him – that was no joyful kind of a fancy. If it had been Meenie who was going away, that would have been easier to bear.

'Call her back, Clebrig; Mudal, call;Ere all of the young springtime be flown'

he would have cried to hill and river and loch and glen, knowing that sooner or later Love Meenie would come back from Glasgow Town. But his own going away was very different – and perhaps a final thing.

By and by he rose, and begged to be excused. Maggie might stay for a while longer with Miss Douglas, if she liked; as for him, he had some matters to attend to. And so they bade him good-bye, and wished him well, and hoped to hear all good things of him. Thus they parted; and he went out by himself into the clear moonlight night.

But he did not go home. A strange unrest and longing had seized him; a desire to be alone with the silence of the night; perhaps some angry impatience that he could not make out so much as a few trivial verses for this beautiful girl-friend whom he might never see again. He could write about his dream-sweetheart easily enough; and was there to be never a word for Meenie herself? So he walked down to the river; and wandered along the winding and marshy banks – startling many wildfowl the while – until he reached the lake. There he launched one of the cobles, and pulled out to the middle of the still sheet of water; and took the oars in again. By this time the redshank and curlews and plover had quieted down once more; there was a deadly stillness all around; and he had persuaded himself that he had only come to have a last look at the hills and the loch and the moorland wastes that Meenie had made magical for him in the years now left behind; and to bid farewell to these; and carry away in his memory a beautiful picture of them.

It was a lonely and a silent world. There was not a sound save the distant murmur of a stream; no breath of wind came down from the Clebrig slopes to ruffle the broad silver sweeps of moonlight on the water; the tiny hamlet half hidden among the trees gave no sign of life. The cottage he had left – the white front of it now palely clear in the distance – seemed a ghostly thing: a small, solitary, forsaken thing, in the midst of this vast amphitheatre of hills that stood in awful commune with the stars. On such a night the wide and vacant spaces can readily become peopled; phantoms issue from the shadows of the woods and grow white in the open; an unknown wind may arise, bringing with it strange singing from the northern seas. And if he forgot the immediate purpose of the verses that he wanted; if he forgot that he must not mention the name of Meenie; if he saw only the little cottage, and the moonlit loch, and the giant bulk of Clebrig that was keeping guard over the sleeping hamlet, and watching that no sprites or spectres should work their evil charms within reach of Meenie's half-listening ear – well, it was all a fire in his blood and his brain, and he could not stay to consider. The phantom-world was revealed; the silence now was filled as with a cry from the lone seas of the far north; and, all impatient and eager and half bewildered, he seemed to press forward to seize those visions and that weird music ere both should vanish and be mute: —

The moonlight lies on Loch Naver,And the night is strange and still;And the stars are twinkling coldlyAbove the Clebrig hill.And there by the side of the water,O what strange shapes are these!O these are the wild witch-maidensDown from the northern seas.And they stand in a magic circle,Pale in the moonlight sheen;And each has over her foreheadA star of golden green.O what is their song? – of sailorsThat never again shall sail;And the music sounds like the sobbingAnd sighing that brings a gale.But who is she who comes yonder? —And all in white is she;And her eyes are open, but nothingOf the outward world can she see.O haste you back, Meenie, haste you,And haste to your bed again;For these are the wild witch-maidensDown from the northern main.They open the magic circle;They draw her into the ring;They kneel before her, and slowlyA strange, sad song they sing —A strange, sad song – as of sailorsThat never again shall sail;And the music sounds like the sobbingAnd sighing that brings a gale.O haste you back, Meenie, haste you,And haste to your bed again;For these are the wild witch-maidensDown from the northern main.'O come with us, rose-white Meenie,To our sea-halls draped with green:O come with us, rose-white Meenie,And be our rose-white queen!'And you shall have robes of splendour,With shells and pearls bestrewn;And a sceptre olden and golden,And a rose-white coral throne.'And by day you will hear the musicOf the ocean come nigher and nigher:And by night you will see your palaceAblaze with phosphor fire.'O come with us, rose-white Meenie,To our sea-halls draped with green;O come with us, rose-white Meenie,And be our rose-white queen!'But Clebrig heard; and the thunderDown from his iron hand sped;And the band of the wild witch-maidensOne swift shriek uttered, and fled.And Meenie awoke, and terrorAnd wonder were in her eyes;And she looked at the moon-white valley,And she looked to the starlit skies.O haste you back, Meenie, haste you,And haste to your bed again;For these are the wild witch-maidensDown from the northern main.O hear you not yet their singingCome faintly back on the breeze? —The song of the wild witch-sistersAs they fly to the Iceland seas.O hark – 'tis a sound like the sobbingAnd sighing that brings a gale:A low, sad song – as of sailorsThat never again shall sail!

Slowly he pulled in to the shore again, and fastened up the boat; and slowly he walked away through the silent and moonlit landscape, revolving these verses in his mind, but not trying in the least to estimate their value, supposing them to have any at all. Even when he had got home, and in the stillness of his own room – for by this time Maggie had gone to bed – was writing out the lines, with apparent ease enough, on a large sheet of paper, it was with no kind of critical doubt or anxiety. He could not have written them otherwise; probably he knew he was not likely to make them any better by over-refining them. And the reason why he put them down on the large sheet of paper was that Meenie's name occurred in them; and she might not like that familiarity to appear in her album; he would fold the sheet of paper and place it in the book, and she could let it remain there or burn it as she chose. And then he went and had his supper, which Maggie had left warm by the fire, and thereafter lit a pipe – or rather two or three pipes, as it befel, for this was the last night before his leaving Inver-Mudal, and there were many dreams and reveries (and even fantastic possibilities) to be dismissed for ever.

The next morning, of course, there was no time or room for poetic fancies. When he had got Maggie to take along the little book to the Doctor's cottage, he set about making his final preparations, and here he was assisted by his successor, one Peter Munro. Finally he went to say good-bye to the dogs.

'Good-bye, doggies, good-bye,' said he, as they came bounding to the front of the kennel, pawing at him through the wooden bars, and barking and whining, and trying to lick his hand. 'Good-bye, Bess! Good-bye, Lugar – lad, lad, we've had many a day on the hill together.'

And then he turned sharply to his companion.

'Ye'll not forget what I told you about that dog, Peter?'

'I will not,' said the other.

'If I thought that dog was not to be looked after, I would get out my rifle this very minute and put a bullet through his head – though it would cost me £7. Mind what I've told ye now; if he's not fed separate, he'll starve; he's that gentle and shy that he'll not go near the trough when the others are feeding. And a single cross word on the hill will spoil him for the day – mind you tell any strange gentlemen that come up with his lordship – some o' them keep roaring at dogs as if they were bull-calves. There's not a better setter in the county of Sutherland than that old Lugar – but he wants civil treatment.'

'I'll look after him, never fear, Ronald,' his companion said. 'And now come away, man. Ye've seen to everything; and the mail-gig will be here in half an hour.'

Ronald was still patting the dogs' heads, and talking to them – he seemed loth to leave them.

'Come away, man,' his companion urged. 'All the lads are at the inn, and they want to have a parting glass with you. Your sister and every one is there, and everything is ready.'

'Very well,' said he, and he turned away rather moodily.

But when they were descended from the little plateau into the highway he saw that Meenie Douglas was coming along the road – and rather quickly; and for a minute he hesitated, lest she should have some message for him.

'Oh, Ronald,' she said, and he hardly noticed that her face was rather pale and anxious, 'I wanted to thank you – I could not let you go away without thanking you – it – it is so beautiful – '

'I should beg your pardon,' said he, with his eyes cast down, 'for making use of your short name – '

'But, Ronald,' she said very bravely (though after a moment's hesitation, as if she had to nerve herself), 'whenever you think of any of us here, I hope you will think of me by that name always – and now, good-bye!'

He lifted his eyes to hers for but a second – for but a second only, and yet, perhaps, with some sudden and unforeseen and farewell message on his part, and on hers some swift and not overglad guessing.

'Good-bye!'

They shook hands in silence, and then she turned and went away; and he rejoined his companion and then they went on together. But Meenie did not re-enter the cottage. She stole away down to the river, and lingered by the bridge, listening. For there were faint sounds audible in the still morning air.

The mail-cart from the north came rattling along, and crossed the bridge, and went on towards the inn, and again there was silence, but for these faint sounds. And now she could make out the thin echoes of the pipes – no doubt one of the young lads was playing —Lochiel's away to France, perhaps, or A Thousand Blessings, for surely no one, on such an occasion, would think of Macrimmon's Lament—

'Macrimmon shall no more returnOh! never, never more return!'

It would be something joyous they were playing there to speed him on his way; and the 'drink at the door' – the Deoch an Dhoruis– would be going the round; and many would be the hand-shaking and farewell. And then, by and by, as she sate there all alone and listening, she heard a faint sound of cheering – and that was repeated, in a straggling sort of fashion; and thereafter there was silence. The mail-cart had driven away for the south.

Nor even now did she go back to the cottage. She wandered away through the wild moorland wastes – hour after hour, and aimlessly; and when, by chance, a shepherd or crofter came along the road, she left the highway and went aside among the heather, pretending to seek for wild-flowers or the like: for sometimes, if not always, there was that in the beautiful, tender Highland eyes which she would have no stranger see.

CHAPTER IX

SOUTHWARDS

As for him, it was a sufficiently joyous departure; for some of the lads about were bent on accompanying him on the mail-car as far as Lairg; and they took with them John Macalpine and his weather-worn pipes to cheer them by the way; and at Crask they each and all of them had a glass of whisky; and on the platform at Lairg railway-station the clamour of farewell was great. And even when he had got quit of that noisy crew, and was in the third-class compartment, and thundering away to the south, his thoughts and fancies were eager and ardent and glad enough; and his brain was busy with pictures; and these were altogether of a joyful and hopeful kind. Already he saw himself on that wide estate – somewhere or other in the Highlands he fondly trusted; draining and planting and enclosing here; there pruning and thinning and felling; manufacturing charcoal and tar; planning temporary roads and bridges; stacking bark and faggots; or discussing with the head-keeper as to the desirability or non-desirability of reintroducing capercailzie. And if the young American lady and her father should chance to come that way, would he not have pleasure and pride in showing them over the place? – nay, his thoughts went farther afield, and he saw before him Chicago, with its masts and its mighty lake, and himself not without a friendly grip of welcome on getting there. As for Meenie, where would she be in those coming and golden and as yet distant days? Far away from him, no doubt; and what else could he expect? – for now he saw her among the fine folk assembled at the shooting-lodge in Glengask – and charming all of them with her sweet and serious beauty and her gentle ways – and again he pictured her seated on the white deck of Sir Alexander's yacht, a soft south wind filling the sails, and the happy gray-blue Highland eyes looking forward contentedly enough to the yellow line of the Orosay shore. That was to be her future – fair and shining; for always he had associated Meenie with beautiful things – roses, the clear tints of the dawn, the singing of a lark in the blue; and who could doubt that her life would continue so, through these bright and freshly-coming years?

Yes, it was a glad enough departure for him; for he was busy and eager, and only anxious to set to work at once. But by and by, when the first novelty and excitement of the travelling was beginning to wear off, he suddenly discovered that the little Maggie, seated in the corner there, was stealthily crying.

'What, what, lass?' said he cheerfully. 'What is it now?'

She did not answer; and so he had to set to work to comfort her; making light of the change; painting in glowing colours all that lay before them; and promising that she should write to Miss Douglas a complete account of all her adventures in the great city. He was not very successful, for the little lass was sorely grieved over the parting from the few friends she had in the world; but at least it was an occupation; and perhaps in convincing her he was likewise convincing himself that all was for the best, and proving that people should be well content to leave the monotony and dulness of a Highland village for the wide opportunities of Glasgow.

But even he, with all his eager hopes and ambitions, was chilled to the heart when at last they drew near to the giant town. They had spent the night in Inverness, for he had some business to transact there on behalf of Lord Ailine; and now it was afternoon – an afternoon dull and dismal, with an east wind blowing that made even the outlying landscape they had come through dreary and hopeless. Then, as they got nearer to the city, such suggestions of the country as still remained grew more and more grim; there were patches of sour-looking grass surrounded by damp stone walls; gaunt buildings soot-begrimed and gloomy; and an ever-increasing blue-gray mist pierced by tall chimneys that were almost spectral in the dulled light. He had been to Glasgow before, but chiefly on one or two swift errands connected with guns and game and fishing-rods; and he did not remember having found it so very melancholy-looking a place as this was. He was rather silent as he got ready for leaving the train.

He found his brother Andrew awaiting them; and he had engaged a cab, for a slight drizzle had begun. Moreover, he said he had secured for Ronald a lodging right opposite the station; and thither the younger brother forthwith transferred his things; then he came down the hollow-resounding stone stair again, and got into the cab, and set out for the Reverend Andrew's house, which was on the south side of the city.

And what a fierce and roaring Maelstrom was this into which they now were plunged! The dusky crowds of people, the melancholy masses of dark-hued buildings, the grimy flagstones, all seemed more or less phantasmal through the gray veil of mist and smoke; but always there arose the harsh and strident rattle of the tram-cars and the waggons and carts – a confused, commingled, unending din that seemed to fill the brain somehow and bewilder one. It appeared a terrible place this, with its cold gray streets and hazy skies, and its drizzle of rain; when, in course of time, they crossed a wide bridge, and caught a glimpse of the river and the masts and funnels of some ships and steamers, these were all ghost-like in the thin, ubiquitous fog. Ronald did not talk much, for the unceasing turmoil perplexed and confused him; and so the stout, phlegmatic minister, whose bilious-hued face and gray eyes were far from being unkindly in their expression, addressed himself mostly to the little Maggie, and said that Rosina and Alexandra and Esther and their brother James were all highly pleased that she was coming to stay with them, and also assured her that Glasgow did not always look so dull and miserable as it did then.

At length they stopped in front of a house in a long, unlovely, neutral-tinted street; and presently two rather weedy-looking girls, who turned out to be Rosina and Alexandra, were at the door, ready to receive the new-comers. Of course it was Maggie who claimed their first attention; and she was carried off to her own quarters to remove the stains of travel (and of tears) from her face; as for Ronald, he was ushered at once into the parlour, where his sister-in-law – a tall, thin woman, with a lachrymose face, but with sufficiently watchful eyes – greeted him in a melancholy way, and sighed, and introduced him to the company. That consisted of a Mr. M'Lachlan – a large, pompous-looking person, with a gray face and short-cropped white hair, whose cool stare of observation and lofty smile of patronage instantly made Ronald say to himself, 'My good friend, we shall have to put you into your proper place;' Mrs. M'Lachlan, an insignificant woman, dowdily dressed; and finally, Mr. Weems, a little, old, withered man, with a timid and appealing look coming from under bushy black eyebrows – though the rest of his hair was gray. This Mr. Weems, as Ronald knew, was in a kind of fashion to become his coach. The poor old man had been half-killed in a railway-accident; had thus been driven from active duty; and now, with a shattered constitution and a nervous system all gone to bits, managed to live somehow on the interest of the compensation-sum awarded him by the railway-company. He did not look much of a hardy forester; but if his knowledge of land and timber measuring and surveying, and of book-keeping and accounts, was such as to enable him to give this stalwart pupil a few practical lessons, so far well; and even the moderate recompense would doubtless be a welcome addition to his income.

And now this high occasion was to be celebrated by a 'meat-tea,' for the Reverend Andrew was no stingy person, though his wife had sighed and sighed again over the bringing into the house of a new mouth to feed. Maggie came downstairs, accompanied by the other members of the family; Mr. M'Lachlan was invited to sit at his hostess's right hand; the others of them took their seats in due course; and the minister pronounced a long and formal blessing, which was not without a reference or two to the special circumstances of their being thus brought together. And if the good man spoke apparently under the assumption that the Deity had a particular interest in this tea-meeting in Abbotsford Place, it was assuredly without a thought of irreverence; to himself the occasion was one of importance; and the way of his life led him to have continual – and even familiar – communion with the unseen Powers.