Читать книгу Sir Robert's Fortune - Mrs. Oliphant - Страница 9

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When Lily got up next morning, it was to the cheerful sounds of the yard, the clucking of fowls, the voices of the kitchen calling to each other, Katrin darting out a sentence as she came to the door, Dougal growling a bass order to the boy, the sounds of whose hissing and movement over his stable-work were as steady as if Rory were being groomed like a racer till his coat shone. It is not pleasant to be disturbed by Chanticleer and his handmaidens in the middle of one’s morning sleep, nor to hear the swing of the stable pails, and the hoofs of the horses, and the shouts to each other of the outdoor servants. I should not like to have even one window of my bedchamber exposed to these noises. But Lily sprang up and ran to the window, cheered by this rustic Babel, and looked out with keen pleasure upon the rush of the fowls to Katrin’s feet as she stood with her apron filled with grain, flinging it out in handfuls, and upon the prospect through the stable of the boy hissing and rubbing down Rory, who clattered with his impatient hoofs and would not stand still to have his toilet made. Dougal was engaged in the byre, in some more important operations with the cow, whose present hope and representative—a weak-kneed, staggering calf—looked out from the door with that solemn stare of wondering imbecility which is often so pathetic. Lily did not think of pathos. She was cheered beyond measure to look out on all this active life instead of the silent moor. The world was continuing to go round all the same, the creatures had to be fed, the new day had begun—notwithstanding that she was banished to the end of the world; and this was no end of the world after all, but just a corner of the country, where life kept going on all the same, whether a foolish little girl had been to a ball overnight, or had arrived in solitude and tears at the scene of her exile. A healthful nature has always some spring in it at the opening of a new day.

She went over the place under Katrin’s guidance, when she had dressed and breakfasted, and was as ready to be amused and diverted as if she had found every thing going her own way; which shows that Lily was no young lady heroine, but an honest girl of twenty-two following the impulses of nature. The little establishment at Dalrugas was not a farm. It had none of the fluctuations, none of the anxieties, which befall a humble agriculturist who has to make his living out of a few not very friendly acres, good year and bad year together. Dougal loved, indeed, to grumble when any harm came over the potatoes, or when his hay was spoiled, as it generally was, by the rain. He liked to pose as an unfortunate farmer, persecuted by the elements; but the steady wages which Sir Robert paid, with the utmost regularity, were as a rock at the back of this careful couple, whose little harvest was for the sustenance of their little household, and did not require to be sold to produce the ready money of which they stood so very little in need. Therefore all was prosperous in the little place. The eggs, indeed, produced so plentifully, were not much profit in a place where every-body else produced eggs in their own barnyards; but a sitting from Katrin’s fowls was much esteemed in the countryside, and brought her honor and sometimes a pleasant present in kind, which was to the advantage both of her comfort and self-esteem. But a calf was a thing which brought in a little money; and the milk formed a great part of the living of the house in various forms, and when there was any over, did good to the poor folk who are always with us, on the banks of the Rugas as in other places. Dougal would talk big by times about his losses—a farmer, however small, is nothing without them; but his loss sat very lightly on his shoulders, and his comfort was great and his little gains very secure. The little steading which lurked behind Sir Robert’s gray house, and was a quite unthought-of adjunct to it, did very well in all its small traffic and barter under such conditions. The mission of Dougal and his wife was to be there, always ready to receive the master when he chose to “come North,” as they called it, with the shooting-party, for whom Katrin always kept her best sheets well aired. But Sir Robert had no mind to trust himself in the chilly North: that was all very well when a man was strong and active, and liked nothing so much as to tramp the moor all day, and keep his friends at heck and manger. But a man’s friends get fewer as he gets old, and other kinds of pleasure attract him. It was perhaps a dozen years since he had visited his spare paternal house. And Dougal and Katrin had come to think the place was theirs, and the cocks and the hens, and the cows and ponies, the chief interest in it. But they were no niggards; they would have been glad to see Sir Robert himself had he come to pay them a visit; they were still more glad to see Lily, and to make her feel herself the princess, or it might be altogether more correct to say the suzerain, under whom they reigned. They did not expect her to interfere, which made her welcome all the more warm. As for Sir Robert, he might perhaps have interfered; but even in the face of that doubt Dougal and Katrin would have acted as became them, and received him with a kindly welcome.

“Ye see, this is where I keep the fowls,” said Katrin. “It was a kind of a gun-room once; but it’s a place where a shootin’ gentleman never sets his fit, and there’s no a gun fired but Dougal’s auld carabeen. What’s the use of keeping up thae empty places, gaun to rack and ruin, with grand names till them? The sitting hens are just awfu’ comfortable in here; and as for Cockmaleerie, he mairches in and mairches out, like Mr. Smeaton, the school-master, that has five daughters, besides his wife, and takes his walks at the head of them. A cock is wonderful like a man. If you just saw the way auld Smeaton turns his head, and flings a word now and then at the chattering creatures after him! We’ve put the pig-sty out here. It’s no just the place, perhaps, so near the house; but it’s real convenient; and as the wind is maistly from the east, ye never get any smell to speak of. Besides, that’s no the kind of smell that does harm. The black powny he’s away to the moor for peat; but there’s Rory, aye taking another rug at his provender. He’s an auld farrant beast. He’s just said to himself, as you or me might do: ‘Here’s a stranger come, and I am the carriage-horse; and let’s just make the most of it.’”

“He must be very conceited if he thinks himself a carriage-horse,” said Lily, with a laugh.

“’Deed, and he’s the only ane; and no a bad substitute. As our auld minister said the day yon young lad was preaching: ‘No a bad substitute.’ I trow no, seeing he’s now the assistant and successor, and very well likit; and if it could only be settled between him and Miss Eelen there could be naething more to be desired. But that’s no the question. About Rory, Miss Lily——”

“I would much rather hear about Miss Helen. Who is Miss Helen? Is it the minister’s little girl that used to come out to Dalrugas to play with me?”

“She’s a good ten years older than you, Miss Lily.”

“I don’t think so. I was—how old?—nine; and I am sure she was not grown up, nor any thing like it. And so she can’t make up her mind to take the assistant and successor? Tell me, Katrin, tell me! I want to hear all the story. It is something to find a story here.”

“There are plenty of stories,” said Katrin; “and I’ll tell you every one of them. But about Miss Eelen. She’s a very little thing. You at nine were bigger than she was—let us say—at sixteen. There maun be five years atween you, and now she’ll be six-and-twenty. No, it’s no auld, and she’s but a bairn to look at, and she will just be a fine friend for you, Miss Lily; for though they’re plain folk, she has been real well brought up, and away at the school in Edinburgh, and plays the pianny, and a’ that kind of thing. I have mair opinion mysel’ of a good seam; but we canna expect every-body to have that sense.”

“And why will she have nothing to say to the assistant and successor? and what is his name?”

“His name is Douglas, James Douglas, of a westland family, and no that ill-looking, and well likit. Eh, but you’re keen of a story, Miss Lily, like a’ your kind. But I never said she would have naething to say to him. She is just great friends with him. They are aye plotting thegether for the poor folk, as if there was nothing needed but a minister and twa-three guid words to make heaven on earth. Oh, my bonnie lady, if it could be done as easy as that! There’s that drunken body, Johnny Wright, that keeps the merchant’s shop.” Katrin was a well-educated woman in her way, and never put f for w, which is the custom of her district; but she said chop for shop, an etymology which it is unnecessary to follow here. “But it’s a good intention—a good intention. They are aye plotting how they are to mend their neighbors; and the strange thing is—— But, dear, bless us! what are we to be havering about other folk’s weakness when nae doubt we have plenty of our ain?”

“I am not to be cheated out of my story, Katrin. Do you mean that the young minister is not a good man himself?”

“Bless us, no! that’s not what I mean. He’s just as pious a lad and as weel living—— It’s no that—it’s no that. It’s just one o’ thae mysteries that you’re far o’er-young to understand. She’s been keen to mend other folk, poor lass; and that the minister should speak to them, and show them the error o’ their ways! But the dreadful thing is that her poor bit heart is just bound up in a lad—a ne’er-do-weel, that is the worst of them all. Oh, dinna speak of it, Miss Lily, dinna speak of it! I’ll tell you anither time; or, maybe, I’ll no tell ye at all. Come in and see the kye. They’re honest creatures. There’s nothing o’ the deevil and his dreadful ways in them.”

“I wouldna be ower sure of that,” said Dougal, who came to meet them to the door of the byre, his cap hanging on to the side of his head, upon one grizzled lock, so many pushes and scratches had it received in the heat of his exertions. “There’s Crummie, just as little open to raison as if she were a wuman. No a step will she budge, though it’s clean strae and soft lying that I’m offering till her. Gang ben, and try what ye can do. She’s just furious. I canna tell what she thinks, bucking at me, and butting at me, as if I was gaun to carry her off to the butcher instead of just setting her bed in comfort for her trouble. None of the deil in them! What d’ye say to Rory? He’s a deil a’thegether, from the crown of his head to his off leg, the little evil spirit! And what’s that muckle cock ye’re so proud o’? Just Satan incarnate, that’s my opinion, stampin’ out his ain progeny when they’re o’ the same sect as himsel’. Dinna you trust to what she says, Miss Lily. There’s nae place in this world where he is not gaun about like a roarin’ lion, seekin’, as the Scripture saith, whom he may devour.”

“Eh, man,” said his wife, coming out a little red, yet triumphant, “but you’re a poor hand with your doctrines and your opinions! A wheen soft words in poor Crummie’s ear, and a clap upon her bonnie broad back, poor woman, and she’s as quiet as a lamb. Ye’ve been tugging at her, and swearing at her, though I aye tell ye no. Fleeching is aye better than fechting, if ye would only believe me—whether it’s a woman or a bairn or a poor timorsome coo.”

“Ye’re a’ alike,” said Dougal, with a grunt, returning to his work. “I’m thinking,” he said, pausing to deliver his broadside, “that, saving your presence, Miss Lily, weemen are just what ye may call the head of the irrational creation. It’s men that’s a little lower than the angels; we’re them that are made in the image of God. But when ye speak o’ the whole creation that groaneth and travaileth, I’m thinking——”

“Ye’ll just think at your work, and haud your ill tongue before the young lady,” cried his wife in high wrath. But she, too, added as he swung away with a big laugh: “Onyway, by your ain comparison, we’re at the head and you’re at the tail. Come away, Miss Lily, and see the bonnie doos. There is nae ill speaking among them. I’m no so sure,” she added, however, when out of hearing of her husband, “I’ve heard yon muckle cushat, the one with the grand ruff about his neck, swearin’ at his bonnie wifie, or else I’m sair mista’en. It’s just in the nature o’ the men-kind. They like ye weel enough, but they maun aye be gibing at ye, and jeerin’ at ye—but, bless me, a bit young thing like you, it’s no to be expeckit ye could understand.”

The pigeons were very tame, and alighted not only on Katrin’s capacious shoulders, who “shoo’d” them off, but on Lily’s, who liked the sentiment, and to find herself so familiarly accosted by creatures so highly elevated above mere cocks and hens—“the bonnie creatures,” as Katrin said, who sidl’d and bridl’d about her, with mincing steps and graceful movements. “The doocot” was an old gray tower, standing apart from the barnyard, in a small field, the traditional appendage of every old Scotch house of any importance. To come upon Rory afterward, dragging after him the boy, by name Sandy, and not unlike, either in complexion or shape, to the superior animal whom he was supposed to be taking out for exercise, brought back, if not the former discussion on the prevalence of evil, at least a practical instance of “the deevil” that was in the pony, and was an additional amusement. Lily made instant trial of the feminine ministrations which had been so effective with the cow, whispering in Rory’s ear, and stroking his impatient nose, without, however, any marked effect.