White Heather: A Novel (Volume 2 of 3)

But it was not Ronald's affairs that were to be the staple of conversation at this somewhat melancholy banquet. It very soon appeared that Mr. M'Lachlan was an elder – and a ruling elder, unmistakably – of Andrew Strang's church, and he had come prepared with a notable proposal for wiping off the debt of the same.

'Ah'm not wan that'll gang back from his word,' he said, in his pompous and raucous voice, and he leaned back in his chair, and crossed his hands over his capacious black satin waistcoat, and gazed loftily on his audience. 'Wan hundred pounds – there it is, as sure as if it was in my pocket this meenit – and there it'll be when ye get fower ither members o' the congregation to pit doon their fifty pounds apiece. Not but that there's several in the church abler than me to pit doon as much; but ye ken how it is, Mr. Strang, the man makes the money and the woman spends it; and there's mair than one family we ken o' that should come forrit on an occasion like this, but that the money rins through the fingers o' a feckless wife. What think ye, noo, o' Mrs. Nicol setting up her powny-carriage, and it's no nine years since Geordie had to make a composition? And they tell me that Mrs. Paton's lasses, when they gang doon the waiter – and not for one month in the year will they let that house o' theirs at Dunoon – they tell me that the pairties and dances they have is jist extraordinar' and the wastry beyond a' things. Ay, it's them that save and scrimp and deny themselves that's expected to do everything in a case like this – notwithstanding it's a public debt – mind, it's a public debt, binding on the whole congregation; but what ah say ah'll stand to – there's wan hundred pounds ready, when there's fower ithers wi' fifty pounds apiece – that's three hundred pounds – and wi' such an example before them, surely the rest o' the members will make up the remaining two hundred and fifty – surely, surely.'

'It's lending to the Lord,' said the minister's wife sadly, as she passed the marmalade to the children.

The conversation now took the form of a discussion as to which of the members might reasonably be expected to come forward at such a juncture; and as Ronald had no part or interest in this matter he made bold to turn to Mr. Weems, who sate beside him, and engage him in talk on their own account. Indeed, he had rather taken a liking for this timorous little man, and wished to know more about him and his belongings and occupations; and when Mr. Weems revealed to him the great trouble of his life – the existence of a shrill-voiced chanticleer in the backyard of the cottage adjoining his own, out somewhere in the Pollokshaws direction – Ronald was glad to come to his help at once.

'Oh, that's all right,' said he. 'I'll shoot him for you.'

But this calm proposal was like to drive the poor little man daft with terror. His nervous system suffered cruelly from the skirling of the abominable fowl; but even that was to be dreaded less than a summons and a prosecution and a deadly feud with his neighbour, who was a drunken, quarrelsome, cantankerous shoemaker.

'But, God bless me,' Ronald said, 'it's not to be thought of that any human being should be tortured like that by a brute beast. Well, there's another way o' settling the hash o' that screeching thing. You just go and buy a pea-shooter – or if one of the laddies will lend you a tin whistle, that will do; then go and buy twopence-worth of antibilious pills – indeed, I suppose any kind would serve; and then fire half a dozen over into the back-yard; my word, when the bantam gentleman has picked up these bonny looking peas, and swallowed them, he'll no be for flapping his wings and crowing, I'm thinking; he'll rather be for singing the tune of "Annie Laurie." But maybe you're not a good shot with a pea-shooter? Well, I'll come over and do it for you early some morning, when the beast's hungry.'

But it was difficult for any one to talk, even in the most subdued and modest way, with that harsh and strident voice laying down the law at the head of the table. And now the large-waistcoated elder was on the subject of the temperance movement; arraigning the government for not suppressing the liquor-traffic altogether; denouncing the callous selfishness of those who were inclined to temporise with the devil, and laying at their door all the misery caused by the drunkenness of their fellow-creatures; and proudly putting in evidence his own position in the city of Glasgow – his authority in the church – the regard paid to his advice – and the solid, substantial slice of the world's gear that he possessed – as entirely due to the fact that he had never, not even as a young man, imbibed one drop of alcohol. Now Ronald Strang was ordinarily a most abstemious person – and no credit to him, nor to any one in the like case; for his firm physique and his way of living hitherto had equally rendered him independent of any such artificial aid (though a glass of whisky on a wet day on the hillside did not come amiss to him, and his hard head could steer him safely through a fair amount of jollification when those wild lads came down from Tongue). But he was irritated by that loud and raucous voice; he resented the man's arrogance and his domineering over the placid and phlegmatic Andrew, who scarcely opened his mouth; and here and there he began to put in a sharp saying or two that betokened discontent and also a coming storm. 'They used to say that cleanliness was next to godliness; but nowadays ye would put total abstinence half a mile ahead of it,' he would say, or something of the kind; and in due course these two were engaged in a battle-royal of discussion. It shall not be put down here; for who was ever convinced – in morals, or art, or literature, or anything else – by an argument? it needs only be said that the elder, being rather hard pressed, took refuge in Scriptural authority. But alas! this was not of much avail; for the whole family of the East Lothian farmer (not merely the student one of them) had been brought up with exceeding care, and taught to give chapter and verse for everything; so that when Mr. M'Lachlan sought to crush his antagonist with the bludgeon of quotation he found it was only a battledore he had got hold of.

'"Wine is a mocker; strong drink is raging; and whosoever is deceived thereby is not wise,"' he would say severely.

'"Wine which cheereth God and man,"' the other would retort. '"Wine that maketh glad the heart of man." What make ye of these?'

'"Who hath woe? who hath sorrow? who hath babbling? – they that tarry long at the wine; they that go to seek mixed wine." What better authority can we have?'

'Ay, man, the wise king said that; but it wasna his last word. "Give strong drink unto him that is ready to perish, and wine unto those that be of heavy hearts. Let him drink, and forget his poverty, and remember his misery no more."'

'The devil quoting Scripture for his own ends,' the Reverend Andrew interposed, with a mild facetiousness.

'It's a dreadful thing to hear in a minister's house,' said the minister's wife, appealing to her neighbour, Mrs. M'Lachlan.

'What is? A verse from the Proverbs of Solomon?' Ronald said, turning to her quite good-naturedly.

But instantly he saw that she was distressed, and even more lachrymose than ever; and he knew that nothing would convince her that he was not a child of wrath and of the devil; and he reproached himself for having entered into any discussion of any kind whatever in this house, where Maggie was to live – he hoped in perfect accord and amity. As for himself, he wished only to be out of it. He was not in his right element. The vulgar complacency of the rich elder irritated him; the melancholy unreason of his sister-in-law depressed him. He foresaw that not here was any abiding-place for him while he sojourned in the great city.

But how was he to get away? They lingered and dawdled over their tea-drinking in a most astonishing fashion; his brother being the most intemperate of all of them, and obviously accounting thereby for his pallid and bilious cheeks. Moreover, they had returned to that fruitful topic of talk – the capability of this or the other member of the congregation to subscribe to the fund for paying off the debt on the church; and as this involved a discussion of everybody's ways and means, and of his expenditure, and the manner of living of himself, his wife, his sons, and daughters and servants, the very air seemed thick with trivial and envious tittle-tattle, the women-folk, of course, being more loquacious than any.

'Lord help us,' said Ronald to himself, as he sate there in silence, 'this house would be a perfect paradise for an Income-tax Commissioner.'

However, the fourth or fifth tea-pot was exhausted at last; the minister offered up a prolonged thanksgiving; and Ronald thought that now he might get away – and out into the freer air. But that was not to be as yet. His brother observed that it was getting late; that all the members of the household were gathered together; and they might appropriately have family worship now. So the two servant-girls were summoned in to clear the table, and that done, they remained; the minister brought the family Bible over from the sideboard; and all sate still and attentive, their books in their hand, while he sought out the chapter he wanted. It was the Eighth of the Epistle to the Romans; and he read it slowly and elaborately, but without any word of comment or expounding. Then he said that they would sing to the praise of the Lord the XCIII. Psalm – himself leading off with the fine old tune of Martyrdom; and this the young people sang very well indeed, though they were a little interfered with by the uncertain treble of the married women and the bovine baritone of the elder. Thereafter the minister offered up a prayer, in which very pointed reference was made to the brother and sister who had come from the far mountains to dwell within the gates of the city; and then all of them rose, and the maidservants withdrew, and those remaining who had to go began to get ready for their departure.

'Come over and see us soon again,' the minister said to him, as they followed him into the lobby; but the minister's wife did not repeat that friendly invitation.

'Ronald,' the little Maggie whispered – and her lips were rather tremulous, 'if you hear from Meenie, will you let me know?'

'But I am not likely to hear from her, lass,' said he, with his hand upon her shoulder. 'You must write to her yourself, and she will answer, and send ye the news.'

'Mind ye pass the public-houses on the way gaun hame,' said the elder, by way of finishing up the evening with a joke: Ronald took no notice, but bade the others good-bye, and opened the door and went out.

When he got into the street his first startled impression was that the world was on fire – all the heavens, but especially the southern heavens, were one blaze of soft and smoky blood-red, into which the roofs and chimney-stacks of the dusky buildings rose solemn and dark. A pulsating crimson it was, now dying away slightly, again gleaming up with a sudden fervour; and always it looked the more strange and bewildering because of the heavy gloom of the buildings and the ineffectual lemon-yellow points of the gas-lamps. Of course he remembered instantly what this must be – the glow of the ironworks over there in the south; and presently he had turned his back on that sullen radiance, and was making away for the north side of the city.

But when he emerged from the comparative quiet of the southern thoroughfares into the glare and roar of Jamaica Street and Argyll Street, all around him there seemed even more of bewilderment than in the daytime. The unceasing din of tramway-cars and vans and carts still filled the air; but now there was everywhere a fierce yellow blaze of gaslight – glowing in the great stocked windows, streaming out across the crowded pavements, and shining on the huge gilded letters and sprawling advertisements of the shops. Then the people – a continuous surge, as of a river; the men begrimed for the most part, here and there two or three drunk and bawling, the women with cleaner faces, but most of them bareheaded, with Highland shawls wrapped round their shoulders. The suffused crimson glow of the skies was scarcely visible now; this horizontal blaze of gas-light killed it; and through the yellow glare passed the dusky phantasmagoria of a city's life – the cars and horses, the grimy crowds. Buchanan Street, it is true, was less noisy; and he walked quickly, glad to get out of that terrible din; and by and by, when he got away up to Port Dundas Road, where his lodging was, he found the world grown quite quiet again, and gloomy and dark, save for the solitary gas-lamps and the faint dull crimson glow sent across from the southern skies.

He went up the stone stair, was admitted to the house, and shown into the apartment that his brother had secured for him. It had formerly been used as a sitting-room, with a bedroom attached; but now these were separated, and a bed was placed at one end of the little parlour, which was plainly and not untidily furnished. When his landlady left he proceeded to unpack his things, getting out first his books, which he placed on the mantel-shelf to be ready for use in the morning; then he made some further disposition of his belongings; and then – then somehow he fell away from this industrious mood, and became more and more absent, and at last went idly to the window, and stood looking out there. There was not much to be seen – a few lights about the Caledonian Railway Station, some dusky sheds, and that faint red glow in the sky.

But – Inver-Mudal? Well, if only he had reflected, Inver-Mudal must at this moment have been just about as dark as was this railway station and the neighbourhood surrounding it – unless, indeed, it happened to be a clear starlit night away up there in the north, with the heavens shining beautiful and benignant over Clebrig, and the loch, and the little hamlet among the trees. However, that was not the Inver-Mudal he was thinking of; it was the Inver-Mudal of a clear spring day, with sweet winds blowing across the moors, and the sunlight yellow on Clebrig's slopes, and Loch Naver's waters all a rippling and dazzling blue. And Mr. Murray standing at the door of the inn, and smoking his pipe, and joking with any one that passed; the saucy Nelly casting glances among the lads; Harry with dark suspicions of rats wherever he could find a hole in the wall of the barn; Maggie, under instruction of Duncan the ploughman, driving the two horses hauling a harrow over the rough red land; everywhere the birds singing; the young corn showing green; and then – just as the chance might be – Meenie coming along the road, her golden-brown hair blown by the wind, her eyes about as blue as Loch Naver's shining waters, and herself calling, with laughter and scolding, to Maggie to desist from that tomboy work. And where was it all gone now? He seemed to have shut his eyes upon that beautiful clear, joyous world; and to have plunged into a hideous and ghastly dream. The roar and yellow glare – the black houses – the lurid crimson in the sky – the terrible loneliness and silence of this very room – well, he could not quite understand it yet. But perhaps it would not always seem so bewildering; perhaps one might grow accustomed in time? – and teach one's self to forget? And then again he had resolved that he would not read over any more the verses he had written in the olden days about Meenie, and the hills and the streams and the straths that knew her and loved her – for these idle rhymes made him dream dreams; that is to say, he had almost resolved – he had very nearly resolved – that he would not read over any more the verses he had written about Meenie.

CHAPTER X

GRAY DAYS

But, after all, that first plunge into city-life had had something of the excitement of novelty; it was the settling down thereafter to the dull monotonous round of labour, in this lonely lodging, with the melancholy gray world of mist surrounding him and shutting him in, that was to test the strength of his resolve. The first day was not so bad; for now and again he would relieve the slow tedium of the hours by doing a little carpentering about the room; and the sharp sound of hammer and nail served to break in upon that hushed, slumberous murmur of the great city without that seemed a mournful, distant, oppressive thing. But the next day of this solitary life (for it was not until the end of the week he was to see Mr. Weems) was dreadful. The dull, silent gray hours would not go by. Wrestling with Ewart's Agricultural Assistant, or Balfour's Elements of Botany, or with distressing problems in land-surveying or timber-measuring, he would think the time had passed; and then, going to the window for a moment's relief to eye and brain, he would see by the clock of the railway station that barely half an hour had elapsed since last he had looked at the obdurate hands. How he envied the porters, the cab-drivers, the men who were loading and unloading the waggons; they seemed all so busy and contented; they were getting through with their work; they had something to show for their labour; they had companions to talk to and joke with; sometimes he thought he could hear them laughing. And ah, how much more he envied the traveller who drove up and got leisurely out of the cab, and had his luggage carried into the station, himself following and disappearing from view! Whither was he going, then, away from this great, melancholy city, with its slow hours, and wan skies, and dull, continuous, stupefying murmur? Whither, indeed! – away by the silver links of Forth, perhaps, with the castled rock of Stirling rising into the windy blue and white; away by the wooded banks of Allan Water and the bonny Braes of Doune; by Strathyre, and Glenogle, and Glenorchy; and past the towering peaks of Ben Cruachan, and out to the far-glancing waters of the western seas. Indeed it is a sore pity that Miss Carry Hodson, in a fit of temper, had crushed together and thrust into the bottom of the boat the newspaper containing an estimate of Ronald's little Highland poem; if only she had handed it on to him, he would have learned that the sentiment of nostalgia is too slender and fallacious a thing for any sensible person to bother his head about; and, instead of wasting his time in gazing at the front of a railway station, he would have gone resolutely back to Strachan's Agricultural Tables and the measuring and mapping of surface areas.

On the third day he grew desperate.

'In God's name let us see if there's not a bit of blue sky anywhere!' he said to himself; and he flung his books aside, and put on his Glengarry cap, and took a stick in his hand, and went out.

Alas! that there were no light pattering steps following him down the stone stair; the faithful Harry had had to be left behind, under charge of Mr. Murray of the inn. And indeed Ronald found it so strange to be going out without some companion of the kind that when he passed into the wide, dull thoroughfare, he looked up and down everywhere to see if he could not find some homeless wandering cur that he could induce to go with him. But there was no sign of dog-life visible; for the matter of that there was little sign of any other kind of life; there was nothing before him but the wide, empty, dull-hued street, apparently terminating in a great wilderness of india-rubber works and oil-works and the like, all of them busily engaged in pouring volumes of smoke through tall chimneys into the already sufficiently murky sky.

But when he got farther north, he found that there were lanes and alleys permeating this mass of public works; and eventually he reached a canal, and crossed that, deeming that if he kept straight on he must reach the open country somewhere. As yet he could make out no distance; blocks of melancholy soot-begrimed houses, timber-yards, and blank stone walls shut in the view on every hand; moreover there was a brisk north wind blowing that was sharply pungent with chemical fumes and also gritty with dust; so that he pushed on quickly, anxious to get some clean air into his lungs, and anxious, if that were possible, to get a glimpse of green fields and blue skies. For, of course, he could not always be at his books; and this, as he judged, must be the nearest way out into the country; and he could not do better than gain some knowledge of his surroundings, and perchance discover some more or less secluded sylvan retreat, where, in idle time, he might pass an hour or so with his pencil and his verses and his memories of the moors and hills.

But the farther out he got the more desolate and desolating became the scene around him. Here was neither town nor country; or rather, both were there; and both were dead. He came upon a bit of hawthorn-hedge; the stems were coal-black, the leaves begrimed out of all semblance to natural foliage. There were long straight roads, sometimes fronted by a stone wall and sometimes by a block of buildings – dwelling-houses, apparently, but of the most squalid and dingy description; the windows opaque with dirt; the 'closes' foul; the pavements in front unspeakable. But the most curious thing was the lifeless aspect of this dreary neighbourhood. Where were the people? Here or there two or three ragged children would be playing in the gutter; or perhaps, in a dismal little shop, an old woman might be seen, with some half-withered apples and potatoes on the counter. But where were the people who at one time or other must have inhabited these great, gaunt, gloomy tenements? He came to a dreadful place called Saracen Cross – a very picture of desolation and misery; the tall blue-black buildings showing hardly any sign of life in their upper flats; the shops below being for the most part tenantless, the windows rudely boarded over. It seemed as if some blight had fallen over the land, first obliterating the fields, and then laying its withering hand on the houses that had been built on them. And yet these melancholy-looking buildings were not wholly uninhabited; here or there a face was visible – but always of women or children; and perhaps the men-folk were away at work somewhere in a factory. Anyhow, under this dull gray sky, with a dull gray mist in the air, and with a strange silence everywhere around, the place seemed a City of the Dead; he could not understand how human beings could live in it at all.

At last, however, he came to some open spaces that still bore some half-decipherable marks of the country, and his spirits rose a little. He even tried to sing 'O say, will you marry me, Nelly Munro?' – to force himself into a kind of liveliness, as it were, and to prove to himself that things were not quite so bad after all. But the words stuck in his throat. His voice sounded strangely in this silent and sickly solitude. And at last he stood stock-still, to have a look round about him, and to make out what kind of a place this was that he had entered into.

Well, it was a very strange kind of place. It seemed to have been forgotten by somebody, when all the other land near was being ploughed through by railway-lines and heaped up into embankments. Undoubtedly there were traces of the country still remaining – and even of agriculture; here and there a line of trees, stunted and nipped by the poisonous air; a straggling hedge or two, withered and black; a patch of corn, of a pallid and hopeless colour; and a meadow with cattle feeding in it. But the road that led through these bucolic solitudes was quite new and made of cinders; in the distance it seemed to lose itself in a network of railway embankments; while the background of this strange simulacrum of a landscape – so far as that could be seen through the pall of mist and smoke – seemed to consist of further houses, ironworks, and tall chimney-stacks. Anything more depressing and disconsolate he had never witnessed; nay, he had had no idea that any such God-forsaken neighbourhood existed anywhere in the world; and he thought he would much rather be back at his books than wandering through this dead and spectral land. Moreover it was beginning to rain – a thin, pertinacious drizzle that seemed to hang in the thick and clammy air; and so he struck away to the right, in the direction of some houses, guessing that there he would find some way of getting back to the city other than that ghastly one he had come by.

By the time he had reached these houses – a suburb or village this seemed to be that led in a straggling fashion up to the crest of a small hill – it was raining heavily. Now ordinarily a gamekeeper in the Highlands is not only indifferent to rain, but apparently incapable of perceiving the existence of it. When was wet weather at Inver-Mudal ever known to interfere with the pursuits or occupations of anybody? Why, the lads there would as soon have thought of taking shelter from the rain as a terrier would. But it is one thing to be walking over wet heather in knickerbocker-stockings and shoes, the water quite clean, and the exercise keeping legs and feet warm enough, and it is entirely another thing to be walking through mud made of black cinders, with clammy trousers flapping coldly round one's ankles. Nay, so miserable was all this business that he took refuge in an entry leading into one of those 'lands' of houses; and there he stood, in the cold stone passage, with a chill wind blowing through it, looking out on the swimming pavements, and the black and muddy road, and the dull stone walls, and the mournful skies.