Читать книгу A Lost Lady of Old Years - John Buchan - Страница 11

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The cold of the water dispersed Francis' high sentiments. He shook himself ruefully, and looked back at the dim outline of the ship. The journey had fairly tired him, and it vexed him to see Starkie, the better swimmer, as active as ever. But by the time he had wrung his clothes and shaken the salt from his hair his spirits had returned, and with the other at his heel he clambered up the bank of red earth and made for the nearest houses.

The darkening was already on the fall, and the roofs of the town shone faint over a field of corn. The plashing Mr. Francis had no care to find a road, but held straight through the crops with a fine disregard of ownership. At the end they came to a low stone dyke, and beyond it a muddy road of the same unfriendly colour of soil. Thence the cobbles began and a line of little houses, stretching steeply down to what seemed a wide grey flood. For a second Francis' heart quickened with interest. This was the great river of Tweed, from whose banks came his family and his name. The sight momentarily enlivened for him the listless scene and the clammy weather.

Both were hungry and cold, and there was little cause to be finical in the matter of lodging; for to both these young adventurers thriftiness was something of a noble quality, and they sought to husband their present resources. So they went boldly to the first door in the line of houses and sought admittance.

A woman came, a tall, harsh-featured woman of forty and more, with her arms bare and her coats kilted. She stared at the intruders with incivility, and waited their question.

"Can you give us a bed for the night, mistress? We are two seafaring men who came ashore the day and are ettlin' to travel up the water to our hames. We're unco wet and famished, and will pay ye for all that ye may gie us."

"Whatna vessel came ye aff?" said the woman, with suspicion in her eye.

"The 'Kern' o' Leith," said Francis, readily.

"And whaur may your hames be?"

"In Yarrow at the Tinnies' Burnfoot," seizing upon the only place of which he had heard the names.

"The Tinnies' Burn," said the woman, meditatively. "There were Scotts in it in my time, but I heard they had flitted. Ye'll be some o' the new folk. Come in, and I'll see what I can dae for ye!"

And she led the ready pair into the kitchen.

The place was high and wide, with cobwebbed, smoke-grimed rafters and a searching odour of comfort. But soon the heat drew the salt fumes from the wet garments, and the place smelt like a ship's cabin. The woman sniffed and bustled angrily. Then with some brusqueness she bade them get up to the garret and put on her husband's breeks, for she would have no sailor-folk making her kitchen like the harbour-end.

Dry clothes and the plain warm meal which followed restored the two to their natural cheerfulness. They sat by the fire and fell to speaking in low tones about their way overland to the West. It was an ill-timed action, for the housewife's suspicious ears caught names which she liked ill, and the whispering made her uneasy. She came over to the ingle and with arms squared broke in on the talk.

"What garred ye come ashore sae ill set-up, lads? I've seen mony sailor-men, but nane sae puirly fitted as yoursels."

"We're juist ashore for a wee," said Francis. "We got the chance o' winnin' hame and we took it. Twae days will bring us to Yarrow, twae days back, and by that time the 'Kern' 'ill be lying loadin' in the harbour. It wasna an errand to tak ony plenishing wi' us."

The woman laughed sardonically. "What bit o' the harbour did ye lie in?" said she.

Francis was at a loss, and cast about warily for an answer.

"I've never been here but the yince," said he, "so I canna just tell ye richt. But we cam maybe a hundred yairds up the river and syne cast anchor by the richt wall."

Again the woman laughed. "And how did ye win up the river? Did ye a' get oot and shove the boat wi' your shouthers?"

"Are you daft, wife?" said the dumbfoundered Mr. Stark.

"No, my lad," said she; "but ye're the daft anes to come to me wi' a story like that. The river the noo is no three feet deep a' ower wi' sands and the shift o' the tide-bar. Ye're nae sailors. I warrant ye dinna ken a boom frae a cuddie's tail, and yet ye come here wi' your talk o' sailors. Na, I'll tell ye what ye are. Ye're Hielandmen or French, I'll no say which, but ye're ower here on nae guid errand. Ye cam frae a ship; but it was in a boat under the Tranen rocks. Oot o' my house ye gang, and ye may bless the Lord I dinna rin ye to the Provost."

The woman stood frowning above them, so clearly mistress of the situation that the hearts of the two wanderers sank. The soul of Mr. Stark, already raised high with vague belief in his comrade's dark and terrible designs, was genuinely alarmed by this shrewd reading of purpose. He looked to see Francis falter and stammer, and when he saw his face still calm and inscrutable, his voice yet unshaken, he bowed in spirit before a master.

As for Francis, he followed the broad path of denial.

"Hielandman or French," he cried with a laugh. "Is't like, think ye, when I haena a plack to spare I should take up my heid wi' beggars' politics? Na, na, a Whig am I and my faither afore me. I wadna stir my thoomb for a' the Charlies that ever whistled. Gin this were a change-house, mistress, and a bowl o' yill were on the board afore me, ye wad see me drink damnation to a' Pretenders, and health to King Geordie."

His words were so violent and so honestly given that the woman looked momentarily satisfied. "I've maybe mista'en ye," she said; "but at ony rate, whatever ye are, ye're shameless leears."

"Maybe we are, gudewife," said Francis, with ingratiating candour; "but for us wandering men we never ken when we are wi' freends. The truth o' the maitter is that we cast oot wi' the Captain, and have e'en ta'en the road to the West whaur we'll find another ship. Ye'll forgie us the lee, mistress?"

"Ye look like honest men," said the woman, slowly and hesitatingly. "You at ony rate," and she turned to Francis. "Ye've far ower long and sarious a face to be a blagyird."

In the morning they were up betimes, and ready for the road. The shadow of Mr. Berritch still hung over both, and a dim mist of suspicion was in the atmosphere of the dwelling. The final affront came at parting. Francis, with conscious honesty, offered payment for the night's lodging. The woman haggled and raised the price till she had all but angered him; then, with a hearty slap on the back, she bade him begone and live like an honest man. "D' ye think," said she, "I wad tak payment frae twae forwandered callants? Gang your ways, man, and try gin ye can be as honest as ye're bonny." And her laugh rang in his ears as he went down the street.

At first, the glory of the morning set his spirits high. They were already on the western outskirts of the town, where the grey sea-beat tenements dwindle to outlying cottages which stare abruptly over meadowland and river. The September haze was rising in furling battalions before the wind, and the salt ocean air strove with the serener fragrance of shorn hay-fields. There was something extraordinarily fresh and blithe in the wide landscape falling to the eye under the blue, and the bitter crispness of morn. Insensibly their limbs moved faster, they flung back their shoulders, and with open mouth and head erect drank in the life-giving air.

But as they plodded on, Francis soon fell into the clutches of memory, and his reflections pleased him little. The whole thought of the day before was full of irritation. On the threshold of high-handed adventure he had met with a closed door, and had been driven to a poverty-stricken compromise. Hitherto in dark moments of self-revelation he had buoyed himself with a flattering picture of a keen brain and a dauntless will. Now, both seemed to have failed grievously; he had been tricked and laughed at by a peddling sailor. Even the rhetorical parting did not comfort him. Seen in the cold light of day it seemed crude and boyish. He could have torn his tongue out with rage when he thought on the grinning Mr. Berritch and the gaping crew.

But more than this folly, he regretted his lapse from his first resolution. The fine renunciation of virtue which he had performed two nights before on the doorstep of his home was rapidly being made of no avail. He had been betrayed into compromise, into honesty. The words of the woman at Berwick still rang in his ears. She had clearly taken him for some truant apprentice, some temporary recreant from the respectable. The thought was gall and wormwood. He, the master, the scorner of the domestic, the Ulysses and Autolycus to be! And—alas for human consistency!—there was still another trouble of a vastly different kind. In one matter he was ashamed of deception. He had worn the badge of whiggery in the eyes of Mr. Stark, and though the need for the step had been apparent, he could not divest his mind of some faint scruples, the relics of an earlier ideal of gentility.

The result of such meditations was to drive the meditator into a fine bad temper, which he proceeded to vent on the ill-fated Starkie. This gentleman had spoken little, being filled with thoughts of his own. Somewhere in his curious nature was a strain of sentiment, which revelled in cheap emotions and the commonplaces of memory. The charms of Kate Mallison still held her fugitive lover, and as he travelled he lingered pleasantly over her face and figure, and formed his mouth to words of endearment. The virulence of his companion did not disturb him. For this he had made up his mind long ago. After all, if one seeks a great man as a friend, one must be prepared to bear with his humours. And when Francis, roused by memories of his fall into virtue, talked shrilly of desperate plans, Starkie inclined a deaf, yet willing ear, and went on with his fancies.

But by and by with the hours, another feeling grew upon the elder's mind. The road ran among low birches with a sombre regiment of pines flanking it on the right. Through the spaces gleamed the blue sky, pale with the light haze of September, and on the left among reeds and willows twined and crooned the great streams of Tweed. Francis was diverted against himself, and, ere ever he knew, the old glamour of the countryside had fallen upon him. He, too, it was his proud reflection, was a son of this land, born of a family whose name was old as the hills and waters. The ancient nameless charm which slumbered with the green hillsides, flashed in the streams, and hung over the bare mosses, stole unbeknown into his soul, and the stout Francis was led captive by the poetry of the common world.

The mood lasted till near evening, when they slept at a little public somewhere by Leader-foot. In the morn they were early awake, for those days of delay in their own land were irksome to both. Now they were in a stranger country, where hills came down to the water's edge, and the distance showed lines of blue mountain. The weather was still the placid and soothing warmth of a late summer with roads running white and dry before them, and the quiet broken only by the sounds of leisured, rustic toil. For the nonce the bustling fervour died in Francis' breast, and he took his way through the gracious valley in a pleasant torpor of spirit.

But by midday, all this was driven to the winds by the conduct of Mr. Stark. This gentleman, awakened from his sentiments of yesterday, fell to the purposeless chatter in which he specially excelled. Thence, finding his companion irresponsive, he glided naturally to the plotting of mischief. He had some desire to vindicate his name of adventurer in the eyes of his saturnine friend. So he cast about him for a fitting object.

Now ill luck sent him an opportunity at once too facile and too mean, for, when the pair stopped at a wayside cottage for water, he adroitly contrived to filch a cut of dried beef from the wooden dresser. In glee he showed it to Francis as they halted at midday a mile beyond. He expected approval, or at the least tolerance; but his reception sorely discomfited him, for to Francis, the thing appeared so aimlessly childish, so petty, that his gorge rose at the sight. It was the act of a knavish boy, and the whole soul of this man of affairs was stirred to anger. If there was any flicker of honesty in the feeling it was sternly suppressed, but to the disgust he gave full rein.

"What for did ye do that?" he asked fiercely.

"Oh, juist to keep my hand in, belike," said the Westlander.

"Ye damnable bairn," cried Francis, "d' ye call this a man's work, robbing auld wives of their meat, when ye have no need of it? I'll learn ye better. Come back with me, see, this minute, and if ye dinna pay her what she asks, you and me will quit company. D' ye think I will have ye running at my heels like a thieving collie?"

The elder man had too menacing a brow and angry tone for the feeble Mr. Stark to resist. He followed him grumbling, and suffered to be led like a sheep within the cottage. The place was bare and poor; the woman, thin and white as a bone, and long fallen in the vale of years.

"My friend happened to lift something o' yours, mistress, and we e'en came to pay ye for it," and Francis regarded the strange place with some pity.

"Were ye starvin', lads?" she asked in a piping voice, "for if sae ye may keep the meat and welcome. But it wad hae been mair faisable to speir."

But, try they their best, she would take no payment, and they had to leave in despair. The thing put both into an ill humour. Starkie nursed a grievance, and Francis had much the same temper as the Christian who laments the failure of judgment upon the wicked. They spoke no words, but stalked silently on different sides of the road, with averted eyes and tragic bearing.

But continued surliness was little in Starkie's way. At the end of half an hour he was jocose and making farcical overtures to friendship. When he found his efforts repulsed, he comforted himself with a song, and when in a little they came to a village and a public, turned gladly to the relief of drink. Now, whether it was that the landlord's whisky had extraordinary qualities or that Starkie drank a wondrous amount, it is certain that ere he had gone far it became clear that he was grossly drunk.

Thence the course of the two became troubled and uncertain. Starkie drew up to the other in maudlin amity. Francis had drunk little and his gloomy temper still held him. He had never loved drunkenness, and at the moment his thoughts dwelt on the failure of his plans. So he sent Mr. Stark to the devil with no mincing words. With drunken gravity Starkie retorted, and then with more drunken heroism squared himself to fight. The patience of Francis fairly gave way. Gripping his assailant by the collar and breeches he tossed him easily to the roadside.

"Lie there, ye drunken swine," he cried, "and I'm glad I'm quit o' ye."

So, pursued by thickly-uttered reproaches, he hastened forward alone.

With the next dawn Francis found himself on the confines of great hills, where the river, now shrunk to a stream, foamed in a narrowed vale. The weather had changed with the night to cloud and cold, and the even drizzle of a Scots mist obscured the sun. The slopes gloomed black and wet, every burn was red with flood, and the sparse trees dripped in dreary silence. The place was singularly dispiriting, for nought met the eye but the mire underfoot and the murky folds of mist.

Early in the day he stopped a passing shepherd and asked him his whereabouts. He was told with great wealth of detail which further befogged his mind. Then on a sudden impulse he asked where lay Yarrow and the Birkenshaw Tower. "D' ye see that hill ower the water?" was the answer. "That's the Grey Drannock, and the far side o' 't looks straucht down on the Yarrow water." This then was the confines of his own land, these were haply his forefathers' hills; a sudden pride went through his heart, but the next moment he was looking drearily on his lamentable fortunes.

He was sick of himself, disgusted with his ill-success, and half inclined to rue his parting with Mr. Stark. Where were his fine resolutions? All vanishing into air under the blast of his spasmodic virtues. As he looked back on the events of the past days he was driven by his present sourness especially to loathe his glimpses of decency. The dismal weather helped to harden him. After all, he reflected, the world is a battle-ground, where he wins who is least saddled with the baggage of virtue. Man preys upon man; I may expect no mercy from others; and none shall others get from me. So it was with fierce purpose and acrid temper that Francis travelled through the clammy weather. It had been Starkie, he thought with irritation, and not himself that had the true spirit; and he cursed the hour when he had left the little Westlander in the ditch.

By the evening it cleared and the sun set stormily over monstrous blue hills. He had passed through the town of Peebles in the early afternoon, and now followed the wide western road up the green pastoral dale of the upper Tweed. The dusk was drawing on as he left the river and took the path which ran to Ayr by Lanark and Clyde. Just at the darkening the lights of a little village beckoned him,—a line of white houses and a cluster of rowans by a burnside. His legs were growing weary, and he had not yet supped; so he turned to the inn to bide the night.