Читать книгу The Wind that Shakes the Barley - James William Barke - Страница 11

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In the following summer when they took possession of Mount Oliphant Robin saw it for the first time.

It had been a good May with plenty of grand growing weather; with showers and sunshine and fresh breezes blowing in from the sea.

As the flitting pulled up the slow hill from Alloway, the backward view gradually extended, sweeping out towards the sea, where to the north-west were the smoke-blue ridges of the Arran peaks.

Robin began to exult and feel that his inner world was developing with subtle harmony. He felt too that he was entering into a world that would become a splendid and unique adventure.

Gilbert, always more restrained and sober in his enthusiasms, felt much like Robin but was unable to give expression to his boyish rhapsodies.

For the moment neither of them knew any regret at leaving the warmth and shelter, the stir and bustle of Alloway. The road that twisted upwards and away from the clay cottage led towards a new world.

And for a while the sun shone on Mount Oliphant. The farm prospered and the Lord blessed the unceasing husbandry of William Burns.

Robin and Gilbert skelped down the hill to Murdoch to be drilled in their fundamentals, but lingered on the road in the evening, tired and hungry: heavy with their day’s load of learning. But they were happy during those long summer days when everything was young and fresh and fair.

Even the first winter was mild and only the wettest days held them from school. And on a winter’s night Murdoch would sometimes trudge home with them, taking them in their grammar as they walked, for nothing seemed to damp Murdoch’s pedagogic ardour and there was no point in wasting the journey in idle conversation.

Robin noted how his father’s face lit up when Murdoch appeared and how eagerly he plied him with questions once they were seated comfortably round the ingle. At such times it seemed that William Burns grew in stature; his voice in firmness and authority; that the beasts and the crops of Mount Oliphant mattered nothing to the moves on the political chessboard of Europe.

Robin listened with unobtrusive attention to those intellectual discussions, admiring the weighty polemic his father developed against the more nimble thrust and parry of the dominie’s metaphysic.

He liked the grave utterance of his father even when he could not help admiring the wit with which Murdoch garnished his rejoinders.

Lord knows but William Burns had need of John Murdoch’s company. His labours were hard and lonely. He saw little or nothing of the life around him: in very truth he was a lone hand ploughing and sowing in the wilderness.

Gone were his talks with Provost William Fergusson at Doonholm and gone too were his conversations with his Alloway neighbours. True, there was still John Tennant (cousin of the Alloway blacksmith) in the nearby farm of Laigh Corton with whom he could exchange words and enjoy friendship. But John Tennant was as poor as himself and burdened with a large family.

Above all William needed Murdoch to sustain his belief in his own wisdom and essential virtue. He needed—though he would never have admitted this need—the flattery Murdoch subtly heaped on him.

Maybe they needed each other. Murdoch was not insincere in his flattery. He needed no proof now to support him in his view that William Burns was perhaps the most remarkable man in Ayrshire. Not only had William an upright heart, the quality of his mind provided a rare whetstone against which Murdoch could sharpen his wit and his intellect. No other man to whom he had the access of friendship could have done so much for him.

But Alloway could not hold him for ever. By the second winter he came to bid the family at Mount Oliphant a sad farewell.

Murdoch, pedagogue to the last, thought that the most appropriate way he could celebrate his farewell was to read to the assembled family the play of Titus Andronicus by William Shakespeare.

The family gathered round the ingle. William Burns especially desired that this reading should be marked with due solemnity: there were few households in Ayrshire where the dominie could drop in and read Shakespeare to the family.

It was a sad blow to all of them this leaving of Murdoch’s: particularly sad to William Burns. But however this might be, William was not the man to show emotion on such an occasion.

Murdoch’s emotions were of a very different character. He was leaving to better himself and he was buoyed with ambition about to be fulfilled. He could not resist the unconscious temptation to show off.

When Murdoch came to the scene where the ravished and mutilated Lavinia is brutally taunted, the three children could stand no more. Robert, Gilbert and Agnes shrieked their protest and wakened Annabella, the bairn, much to their mother’s annoyance.

William was aghast at this display of bad-mannered hysteria: this was a scandalous way to show their gratitude to Murdoch.

“Enough!” he cried sternly: “enough I say! If this is the gratitude you are prepared to show Mr. Murdoch then he will take away his play.”

Robin’s big black eyes were wet with tears. He clenched his fists in the tension of his outraged emotion.

“Aye!” he cried. “Let Mr. Murdoch take it away; for if he doesna then I’ll burn it in the fire.”

“Robin!” cried his father, feeling a wave of choleric anger rise in him at the audacity of his son’s impertinence, “Robin——”

But Murdoch closed the book and rose with a laugh.

“Indeed, Mr. Burns, the fault is mine. I should have brought something of Shakespeare that would have been more to the minds of the children. I beg of you, sir, that no more be made of the incident. I would not have my last memory of Mount Oliphant and the happy nights I have spent under its roof-tree marred by any displeasure. Indeed, my good friend Robin shows the excellence of his sentiments; and we would do well to acknowledge them!”

Not for the first time Agnes felt that Robin had shown sound common sense in telling Mr. Murdoch he would burn the play: to her private mind the rubbish was fit for no higher end.

But then, in her heart of hearts, Agnes had never really liked Murdoch and had never warmed to his pedagogic poses. She was glad he had the education of her sons. But she could not see that reading such blood-thirsty nonsense was in any way part of their education.

As he walked down the road with Murdoch, William again apologised for Robin’s behaviour. “I am worried at times about him,” he confessed.

“There is really little cause to be worried, Mr. Burns. I admit that Robin is in some small parts peculiar; but his peculiarity is that of a very sensitive boy. Indeed, Mr. Burns, I would make bold to say that there is an element of the precocious in our Robin. Yes, I think I may be so bold as to state that belief.”

“Precocious, Mr. Murdoch?”

“I mean—in parts—a more than usual ability. His retention of memory is of quite surpassing excellence. His understanding of our English authors is of the very first order. I confess that the dullness of his ear in the simple harmony of music is something that puzzles me.”

“No, Mr. Murdoch: Robin is no songster. But I don’t think that that will be any great drawback in his education.”

“Oh no, I don’t think it will be. Nevertheless, sir, I have striven to give the boys the very best education and I merely point this out to show you what I mean by his precocity.”

“But what am I to do, Mr. Murdoch, about their education now? That is what worries me.”

“Mr. Burns, sir: there is nothing that has given me more thought than leaving your boys without the proper means of education. Yet they have a good grounding in the essentials. I am certain that with your aid they can very profitably continue in their studies. At least they can continue with you until you can come to some suitable arrangement.”

“I am worried, Mr. Murdoch. More and more I am needing Robin’s help in the fields. Until I find my feet on the farm and manage to put a little capital by me, I don’t see that I could afford to send them into Ayr. It is a grave handicap being so far out of the way here in Mount Oliphant.”

But Murdoch didn’t comment on this. The gloom that seemed to gather round his friend’s mind was something that blended ill with his own happy thoughts.

They said good-bye at the turn of the road. Only when Murdoch had bidden farewell did he begin to feel he had parted from a very worthy friend and that he might not meet with such a man again.