Читать книгу The Laird of Norlaw; A Scottish Story - Маргарет Олифант - Страница 16

The village lay bright under the afternoon sun when Huntley Livingstone came in sight of it that day. It was perfectly quiet, as was its wont—some small children playing at the open doors, the elder ones, save here and there an elder daughter charged with the heavy responsibility of a baby, being for the most part safe at school. At the door of the Norlaw Arms an angler-visitor, with his rod over his shoulder, a single figure becalmed in the sunshine, stood lazily gazing about him—and in the shadow of the projecting gable of the inn, another stranger stood holding his horse before the door of the smithy, from whence big John Black, the smith, was about to issue to replace a lost shoe. John was the master of this important rural establishment, and was a big, soft-hearted giant, full of the good-humored obtuseness which so often accompanies great personal size and strength. Inside, in the fiery obscurity of the village Pandemonium, toiled a giant of quite a different order—a swarthy, thick-set little Cyclops, with a hump on his shoulder, and one eye. This was John’s brother, the ruling spirit of mischief in Kirkbride, whom all the mothers of sons held in disgust and terror, and whom Dr. Logan himself could make no improvement in. Jacob, or Jaacob, as he was popularly called, was as strong as he was ugly, and, it was generally understood, as wicked as both. By natural consequence, his rustic neighbors found a considerable attraction in his society, and liked to repeat his sayings, which were not always funny, with explosions of laughter. Huntley’s errand, as it happened, was with this individual, who was somewhat of a genius in his way, which was the way of agricultural implements. Jaacob had even taken out what he called a “paatent” for a new harrow of his own invention, and was, in right of this, the authority, on all such matters, of the country-side.

“Ye’ll be carrying on the farm then?” said Jaacob. “A plow needs mair than a new coulter to drive it through a furrow—it’ll be new work to you, Mr. Huntley, to gang atween the stilts yoursel’.”

Huntley had descended suddenly out of the hurry of his fancies about Melmar, of which he already saw himself master. He came to the ground with rather a rude shock when he heard these words, and found himself on the hard earthen floor of the smithy, with the red sparks flying into the darkness over his head, and Jaacob’s one eye twinkling at him in the fiery light. He was not the laird of Melmar to Jaacob, but only the son of the ruined Norlaw.

“What we want in the meantime is the plow,” said Huntley, somewhat sharply, his face flushing in spite of himself; then he added, after a pause, all the humiliation of debt and poverty recurring to his mind, which had been defended for some time against that lesser pain by the excitement of grief, and to-day by the violent flush of ambitious hope. “I believe there is a bill—but if you’ll send it up to the house I’ll see to it without delay.”

Bowed Jaacob was not ungenerous in his way, but he scorned to defend himself from any imputation of ungenerosity. He did not hasten, therefore, as might have been supposed, to say that the aforesaid bill was of no importance, and could wait. On the contrary, he proceeded, with sarcastic dryness in his tone:

“You’ll find it hard work to get in your craps. How many acres have ye in wheat the year, Mr. Huntley? You’ll no’ ken? Houts, man! that’s an ill beginning for a lad that farms his ain land.”

In spite of himself, tears of mortification stole into Huntley’s eyes. He turned his head away with a muttered exclamation.

“I don’t know that we’ve half an acre safe!” cried Huntley, in the bitterness of his heart. His dream was broken. Me’mar, who was their chief creditor—Me’mar, whom he had not yet displaced—might be able to get into his hard worldly hands, for aught Huntley knew, every slope of Norlaw.

“Aweel, aweel, lad,” said Jaacob, striking his hammer fiercely upon the glowing iron, “a’ the better for you—you’ll be your ain man—but I wouldna cheat myself with fancies if I was you. Make up your mind ae way or another, but dinna come here and speak to me about plows, as if that was what your mind was set on. I’m no’ a Solomon, but if you mean to thrive, never delude yoursalf with a sham.”

“What’s a’ that?” said big John, as his customer mounted the reshod horse, and trotted off in leisurely fashion as became the day; “has Jaacob won to his books, Mr. Huntley? but I reckon he has his match when he has you.”

John, however, who was rather proud of his brother’s intellectual powers, thought no such thing—neither did the little Cyclops himself.

“Mind your ain business,” said Jaacob, briefly; “what do you think a man learns out of books, you haverel? Na, if I’m onything, I’m a man of observation; and take my word, lad, there never was a man trove yet till he saw distinck where he was, and ordered his ways according. There’s mysel’—do you think I could ever make ony progress, ae way or another, if I minded what a’ these stupid ideots say?”

“What do they say?” said Huntley, who was too much occupied with his own thoughts to perceive the drift of Jaacob’s personal observations.

“Na, d’ye think I’m heeding?” said Jaacob; “a man can rarely be more enlightened than his neighbors without suffering for’t. A’ this auld machinery of the world creaks like an auld bellows. There’s naething but delusions on every side of ye. Ye canna be clear of a single thing that ye havena conquished for yoursel’.”

Huntley, who had come out of the languid August afternoon, red in a glow of sunshine and heat, to which the very idea of long labor was alien, which accorded well enough with his own ambitious dreams and thoughts of sudden fortune—could not help feeling somehow as if Jaacob’s hammer, beneath the strokes of which the sparks flew, struck himself as well as the iron. Melmar dissipated into thin air, in the ruddy atmosphere of the smithy. The two darkling giants, large and small, moving about in the fierce glow of the firelight, the puff of the bellows, plied by an attendant demon, and the ceaseless clank of the hammer, all combined to recall to reality and the present, the thoughts of the dreaming lad. In this atmosphere the long labors of the Australian emigrant looked much more reasonable and likely than any sudden enrichment; and with the unconscious self-reference of his age, Huntley took no pains to find out what Jaacob meant, but immediately applied the counsel to his own case.

“I suppose you’re very right, Jacob,” said Huntley; “but it’s hard work making a fortune; maybe it’s safer in the end than what comes to you from another man’s labors; but still, to spend a life in gathering money, is no very great thing to look forward to.”

“Money!” said Jaacob, contemptuously. “Na, lad; if that’s your thought, you’re no’ in my way. Did you ever hear of a rich philosopher? ne’er a are have I heard tell o’, though I ken the maist of that fraternity. Money! na! it’s ideas, and no that sordid trash, that tempts me.”

“And the mair fuil you!” said big John, half in chagrin, half in admiration. “You might have made your fortune twenty times over, if it hadna been for your philosophy.”

“Whew!” whistled bowed Jaacob, with magnificent disdain; “what’s a’ the siller in the world and a’ its delichts—grand houses, grand leddies, and a’ the rest of thae vanities—to the purshuit of truth? That’s what I’m saying, callant—take every thing on trust because you’ve heard sae a’ your days, and your faither believed it before ye, gin ye please; but as for me, I’m no’ the man for sham—I set my fit, if a’ the world should come against me, on ideas I’ve won and battled for mysel’.”

“When they’re as reasonable as the harrow, I’ve nae objection,” said big John; “but ilka man canna write his idies in wud and iron, Mr. Huntley. The like o’ that may be a’ very well for him, but it doesna answer you and me. Eh, man, but it’s warm! If it wasna that philosophy’s an awfu’ drouthy thing—and the wife comes down on me like murder when I get a gill—I wouldna say but it’s the best kind of wark for this weather. Ye’ll be goin’ up bye to the manse, Mr. Huntley. I hear they’re aye very well pleased to see onybody out of Norlaw; but ye maunna say ye’ve been here, for Jaacob and the minister, they’re at daggers drawn.”

“Pish! nae such thing,” cried Jaacob, with complacency; “the like of a man like yon shouldna mell with a man like me. It’s no’ a fair battle—I aye say sae—I can tak his measure fast enough, but he can nae mair tak mine than he can flee. Eh, lad! have you ta’en the gate? and no’ a word mair about the plow?”

“I’ll take your advice, Jacob,” said Huntley; “the plow can stand till we see what use we’ll have for it; but as for going between the stilts myself, if I do you’ll see me draw as fair a furrow as any plowman about Kirkbride.”

“Hurray!” said Jaacob; “the lad has some speerit after a’; never you mind—we’ll send down somebody to see to the plow.”

With this assurance, Huntley left the smithy; but not till Jaacob had begun to sing in the most singular of cracked and elvish voices, beating time with emphatic strokes of his hammer, “The Flaxen-headed Cowboy,” a rustic and ancient ditty, much in favor in the country-side. Whether it was the gestures of the gnome which called them forth, or a ludicrous application of the song to himself, Huntley could not tell; but big John and the boy accompanied the chant with audible, yet restrained explosions of laughter. Huntley grew very red in spite of himself, as he hurried along to the little bridge. What a change from the fancy which possessed him as he came up the village street half an hour ago! He could not have believed that his hypothetical inheritance could have vanished so utterly; somehow he could not even recall that evanescent splendor. It was no longer the heir of Melmar who ascended the brae of Tyne, through the trees and scattered cottages towards the white-gabled manse. It was the same Huntley Livingstone who had buried his father at midnight, who had set his face against the evil fortune which seemed ready to overwhelm his house, and who had pledged himself to win in a new country a new and stable fortune for the race of Norlaw.

But the young man was by no means contented to part so lightly with his magnificent vision. He did all he could by dint of thinking to bring it back to his mind; but even when he paused at the top of the little hill and surveyed once more the fair fields of Melmar, he could not recover the enthusiasm and fervor of his former thoughts. Bowed Jaacob, with the odd philosophy which perceived other people’s mistakes, but could not see its own ludicrous pretensions—big John, who believed in his brother—and the ruddy darkness of the smithy, where reality made a rude assault upon his vision—had disenchanted Huntley. He stood on the brae of Tyne, seeing every thing with practical and undazzled eyes, feeling himself to have a certain claim, difficult and doubtful, yet real, upon the lands before him; but seeing all the obstacles which lay in its way. And, distinct from this, far apart and separate, with a world between, lay the fortune far more secure and certain which Huntley had to make with his own hands.

It was with these thoughts that he entered the manse of Kirkbride.