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Ranald Bannerman's Boyhood
“I am aware of what you mean, Mrs. Gregson. That is what brought me to inquire after you. I hope you are not seriously the worse for it.”
“I’m an ill-used woman,” she repeated. “Every man’s hand’s against me.”
“Well, I hardly think that,” said my father in a cheerful tone. “My hand’s not against you now.”
“If you bring up your sons, Mr. Bannerman, to mock at the poor, and find their amusement in driving the aged and infirm to death’s door, you can’t say your hand’s not against a poor lone woman like me.”
“But I don’t bring up my sons to do so. If I did I shouldn’t be here now. I am willing to bear my part of the blame, Mrs. Gregson, but to say I bring my sons up to that kind of wickedness, is to lay on me more than my share, a good deal.—Come here, Ranald.”
I obeyed with bowed head and shame-stricken heart, for I saw what wrong I had done my father, and that although few would be so unjust to him as this old woman, many would yet blame the best man in the world for the wrongs of his children. When I stood by my father’s side, the old woman just lifted her head once to cast on me a scowling look, and then went on again rocking herself.
“Now, my boy,” said my father, “tell Mrs. Gregson why you have come here to-night.”
I had to use a dreadful effort to make myself speak. It was like resisting a dumb spirit and forcing the words from my lips. But I did not hesitate a moment. In fact, I dared not hesitate, for I felt that hesitation would be defeat.
“I came, papa–” I began.
“No no, my man,” said my father; “you must speak to Mrs. Gregson, not to me.”
Thereupon I had to make a fresh effort. When at this day I see a child who will not say the words required of him, I feel again just as I felt then, and think how difficult it is for him to do what he is told; but oh, how I wish he would do it, that he might be a conqueror I for I know that if he will not make the effort, it will grow more and more difficult for him to make any effort. I cannot be too thankful that I was able to overcome now.
“I came, Mrs. Gregson,” I faltered, “to tell you that I am very sorry I behaved so ill to you.”
“Yes, indeed,” she returned. “How would you like anyone to come and serve you so in your grand house? But a poor lone widow woman like me is nothing to be thought of. Oh no! not at all.”
“I am ashamed of myself,” I said, almost forcing my confession upon her.
“So you ought to be all the days of your life. You deserve to be drummed out of the town for a minister’s son that you are! Hoo!”
“I’ll never do it again, Mrs. Gregson.”
“You’d better not, or you shall hear of it, if there’s a sheriff in the county. To insult honest people after that fashion!”
I drew back, more than ever conscious of the wrong I had done in rousing such unforgiving fierceness in the heart of a woman. My father spoke now.
“Shall I tell you, Mrs. Gregson, what made the boy sorry, and made him willing to come and tell you all about it?”
“Oh, I’ve got friends after all. The young prodigal!”
“You are coming pretty near it, Mrs. Gregson,” said my father; “but you haven’t touched it quite. It was a friend of yours that spoke to my boy and made him very unhappy about what he had done, telling him over and over again what a shame it was, and how wicked of him. Do you know what friend it was?”
“Perhaps I do, and perhaps I don’t. I can guess.”
“I fear you don’t guess quite correctly. It was the best friend you ever had or ever will have. It was God himself talking in my poor boy’s heart. He would not heed what he said all day, but in the evening we were reading how the prodigal son went back to his father, and how the father forgave him; and he couldn’t stand it any longer, and came and told me all about it.”
“It wasn’t you he had to go to. It wasn’t you he smoked to death—was it now? It was easy enough to go to you.”
“Not so easy perhaps. But he has come to you now.”
“Come when you made him!”
“I didn’t make him. He came gladly. He saw it was all he could do to make up for the wrong he had done.”
“A poor amends!” I heard her grumble; but my father took no notice.
“And you know, Mrs. Gregson,” he went on, “when the prodigal son did go back to his father, his father forgave him at once.”
“Easy enough! He was his father, and fathers always side with their sons.”
I saw my father thinking for a moment.
“Yes; that is true,” he said. “And what he does himself, he always wants his sons and daughters to do. So he tells us that if we don’t forgive one another, he will not forgive us. And as we all want to be forgiven, we had better mind what we’re told. If you don’t forgive this boy, who has done you a great wrong, but is sorry for it, God will not forgive you—and that’s a serious affair.”
“He’s never begged my pardon yet,” said the old woman, whose dignity required the utter humiliation of the offender.
“I beg your pardon, Mrs. Gregson,” I said. “I shall never be rude to you again.”
“Very well,” she answered, a little mollified at last.
“Keep your promise, and we’ll say no more about it. It’s for your father’s sake, mind, that I forgive you.”
I saw a smile trembling about my father’s lips, but he suppressed it, saying,
“Won’t you shake hands with him, Mrs. Gregson?”
She held out a poor shrivelled hand, which I took very gladly; but it felt so strange in mine that I was frightened at it: it was like something half dead. But at the same moment, from behind me another hand, a rough little hand, but warm and firm and all alive, slipped into my left hand. I knew it was Elsie Duff’s, and the thought of how I had behaved to her rushed in upon me with a cold misery of shame. I would have knelt at her feet, but I could not speak my sorrow before witnesses. Therefore I kept hold of her hand and led her by it to the other end of the cottage, for there was a friendly gloom, the only light in the place coming from the glow—not flame—of a fire of peat and bark. She came readily, whispering before I had time to open my mouth—
I’m sorry grannie’s so hard to make it up.”
“I deserve it,” I said. “Elsie, I’m a brute. I could knock my head on the wall. Please forgive me.”
“It’s not me,” she answered. “You didn’t hurt me. I didn’t mind it.”
“Oh, Elsie! I struck you with that horrid snowball.”
“It was only on the back of my neck. It didn’t hurt me much. It only frightened me.”
“I didn’t know it was you. If I had known, I am sure I shouldn’t have done it. But it was wicked and contemptible anyhow, to any girl.”
I broke down again, half from shame, half from the happiness of having cast my sin from me by confessing it. Elsie held my hand now.
“Never mind; never mind,” she said; “you won’t do it again.”
“I would rather be hanged,” I sobbed.
That moment a pair of strong hands caught hold of mine, and the next I found myself being hoisted on somebody’s back, by a succession of heaves and pitches, which did not cease until I was firmly seated. Then a voice said—
“I’m his horse again, Elsie, and I’ll carry him home this very night.”
Elsie gave a pleased little laugh; and Turkey bore me to the fireside, where my father was talking away in a low tone to the old woman. I believe he had now turned the tables upon her, and was trying to convince her of her unkind and grumbling ways. But he did not let us hear a word of the reproof.
“Eh! Turkey, my lad! is that you? I didn’t know you were there,” he said.
I had never before heard my father address him as Turkey.
“What are you doing with that great boy upon your back?” he continued.
“I’m going to carry him home, sir.”
“Nonsense! He can walk well enough.”
Half ashamed, I began to struggle to get down, but Turkey held me tight.
“But you see, sir,” said Turkey, “we’re friends now. He’s done what he could, and I want to do what I can.”
“Very well,” returned my father, rising; “come along; it’s time we were going.”
When he bade her good night, the old woman actually rose and held out her hand to both of us.
“Good night, Grannie,” said Turkey. “Good night, Elsie.” And away we went.
Never conqueror on his triumphal entry was happier than I, as through the starry night I rode home on Turkey’s back. The very stars seemed rejoicing over my head. When I think of it now, the words always come with it, “There is joy in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner that repenteth,” and I cannot but believe they rejoiced then, for if ever I repented in my life I repented then. When at length I was down in bed beside Davie, it seemed as if there could be nobody in the world so blessed as I was: I had been forgiven. When I woke in the morning, I was as it were new born into a new world. Before getting up I had a rare game with Davie, whose shrieks of laughter at length brought Mrs. Mitchell with angry face; but I found myself kindly disposed even towards her. The weather was much the same; but its dreariness had vanished. There was a glowing spot in my heart which drove out the cold, and glorified the black frost that bound the earth. When I went out before breakfast, and saw the red face of the sun looking through the mist like a bright copper kettle, he seemed to know all about it, and to be friends with me as he had never been before; and I was quite as well satisfied as if the sun of my dream had given me a friendly nod of forgiveness.
CHAPTER XX
I Have a Fall and a Dream
Elsie Duff’s father was a farm-labourer, with a large family. He was what is called a cottar in Scotland, which name implies that of the large farm upon which he worked for yearly wages he had a little bit of land to cultivate for his own use. His wife’s mother was Grannie Gregson. She was so old that she needed someone to look after her, but she had a cottage of her own in the village, and would not go and live with her daughter, and, indeed, they were not anxious to have her, for she was not by any means a pleasant person. So there was no help for it: Elsie must go and be her companion. It was a great trial to her at first, for her home was a happy one, her mother being very unlike her grandmother; and, besides, she greatly preferred the open fields to the streets of the village. She did not grumble, however, for where is the good of grumbling where duty is plain, or even when a thing cannot be helped? She found it very lonely though, especially when her grannie was in one of her gloomy moods. Then she would not answer a question, but leave the poor girl to do what she thought best, and complain of it afterwards. This was partly the reason why her parents, towards the close of the spring, sent a little brother, who was too delicate to be of much use at home, to spend some months with his grannie, and go to school. The intention had been that Elsie herself should go to school, but what with the cow and her grandmother together she had not been able to begin. Of course grannie grumbled at the proposal, but, as Turkey, my informant on these points, explained, she was afraid lest, if she objected, they should take Elsie away and send a younger sister in her place. So little Jamie Duff came to the school.
He was a poor little white-haired, red-eyed boy, who found himself very much out of his element there. Some of the bigger boys imagined it good fun to tease him; but on the whole he was rather a favourite, for he looked so pitiful, and took everything so patiently. For my part, I was delighted at the chance of showing Elsie Duff some kindness through her brother. The girl’s sweetness clung to me, and not only rendered it impossible for me to be rude to any girl, but kept me awake to the occurrence of any opportunity of doing something for her sake. Perceiving one day, before the master arrived, that Jamie was shivering with cold, I made way for him where I stood by the fire; and then found that he had next to nothing upon his little body, and that the soles of his shoes were hanging half off. This in the month of March in the north of Scotland was bad enough, even if he had not had a cough. I told my father when I went home, and he sent me to tell Mrs. Mitchell to look out some old garments of Allister’s for him; but she declared there were none. When I told Turkey this he looked very grave, but said nothing. When I told my father, he desired me to take the boy to the tailor and shoemaker, and get warm and strong clothes and shoes made for him. I was proud enough of the commission, and if I did act the grand benefactor a little, I have not yet finished the penance of it, for it never comes into my mind without bringing its shame with it. Of how many people shall I not have to beg the precious forgiveness when I meet them in the other world! For the sake of this penal shame, I confess I let the little fellow walk behind me, as I took him through the streets. Perhaps I may say this for myself, that I never thought of demanding any service of him in return for mine: I was not so bad as that. And I was true in heart to him notwithstanding my pride, for I had a real affection for him. I had not seen his sister—to speak to I mean—since that Sunday night.
One Saturday afternoon, as we were having a game something like hare and hounds, I was running very hard through the village, when I set my foot on a loose stone, and had a violent fall. When I got up, I saw Jamie Duff standing by my side, with a face of utter consternation. I discovered afterwards that he was in the way of following me about. Finding the blood streaming down my face, and remarking when I came to myself a little that I was very near the house where Turkey’s mother lived, I crawled thither, and up the stairs to her garret, Jamie following in silence. I found her busy as usual at her wheel, and Elsie Duff stood talking to her, as if she had just run in for a moment and must not sit down. Elsie gave a little cry when she saw the state I was in, and Turkey’s mother got up and made me take her chair while she hastened to get some water. I grew faint, and lost my consciousness. When I came to myself I was leaning against Elsie, whose face was as white as a sheet with dismay. I took a little water and soon began to revive.
When Turkey’s mother had tied up my head, I rose to go home, but she persuaded me to lie down a while. I was not unwilling to comply. What a sense of blissful repose pervaded me, weary with running, and perhaps faint with loss of blood, when I stretched myself on the bed, whose patchwork counterpane, let me say for Turkey’s mother, was as clean as any down quilt in chambers of the rich. I remember so well how a single ray of sunlight fell on the floor from the little window in the roof, just on the foot that kept turning the spinning-wheel. Its hum sounded sleepy in my ears. I gazed at the sloping ray of light, in which the ceaseless rotation of the swift wheel kept the motes dancing most busily, until at length to my half-closed eyes it became a huge Jacob’s ladder, crowded with an innumerable company of ascending and descending angels, and I thought it must be the same ladder I used to see in my dream. The drowsy delight which follows on the loss of blood possessed me, and the little garret with the slanting roof, and its sloping sun-ray, and the whirr of the wheel, and the form of the patient woman that span, had begun to gather about them the hues of Paradise to my slowly fading senses, when I heard a voice that sounded miles away, and yet close to my ear:
“Elsie, sing a little song, will you?”
I heard no reply. A pause followed, and then a voice, clear and melodious as a brook, began to sing, and before it ceased, I was indeed in a kind of paradise.
But here I must pause. Shall I be breaking my promise of not a word of Scotch in my story, if I give the song? True it is not a part of the story exactly, but it is in it. If my reader would like the song, he must have it in Scotch or not at all. I am not going to spoil it by turning it out of its own natural clothes into finer garments to which it was not born—I mean by translating it from Scotch into English. The best way will be this: I give the song as something extra—call it a footnote slipped into the middle of the page. Nobody needs read a word of it to understand the story; and being in smaller type and a shape of its own, it can be passed over without the least trouble.
[Footnote 1: The Yellow-hammer.]
[Footnote 2: Birch-trees.]
[Footnote 3: Singing.]
[Footnote 4: Nonsense.]
[Footnote 5: Slippery.]
Elsie’s voice went through every corner of my brain: there was singing in all its chambers. I could not hear the words of the song well enough to understand them quite; but Turkey gave me a copy of them afterwards. They were the schoolmaster’s work. All the winter, Turkey had been going to the evening school, and the master had been greatly pleased with him, and had done his best to get him on in various ways. A friendship sprung up between them; and one night he showed Turkey these verses. Where the air came from, I do not know: Elsie’s brain was full of tunes. I repeated them to my father once, and he was greatly pleased with them.
On this first acquaintance, however, they put me to sleep; and little Jamie Duff was sent over to tell my father what had happened. Jamie gave the message to Mrs. Mitchell, and she, full of her own importance, must needs set out to see how much was the matter.
I was dreaming an unutterably delicious dream. It was a summer evening. The sun was of a tremendous size, and of a splendid rose-colour. He was resting with his lower edge on the horizon, and dared go no farther, because all the flowers would sing instead of giving out their proper scents, and if he left them, he feared utter anarchy in his kingdom before he got back in the morning. I woke and saw the ugly face of Mrs. Mitchell bending over me. She was pushing me, and calling to me to wake up. The moment I saw her I shut my eyes tight, turned away, and pretended to be fast asleep again, in the hope that she would go away and leave me with my friends.
“Do let him have his sleep out, Mrs. Mitchell,” said Turkey’s mother.
“You’ve let him sleep too long already,” she returned, ungraciously. “He’ll do all he can, waking or sleeping, to make himself troublesome. He’s a ne’er-do-well, Ranald. Little good’ll ever come of him. It’s a mercy his mother is under the mould, for he would have broken her heart.”
I had come to myself quite by this time, but I was not in the least more inclined to acknowledge it to Mrs. Mitchell.
“You’re wrong there, Mrs. Mitchell,” said Elsie Duff; and my reader must remember it required a good deal of courage to stand up against a woman so much older than herself, and occupying the important position of housekeeper to the minister. “Ranald is a good boy. I’m sure he is.”
“How dare you say so, when he served your poor old grandmother such a wicked trick? It’s little the children care for their parents nowadays. Don’t speak to me.”
“No, don’t, Elsie,” said another voice, accompanied by a creaking of the door and a heavy step. “Don’t speak to her, Elsie, or you’ll have the worst of it. Leave her to me.—If Ranald did what you say, Mrs. Mitchell, and I don’t deny it, he was at least very sorry for it afterwards, and begged grannie’s pardon; and that’s a sort of thing you never did in your life.”
“I never had any occasion, Turkey; so you hold your tongue.”
“Now don’t you call me Turkey. I won’t stand it. I was christened as well as you.”
“And what are you to speak to me like that? Go home to your cows. I dare say they’re standing supperless in their stalls while you’re gadding about. I’ll call you Turkey as long as I please.”
“Very well, Kelpie—that’s the name you’re known by, though perhaps no one has been polite enough to use it to your face, for you’re a great woman, no doubt—I give you warning that I know you. When you’re found out, don’t say I didn’t give you a chance beforehand.”
“You impudent beggar!” cried Mrs. Mitchell, in a rage. “And you’re all one pack,” she added, looking round on the two others. “Get up, Ranald, and come home with me directly. What are you lying shamming there for?”
As she spoke, she approached the bed; but Turkey was too quick for her, and got in front of it. As he was now a great strong lad, she dared not lay hands upon him, so she turned in a rage and stalked out of the room, saying,
“Mr. Bannerman shall hear of this.”
“Then it’ll be both sides of it, Mrs. Mitchell,” I cried from the bed; but she vanished, vouchsafing me no reply.
Once more Turkey got me on his back and carried me home. I told my father the whole occurrence. He examined the cut and plastered it up for me, saying he would go and thank Turkey’s mother at once. I confess I thought more of Elsie Duff and her wonderful singing, which had put me to sleep, and given me the strange lovely dream from which the rough hands and harsh voice of the Kelpie had waked me too soon.
After this, although I never dared go near her grandmother’s house alone, I yet, by loitering and watching, got many a peep of Elsie. Sometimes I went with Turkey to his mother’s of an evening, to which my father had no objection, and somehow or other Elsie was sure to be there, and we spent a very happy hour or two together. Sometimes she would sing, and sometimes I would read to them out of Milton—I read the whole of Comus to them by degrees in this way; and although there was much I could not at all understand, I am perfectly certain it had an ennobling effect upon every one of us. It is not necessary that the intellect should define and separate before the heart and soul derive nourishment. As well say that a bee can get nothing out of a flower, because she does not understand botany. The very music of the stately words of such a poem is enough to generate a better mood, to make one feel the air of higher regions, and wish to rise “above the smoke and stir of this dim spot”. The best influences which bear upon us are of this vague sort—powerful upon the heart and conscience, although undefined to the intellect.
But I find I have been forgetting that those for whom I write are young—too young to understand this. Let it remain, however, for those older persons who at an odd moment, while waiting for dinner, or before going to bed, may take up a little one’s book, and turn over a few of its leaves. Some such readers, in virtue of their hearts being young and old both at once, discern more in the children’s books than the children themselves.
CHAPTER XXI
The Bees’ Nest
It was twelve o’clock on a delicious Saturday in the height of summer. We poured out of school with the gladness of a holiday in our hearts. I sauntered home full of the summer sun, and the summer wind, and the summer scents which filled the air. I do not know how often I sat down in perfect bliss upon the earthen walls which divided the fields from the road, and basked in the heat. These walls were covered with grass and moss. The odour of a certain yellow feathery flower, which grew on them rather plentifully, used to give me special delight. Great humble-bees haunted the walls, and were poking about in them constantly. Butterflies also found them pleasant places, and I delighted in butterflies, though I seldom succeeded in catching one. I do not remember that I ever killed one. Heart and conscience both were against that. I had got the loan of Mrs. Trimmer’s story of the family of Robins, and was every now and then reading a page of it with unspeakable delight. We had very few books for children in those days and in that far out-of-the-way place, and those we did get were the more dearly prized. It was almost dinner-time before I reached home. Somehow in this grand weather, welcome as dinner always was, it did not possess the same amount of interest as in the cold bitter winter. This day I almost hurried over mine to get out again into the broad sunlight. Oh, how stately the hollyhocks towered on the borders of the shrubbery! The guelder-roses hung like balls of snow in their wilderness of green leaves; and here and there the damask roses, dark almost to blackness, and with a soft velvety surface, enriched the sunny air with their colour and their scent. I never see these roses now. And the little bushes of polyanthus gemmed the dark earth between with their varied hues. We did not know anything about flowers except the delight they gave us, and I dare say I am putting some together which would not be out at the same time, but that is how the picture comes back to my memory.