Читать книгу The Raiders: Being Some Passages In The Life Of John Faa, Lord And Earl Of Little Egypt - Samuel R. Crockett - Страница 9
ОглавлениеJUST WHY MY father called me Patrick I have never yet been able to make out. His own name was John, which, had he thought of it in time, was a good name enough for me. It may have been part of his humorsomeness, for indeed he used to say, ‘I have little to leave you, Patrick, but this auld ramshackle house on the Isle Rathan and your excellent name. You will be far on in life, my boy, before you begin to bless me for christening you Patrick Heron, but when you begin you will not cease till the day of your death.’
I am now in the thirty-seventh year of my age, yet have I not so begun to bless my father – at least not for the reason indicated.
My father, John Heron of Isle Rathan, on the Solway shore, was never a strong man all the days of him. But he married a lass from the hills who brought him no tocher, but, what was better, a strong dower of sense and good health. She died, soon after I was born, of the plague which came to Dumfries in the Black Year, and from that day my father was left alone with me in the old house on the Isle of Rathan. John Heron was the laird of a barren heritage, for Rathan is but a little isle – indeed only an isle when the tide is flowing. Except in the very slackest of the neaps there is always twice a day a long track of shells and shingle out from the tail of its bank. This track is, moreover, somewhat dangerous, for Solway tide flows swift and the sands are shifting and treacherous. So we went and came for the most part by boat, save when I or some of the lads were venturesome, as afterwards when I got well acquaint with Mary Maxwell, whom I have already called May Mischief, in the days of a lad’s first mid-summer madness.
Here on the Isle of Rathan my father taught me English and Latin, Euclid’s science of lines and how to reason with them for oneself. He ever loved the mathematic, because he said even God Almighty works by geometry. He taught me also surveying and land measuring. ‘It is a good trade, and will be more in request,’ he used to say, ‘when the lairds begin to parcel out the commonties and hill pastures, as they surely will. It’ll be a better trade to your hand than keepin’ the blackfaced yowes aff the heuchs o’ Rathan.’
And so it has proved; and many is the time I have talked over with my wife the strange far-seeing prophecy of my father about what the lairds would do in more settled times. Indeed, all through my tale, strange as it is (may I be aided to tell it plainly and truly), I have occasion to refer to my father’s sayings. Many is the time I have been the better of minding his words; many the time, also, that I have fallen with an unco blaff because I have neglected to heed his warnings. But of this anon, and perhaps more than enough.
It was a black day for me, Patrick Heron, when my father lay a-dying. I remember it was a bask day in early spring. The tide was coming up with a strong drive of east wind wrestling against it, and making a clattering jabble all about the rocks of Rathan.
‘Lift me up, Paitrick,’ said my father, ‘till I see again the bonny tide as it lappers again’ the auld toor. It will lapper there mony and mony a day an’ me no here to listen. Ilka time ye hear it, laddie, ye’ll mind on yer faither that loved to dream to the plashing o’t, juist because it was Solway salt water and this his ain auld toor o’ the Isle Rathan.’
So I lifted him up according to his word, till through the narrow window set in the thickness of the ancient wall, he could look away to the Mull, which was clear and cold slaty blue that day – for, unless it brings the dirty white fog, the east wind clears all things.
As he looked a great fishing gull turned its head as it soared, making circles in the air, and fell – a straight white streak cutting the cold blue sky of that spring day.
‘Even thus has my life been, Paitrick. I have been most of my time but a great gull diving for herring on an east-windy day. Whiles I hae gotten a bit flounder for my pains, and whiles a rive o’ drooned whalp, but o’ the rale herrin’ – desperate few, man, desperate few.
‘I hae tried it a’ ways, Paitrick, my man, ye ken,’ he would say, for in the long winter forenights when all was snug inside and the winds were trying the doors, he and I did little but talk. He lay many months a-dying. But he was patient, and most anxious that he should give me all his stores of warning and experience before he went from me and Rathan.
‘No that, at the first go off, ye’ll profit muckle, Paitrick, my man,’ he would say; ‘me telling ye that there are briers i’ the buss will no advantage ye greatly when ye hae to gae skrauchlin’ through. Ye’ll hae to get berried and scartit, whammelt and riven, till ye learn as I hae learned. Ay, ay, ye wull that!’
My father was a dark man, not like me who am fair like my mother. He had a pointed beard that he trimmed with the shears, which in a time of shaven men made him kenspeckle. He was very particular about his person, and used to set to the washing of his linen every second week, working like an old campaigner himself, and me helping – a job I had small stomach for. But at least he learned me to be clean by nature and habit.
‘We canna compass godliness,’ he would say often, ‘try as we may, Paitrick. But cleanliness is a kindly, common-like virtue, and it’s so far on the road, at any rate.’ That was one of his sayings.
My father was not what you would call a deeply religious man; at least, if he were, he said little about it, though he read daily in the Scriptures, and also expected me to read a chosen part, questioning me sharply on the meaning. But he did not company with the lairds of the countryside, nor with the tenants either for the matter of that. He took no part in the services which were held by the Society Men who collected in the neighbourhood, and who met statedly for their diets of worship at Springholm and Crocketford. Yet his sympathies were plainly with these men and with Mr Macmillan of Balmaghie who subscribed to them – not at all with the settled ministers of the parishes. On Sabbaths he always encouraged me to take the pony over in the great wide-bottomed boat to the shore, and ride on Donald to the Kirk of Dullarg or the Societies meeting.
‘Ye see, Paitrick, for mysel’ I hae tried a’ ways o’t. I hae been oot wi’ the King’s riders in the auld bad days. Silver Sand kens where. I hae been in the haggs o’ the peat-mosses wi’ the sants. I hae lain snug an’ cosy in Peden’s cave wi’ the auld man himsel’ at my back. So ye see I hae tried a’ ways o’t. My advice to you, Paitrick, is no to be identified wi’ ony extremes, to read yer Bible strictly, an’ gin ye get a guid minister to sit under, to listen eidently to the word preached. It’s mair than your faither ever got for ony length o’ time.’
By bit and bit he grew weaker, as the days grew longer.
‘Noo, Paitrick,’ he said, over in the still time of one morning, at the hour of slack tide, when a watcher sitting up with the sick gets chill and cauldrife and when the night lies like a solid weight on the earth and sea, though heavier on the sea. At this time my father called to me.
‘I’m gaun, Paitrick,’ he said, just as though he were going over to the Dullarg in the boat; ‘it’s time I was awa’. I could wish for your sake that I had mair to leave ye. Had I been a better boy at your time o’ life, ye wad hae had mair amang your hands; but then maybe it’s you that wad hae been the ill boy. It’s better that it was me. But there’ll be a pickle siller in Matthew Erskine’s hands for a’ that. But gin I can leave ye the content to be doing wi’ little, an’ the saving salt o’ honour to be kitchen to your piece, that’s better than the lairdship o’ a barony.’
He was silent for a while, and then he said:
‘Ye are no feared, Paitrick?’
‘Feared, father,’ I said, ‘what for would I be feared of you?’
‘Aweel, no,’ he answered, very calm, ‘I am no a man to mak’ a to-do aboot deein’. I bid ye guid-nicht, my son Paitrick.’ And so passed, as one might fall on sleep.
He was a quiet man, a surprisingly humorsome man, and I believe a true Christian man, though all his deathbed testimony was no more than I have told.
