Part 10
Breakfast is over--a Highland breakfast. Full justice has been done to the pleasant porridge and warm creamy milk, the fresh herrings that were alive in Loch Fyne a few hours ago, salmon from the splash-nets at Eriska, fragrant coffee, excellent home-made scones, and rich butter, tasting of the clover-field. The day is superb, and no one will spend more of it indoors than he can help; besides, the boat will be almost afloat now, and it will take a little time to bale her out. Bring the lines, then, with their gaudy red and yellow flies--it may be that a mackerel or two are to be caught in the loch; a novel of William Black’s, “The Princess of Thule” or “MacLeod of Dare,” and a pocketful of good cigars. It is hardly nine o’clock, yet the sun is dazzling and hot in the doorway. There is just enough air moving to bring up the fresh smell of the seaweed stirred by the rising tide. The white sandy road is almost dry again after the rain which has fallen in the night, and as the kine, after their morning milking, are turned into the clover-field alongside, the foremost will hardly move from the gate to allow the others to enter, but bury their muzzles at once in the fresh, wet grass. The sea lies flashing and sparkling in the morning sunshine, and, on the dark Kingairloch mountains opposite, here and there the silver streak of a torrent still shows the effects of the morning shower. A sunny quiet fills the air. The faint screaming and splashing of gulls and sea-swallows far out over some shoal of fishes, and the sound of the oars in the rowlocks of the distant boat, can be distinctly heard, while the leisurely movements of the horse and cart going down the road a quarter of a mile away are quite distinguishable. The driver is whistling pleasantly; the tune is “Mo nighean donn bhoidheach.” The last mists are leaving the mountain sides, and everything promises a hot day. Even the soft white clouds far up in the sky are every moment growing fainter, and already the thin shimmer of heat is ascending from the dry-stone dyke beside the road. The brambles on the other side of the dry, grassy ditch show profuse clusters of bright red fruit, but there are no ripe berries to be seen--the children pluck them long before they are black. The scarlet hips, too, shine bravely on the sprays of hedgebrier, the tips of whose leaves are just beginning to turn brown. A small blue butterfly flickers across the road, and, rising at the dyke, is lost in a moment against the blue of the sky; while a silent humble-bee comes by, alights on the last empty bell of a seeded foxglove, and immediately tumbles out again disgusted, to continue his researches farther on. Over the hedge there, on the other side of the road, the oats seem yellow enough to cut, and among them are still in flower a few yellow Marguerites. The hill beyond glows purple yet with the heather, although its full bloom is past. Here and there plants of it are flowering close to the dyke by the roadside. It is the small sort, the kind the bees frequent, for they can get into it--the bell heather flowers earlier, and is over now.
But here is our boat. She is already afloat, the mainsail and jib are soon hoisted, there is just enough wind to carry her against the tide, and Appin and Castle Stalker, the ruined stronghold of the Stewarts of Appin, are slowly hidden by the point behind. On the right is the green island of Lismore, low lying and fertile, with few houses visible upon it; only the slate roof of Lady Elphinstone’s lodge flashes in the sunlight like a crystal. And beyond and above tower the dark mountains of Morven. To the south, in the offing, lie the islands of Easdale and Luing, famous for their slates.
Down we drift, past the Black Isle, to the narrows of Eriska. The tide is still running in towards Loch Creran, and the passage, which otherwise would have been difficult among the eddies and currents, is easily and quickly made. An immense volume of water must pour to and fro through that narrow channel to fill the loch at every tide. At these times the current rushes like a mill-race. We are inside presently, and as the air is very warm, and a pleasant little bay with a sandy beach lies close at hand on Eriska, there could be no better opportunity for a bathe.
No sooner said than done. The boat is anchored a little way from the beach, where through the clear green water the sandy bottom can be seen some few fathoms below, and one after another enjoys a header from the bow, or slips gently over the stern. Pleasant as Arcady and utterly secluded is the spot; not even the crack of a gamekeeper’s fowling-piece is to be heard on shore.
But what is this--that jig-jig-jigging of engines? A small steam yacht is coming into the loch, and--gracious goodness! there are ladies on board. To cover, all three, behind the boat, hang on by the gunwale, and trust in Providence to keep the yacht at a respectable distance. One has no ambition at such moments to court the suffrages even of the most delectable society. But the danger moves past, and though the fair ones on deck do smile at the phenomenal movements of our boat, and the ominous absence of occupants, who is a whit the worse? They will laugh with us, rather than at us, should we meet.
The breeze has freshened a little now, and will be enough to carry us up the loch amongst the currents and against the outflowing tide. Yonder goes the ferry-boat, crossing from Shian. It has a waggonette and horses on board, and the sweeps carry it over but slowly. The long low island there, with its few stunted bushes, is seldom visited, and remains a favourite haunt of the graceful sea-swallows. Two months ago every grassy ledge upon its sides would have its couple of sea-swallow’s eggs. See yonder, just beyond the rocky point, swimming quietly about, with watchful, intelligent eyes, there is the black head of a seal.
As the boat gets round the end of Craigailleach, the ruin of the ancient castle of Barcaldine, on the low neck of land across which the road winds from Connal, comes into sight. In the days of which Sir Walter Scott speaks in his “Lord of the Isles,” when against the Bruce in Artornish Castle “Barcaldine’s arm was high in air,” there was scantier cultivation around the site of that black stronghold. The shrub ivy was not waving then from its beacon turret, and the retainers whose thatched cottages are still scattered among the fields around were rather caterans and pirates than peaceful crofters. Now, however, as Mr William Freeland puts it--
The freebooters, reiving and killing, No longer swoop down from their glens, But delve by the bothie and shieling, Or shepherd their flocks on the bens.
The mountains in front seem to rise higher as we approach, and to cast a deeper silence on the narrowing water and motionless woods at their base. Barcaldine House, as secluded and delightful a spot as any in the Highlands, with its old-fashioned gardens and vineries, lies hidden among these woods.
Far up on the purple hillside at the head of the loch the eye can make out a lonely burying-place. A stone dyke guards the little enclosure of quiet graves. The spot is visible for many a mile around, and its presence ever in sight must have a tender and solemn effect in keeping alive the memory of the dead. Every day, as the crofter toils in his little field, or the shepherd takes the hill with his dogs, his eyes will turn to it, and he will think of wife or child who lie in that still, peaceful place, asleep under the calm sunshine and among the heather. Only sometimes will it be hidden--when the soft, white, trailing mists come down and weep their gentle tears upon the spot.
Directly in front, away beyond and above the other mountains, towers Ben Cruachan, a monarch among the peers. And below, on the shore of the loch, appears the long, low-roofed cottage, half covered a month ago with crimson tropeolum, and half smothered among its roses, where lives the author of the humorous and valuable “Notes from Benderloch.” Here is our destination. Let down the mainsail, let go the jib, and we will run ashore. It is not yet noon, and there are many hours before us to spend in the beautiful Barcaldine woods.
TILL DEATH US PART.
“Is she better, Doctor?”
“No; worse. Can’t last through the night, I’m afraid.”
The forester’s wife pauses a moment, looking after the physician’s carriage as it whirls out of sight in the gathering darkness along the road; then, exclaiming sadly, “Poor, dear young lady!” she closes again the heavy iron gates, and retires to her own happy hearthside within the lodge.
Night has all but fallen, and though it is still only dusk upon the open road outside, within the avenue the gloaming is already deepening into mirk, and under the shadows of the limes it will soon be quite dark. A quiet spring night. When the wheels of the doctor’s carriage have retreated in the distance, no sound is to be heard amid the shadows but the twitter of a blackbird settling itself again to roost in its perfumed dreaming-place among the spruce branches, and the silvery tinkle of a streamlet making its way at hand through the ferny under-tangle of the wood. The air is rich with the fresh sweetness of budding life--the breath of unseen primroses opening their creamy petals upon dewy moss-banks in the darkness. Born amid the stillness, new, vague hopes stir within the heart; everywhere seems the delicious promise of the time of blossom and leaf that is to be; and the motionless night itself seems conscious of the coming of desire. It is a night to inspire a poet or a lover; every faint wood-scent, the cool touch of the night air itself upon the cheek, bringing with it some subtle suggestion, the more delightful that it is undefined, setting the pulse of youth a-beating with thoughts of a glad to-morrow.
Alas for those to whom no morrow will come!
At the upper end of the long avenue a faint light is shining yet in two windows of the many-gabled mansion-house. One of the windows is open, and within, at a small table, leaning his head upon his hand, can be seen the figure of a man. It is the master of the house. He has just received the last sentence of the physician, “I can be of no further service. The end will probably come before to-morrow”; and the words are still in his ears, beating like a leaden pendulum against his heart. Straight before him into the dark night he is gazing; but the eyes that look are tearless; only the drawn line about his mouth and the pitiful twitching of his lip bespeak the emotion that is working within. Yet he is not altogether left to himself. The air from the open window stirs his hair and fans his pale cheek--Nature, like a sweet and gentle friend, would offer him the soothing of her sympathy. Probably he is unconscious of it--drowning in the hopeless flood-tide of his grief; but, with the gentle air stealing in from the darkness outside, the influence of the great Reconciler, mother-heart of all mankind, is already touching him. While his ear takes in the soft movements of the nurse in the next room, tending all that is dearest to him on earth, his heart, stirred unconsciously by the subtle suggestions of the incoming night-scents, is travelling, torn with regret, through the tender avenues of the past. And strangely fresh in every detail reappear those scenes imprinted upon the pages of memory by the sunshine of love.
He is in a cottager’s garden, listening, amid the hum of the hives and the glory of old-fashioned wallflower borders, to the gossip of the simple old soul who is showing him her little domain. There is the quick trotting of a pony. A low phaeton drives past on the road beneath. And he has seen and shared the smiling glance of a gentle, lovely face--a sunny glimpse to be remembered. Again, he has been picnicking with friends, a family party, on the shore of a Highland loch, and has noticed with mingled admiration and resentment that while all others have been seeking their own enjoyment, one pair of frank and willing little hands has wrought the whole comfort of the group. They are in the shallops, rowing home, and as, pulling at his oar, he listens to the innocent freshness of a shy young voice singing some Highland boat-song, he becomes conscious for the first time of a vista before him of wondrous new and fair possibilities--of a path in life which is not to be trodden alone. Once more. It is a secluded spot. He has wandered in happy company, from his party. Clear as yesterday comes back the memory of the scene. In front some tented waggons, rust-brown with wandering years, trail down the woodland by-road. The gipsy woman has taken his silver coin, and, with a keen, shrewd glance, has wished the “lady and gentleman a happy bridal!” He has seized the moment, has whispered the secret which was no secret, and has read in shining eyes the answer of his hopes.
All that was a year ago, little more--woodland and lake and garden, with a hundred other scenes and episodes as tender, which, crowding back, fill his heart to bursting; and now----
He rises, closing the window, and passes into the adjoining room.
Treading softly on the thick carpet, a glance assures him that nothing has altered in the sick-chamber since he left it with the physician. Only amid the momentous stillness, in the subdued light by the fire, the trim, white-aproned nurse is trying to read. A whisper to her--she will be called if required; and, closing the door noiselessly behind her, she leaves him to watch alone.
Alone, for the last time, with all that is dear to him, the flower that is fading out of his life so soon! He turns to the bed. There, pale with preternatural loveliness, her dark hair spread like a cloud upon the pillow, lies the sunny sweetheart, the shy bride of a year ago. A faint moan, the glistening of a tear between the closed eyelids, betrays the grief that is haunting that strange shadowland between this world and the next--grief for that which was not to be! He can look no more! Sinking into a chair by the fire, he buries his face in his hands. It is the hour of his despair.
Midnight has long passed; the fire is sinking unheeded in the grate; and he has not moved.
“Arthur!”
In a moment he is by the bed, that thin, hot hand in his, gazing heartbroken into the face of his wife. In those grey eyes of hers there is no second thought. Love, for the time is short, has dropped his last disguise, and looks forth from them with unutterable tenderness and regret. “Arthur!” She lingers fondly upon his name, and her fingers push the hair tenderly from his brow--“Arthur!”
But there is a sudden change. A look of terror springs to her eyes, and she clings wildly to his arm. Is this the end? She would have fallen back upon the pillow had not his arm been round her. With a despairing effort, her eyes filling with tears, she articulates, “We have--been--very--happy--my dear!” Their lips meet for the last time--a long, long farewell. Then a second shadow passes over her face. He lays her gently back upon the pillow. The wistful, eager look dies away out of her eyes. It is all over. He is alone, kneeling by the bed, his face pressed deep into his hands. A gust of wind, rising outside, shakes the sash of the window; the crow of chanticleer is heard far off at the stables: it is three o’clock, the coldest hour of the night.
And in the lodge at the foot of the avenue, at that hour, the young forester’s wife, stirring softly in her sleep, presses the month-old babe beside her closer to her heart.
A FOREST WEDDING.
Though it is not yet seven o’clock, the winter night, in this northern parish, has quite closed in, and it is already very dark. When the sun set, far in the south, some hours ago, its disc gleamed coppery red through brown mist veils as of rising smoke, and the shepherd’s wife on the moor, as she brought in her peats for the night, said she thought there would be more snow before morning. It has not yet begun to fall, however, when the minister, wrapped up to the ears in his heavy coat, and his feet encased in strong, thick-soled boots, pulling on a pair of rough worsted gloves, and calling his spaniel from her place on the study hearth, sets out from his comfortable manse.
Presently, as he turns from the beaten highway into the snow-clad woods of the manor, hearing the bell of the distant town steeple behind him striking the hour, he gives an encouraging word to his dog, and quickens his steps a little. As he passes the humble window of the gate-lodge, he pauses a moment--there was a sound; yes, it is audible again--a mother crooning softly over her child; and his eye glistens as his ear catches the lullaby, old bachelor as he is. From the chimney on the low roof, too, there steals down among the trees the savoury fragrance of the evening meal. The father, one of the under-gamekeepers on the estate, evidently has not come home yet, and his young wife is waiting for him.
The sky hangs soft and very dark overhead, the tree-tops are all but lost in it, and one can almost fancy he hears the drifting of the coming snow. But all is silent, not a branch in the forest stirs, and between the black tree-trunks the white sheet can be seen stretching stainless and undisturbed on either hand into the mysterious depths of the woods. The trees themselves, unshaken all these weeks by wind or squirrel or woodbird, raise into the night their branches robed to the remotest twig in the matchless lacework of the frost.
But see! Along the hollow, to the left, can be caught a glimpse of the manor-house, its windows, most of them, aglow with light. A grey, stately old place it is, in the midst of its woods, eloquent with the memories of long-past centuries. Royalty has been entertained there in bygone days, and in the woodland aisles around has echoed merrily the laughter of many a gay party from the Court, distant only a morning’s ride. But storm after storm has swept the land since then; that gay Court’s palace lies a ruin now; and while the race of the humble peasant still thrives in the manor woods, the race of the manor lord and the race of the kings themselves of those days have passed from the earth for ever.
There is no spot in so old a land but has its memories, sad and gay. Somewhere in these woods, in days still farther gone, a national hero was betrayed, and on the moorland ridge, a mile away, a king’s army suffered defeat. But the minister passes on. His errand to-night is neither to palace nor castle, yet it may be that the simple hearts he is presently to unite will beat as happily under a lowly roof of thatch as do those of the gentle owners in their mansion yonder.
By degrees, as he presses on, the path becomes rougher, the trees deepen the darkness overhead, and hardly a former footstep has left its trace in the undrifted snow. The solitude might almost be primeval, so absolute is the silence in these untrodden recesses. The solitary snapping, once, of a rime-laden branch has only testified amid the stillness to the intensity of the frost. At last, however, the path widens somewhat, there is a little clearing and a forsaken lodge, and beyond, here and there in the open, gleam the scattered lights of the village. A sequestered spot it is, bowered in summer by the whispering woods, and in winter buried in the forest solitudes by the swathing snow.
But there is merriment enough to-night in the little community; and the frequent ring of laughter from the nearest cottage, as well as the warm glow of firelight streaming from its threshold and windows, deep-set under the thatch, tell where the festivities are going forward. It is the cottage of the bride’s father: all the village has assembled here to assist in the ceremony, and they are waiting now for the minister. The laughter subsides as he lifts the latch and enters, stamping in the doorway to shake the snow from his feet; and all eyes are turned upon him, as the goodman of the house, a grizzled forester of sixty winters, hastens forward with a welcome to help him out of his coat. It is a comfortable scene, the interior of the low-raftered kitchen, lit up rather by the warm glow of the open fire than by the candles set on table and window-shelf. By the hearth are gathered the older folk--the many-wrinkled granny, in comely white mutch and kerchief; the few matrons, with smoothly-braided hair, and little ornament, except a well-worn ring or two; and the men in decent homespun; while farther back are grouped the more youthful members of the party--broad-shouldered young fellows and merry-eyed lasses, excited a little by the somewhat infectious inspiration of the occasion. Everything in the humble apartment is as clean as housewifely care can make it; not a speck is to be seen on the brown stones of the floor, and above the black shining chimney-piece the brass candlesticks glitter like gold. On the snowy dresser, below the well-filled plate-rack, is piled in profusion the substantial fare which will do duty later on. Meanwhile, on the white deal table in the middle of the room is set only the well-worn family Bible.
The minister, with a kindly word, has shaken the hand of the somewhat embarrassed bridegroom, and stands now, inquiring pleasantly after granny’s eyesight, by the fire. There is a pause of expectancy, a hurried messenger or two pass between the rooms, and then the bride, a handsome young woman of twenty-two or so, is brought in by her mother from “ben the hoose,” as the only other apartment is called. With a look of happy pride at the object of his affection, the bridegroom takes his place by her side at the farther end of the table, and the minister, glancing round to see that all is ready, opens the Bible.
After a brief but earnest prayer, and the reading of a short passage of Scripture, the good old man addresses them in a few solemn yet kindly words. They are taking the most serious step in life; let them look to Heaven for a blessing upon it. The future may bring them prosperity; let them see that it does not cool their affection. It may also have trials in store for them; let these be lightened by being shared between them. Above all, let them remember to be open-hearted to one another. Then he asks if they are willing to be wedded “for better or for worse,” bids them join hands, engages in another most momentous prayer, and finally declaring them man and wife, with the solemn injunction, “Whom God has joined together, let no man put asunder,” ends the short ceremony.
Immediately there is a great stir, shaking of hands with the bridegroom, and kissing of the bride; the gallant “best man,” somehow, unwarrantably extending the salutation to the blushing bridesmaid. The mother sheds a few quiet tears, and granny, by the fire, wakens up to speak of her own wedding day.
But the proper papers have been signed, and the minister, followed to the door by the overflowing thanks of the little family, and refusing all offers of escort, leaves the homely company to its enjoyment--for the dance will be kept up till a late hour in the morning. The night air is bracing, after the warmth inside, and, as the sky has cleared a little by this time, the pathway back through the woods will be better seen by the silvery sparkle of the frosty stars.
LOCH LOMOND ICE-BOUND.