Читать книгу Kenneth McAlpine: A Tale of Mountain, Moorland and Sea - Stables Gordon - Страница 4

Scene: Half-way down the glen, where heather and patches of tilled land end, and woodland commences. Where the stream goes wimpling and swirling round the boulders, underneath the rustic bridge.

At the corner, where, after crossing the bridge, the road takes a bend, and is soon lost in the gloom of overhanging foliage, Kenneth is seated on a stone.

At his feet lies Kooran, looking very knowing, because he has got his ears pricked up, and his eyes very wide open, and his head thoughtfully turned a little on one side.

Kooran knows that his master has come there to meet his friend the Highland keeper, and that the retriever Shot will be with him, but the keeper may come down from the brae-land on the right, or up the road from the wood, or he may suddenly appear on the cliff top, after fording the stream and climbing the rocks.

No need for Kenneth to listen; he has only to watch Kooran.

No sound can deceive Kooran. He will not move from that position till the right moment.

Not far from Kooran’s extended tail, a field-mouse begins to sing a little song. She is hidden in under the dry moss, through which she has driven all sorts of smooth round tunnels, for quite an engineer is the field-mouse, and the only wonder is she ever finds her way back again to her nest, through such a labyrinthic network of half-lighted lanes.

“Beet-ee-beet-ee-beet-ee-ee-beet-ee.” So goes her song.

Kooran never moves his head; all he does is to turn one ear back towards his tail for a moment, but only one ear.

“I hear you,” he seems to say. “Sing away, my pretty one you know I’m busy, but wait a wee till Shot comes. Shot and I will soon have you out of there. My eyes! won’t we make the turf fly!”

A great bird flies right over a tree, but turns sharply in the air and flies back affrightedly. It was a moor-cock, but he didn’t know any one was there. He has to take another road home.

A twig snaps; Kenneth looks in that direction. The dog never moves. He knows it is only the polecat trying to reach out to a branch where a thrush has gone to sleep.

The stream makes music in drowsy monotone, but hark! there is a plash. It is an otter. Kooran knows it, and does not move. Then presently there are close beside them apparently, two sharp dull thuds. It is only mother rabbit beating her heels on the ground to drive her over-bold little ones back into their holes, and to warn every rabbit within hearing that danger is near, and that there are a live dog and a live boy not far off, who can’t be after any good.

Sometimes the distant bleating of sheep or the pleasant lowing of kine falls on Kenneth’s ear, and anon, far up among the mountains, there is a strange shout, half whoop, half whistle, prolonged and mournful. At first it is repeated about every two seconds; then Quicker and quicker it comes, and wilder and wilder, till it ends in one long quavering scream.

“Whoo-oop, whoo-oop, whoo-oop, whoop, whoop-oop-oop-oop-oo-oo-oo!”

It is the shriek of the curlew as he sails round and round in the air.

“Why, Kooran,” says the boy at last, “what can be keeping them?”

Kooran beats his tail twice on the ground, but does not move his body.

“I hope they won’t be long, dear doggie.”

Kooran beats his tail once against the ground.

This means, “Have patience, master.”

The sun goes down behind the hills.

Then comes still Evening on.

In the bonnie Scottish Highlands, reader, in sweet summer-time, or in riper autumn, we cannot say with truth that night falls; no, rather “Evening steals down.”

Oh! how gently she is stealing down now on the peaceful scene around Kenneth and Kooran. Far down the glen yonder, where the river broadens out in the valley, there lie long clouds of grey mist, with the tall spruce pines glimmering green and ghost-like through them. They are the trailing garments of Evening. Gradually they change to crimson as the sun’s parting rays fall on them.

But day lingers long on the hill-tops, among the steel-grey rocks, among boulders that stand boldly out from the dark background like blocks of snow, and among patches of purple heather. Evening sees that day must go at last, so she hies away to put the flowers to sleep.

“Sleep, sleep, my gentle flowers,” she says, “for the day is dying fast, and the dews will fall and blight you.”

She whispers to the gowans (mountain daisies) first, and the “wee modest crimson-tippèd flowers” fold their petals like sea-anemones, and go softly to sleep. She lightly touches the pimpernels, the crimson and the pink-eyed, and they curl their flower-leaves and sink to rest. She breathes upon the wild convolvulus that trails among the grass, and it twists up its silken blossoms till they look like little wisps of calico, pink and white. Even the hardy heather bells creep closer together, and the star-like blossoms of the bramble that clothe the banks shrink smaller as she brushes them with her wings.

Then Evening speaks to the west wind.

“Blow softly, gentle west wind,” she says; “blow softly through the feathery larches and the needled pines; make the leaves of the russet oaks and the silvery drooping birches sing soft lullabies, that my children the flowers may sleep.”

And the west wind obeys her, and goes sighing through the trees, and all the flowerets nod and sleep.

The linnet has long gone to bed, close hidden under the whin bush. The tom-tit creeps closer against a patch of lichen that grows on the stem of an old ash tree. The cushat in the thicket of spruce hears the west wind’s lullaby, and ceases to croodle. The blackbird and thrush hide themselves in the hawthorn tree; only the robin still sings on the top rail of the old bridge.

“I will sing all night,” the robin says. “I will sing with the trees and the west wind till the sun returns.”

“Twhoo-hoo-hoo!” shrieks the owl, and Robin flies away.

Then Evening goes to the hedgehog, to the fox, to the foumart, the whitterit, the bat, and the vole.

“Come out now, come out now,” she cries to these, “for the moon is coming, and danger has fled with the daylight far over the hills.”

But the lithe green snake, and the deadly adder, and the toad have heard the invitation too, and lie closer under cover or creep into their holes, for enemies are abroad.

Then slowly and solemnly over the distant hills uprises the moon.

And so gloaming gives place to night.

Something black came feathering along at last, and next moment Shot, with his jacket quite wet, and very much out of breath with running, was kissing his friend the collie.

Very soon after Dugald and Kenneth were shaking hands.

“You thought I wasn’t coming?” said Dugald.

“Indeed, you’re right, but I had almost fallen asleep.”

“I’ve had such a chase after a couple of poachers. Didn’t you hear me firing? No? But troth, I did have a rap at one of them. Didn’t kill him? Man, no, and more’s the pity. Troth, Kennie, lad, there are too many about. But come along, till we see the fairy’s knoll. Man, it’s a whole week since I’ve seen you. How’s the sheep?”

“Doing well. No more late lambs. No more feeble dying ones.”

The keeper shouldered his gun; the two dogs speedily tore up the grass where the field-mouse had been singing. They destroyed all her tunnels and mossy lanes, but they hadn’t time to unearth the mouse herself.

Away up over the hills went the friends. Up, and up, and up. When on the brow of the mountain they were to cross they must have been fifteen hundred feet above the sea level. Down beneath them the rolling country was slumbering in the misty moonlight, only the river meandered through it all and sparkled like a thread of silver.

It was a near cut they had taken; they had now only to descend a little way, and, behold, they were at the cave.

And soon in it.

“I’ll light the lamp,” said Kenneth, and in a moment more the interior was illuminated.

“Well, I do declare this is grand! Never in this world before had shepherd such a shelter, surely!”

So he well might say. Kenneth had cleaned the cave out, bedded the floor with a carpet of withered brackens, hung a huge oil lamp in it, which gave light and warmth both, built rude seats round it, made a rude table, and conveyed hither his books, his fishing-gear, and even his flute.

“Isn’t it delightful!” cried Kenneth, laughing till his eyes danced and sparkled in the moonlight.

“Oh! it is grand!” said Dugald, sitting down all the better to view the place.

“I can eat my dinner here, you know,” said Kenneth, “and read my books, and study at night.”

“At night!” exclaimed honest Dugald. “Wad ye no’ be feared, man?” he added solemnly. “Are there no bogles about? Losh! there might be even ghosts. Or, man! just fancy a wee fairy body coming in through the door when you were a’ by yoursel’!”

“Oh!” cried the boy, “that is too good ever to be true. I should rejoice to see a fairy.”

“Well, man, rather you than me. But tak’ your flute and play a tune, to banish eerie thoughts.”

Kenneth put his instrument together and commenced.

Shot sat down on the brackens and commenced too.

Dugald turned Shot out of the cave, but Kooran had better manners and was allowed to stay. It was the “Flowers o’ the Forest” that Kenneth played, and to this sweetly mournful air Dugald listened entranced.

“Silly Dugald!” some would say, for his very eyes were moist.

“Ah! Kennie, man,” he said at last, “I hope you may never live to play that dear auld lilt in a foreign land with the tears rinnin’ o’er your face.”

“What mean ye, Dugald?” Kenneth said.

“Mean?” cried Dugald almost fiercely. “Why, this, lad: that news came to-day to the clachan that our auld laird, that has ever been sae kind to us, is bankrupt, and has sold his fine estate to an American – to a foreigner, Kennie.”

“Don’t say so?”

“But I do say so, and I fear it’s an owertrue tale, lad. The place that knows us noo may soon know us no more. For they tell me he is going to evict the tenants, pull the clachan down, and turn our bonnie glen into a forest for deer, knock doon the dear auld kirk, Kennie, that you and I were christened in, and have sung psalms in Sunday after Sunday, knock doon our kirk, give our roofs to the flames, – ay, Kennie, and level the graves o’ those we hold dear!”

“I really cannot believe all this, Dugald. Oh! it would kill my mother.”

“Poor laddie!” said Dugald, laying his hand kindly on Kenneth’s shoulder. “Poor laddie! Grief has been your share in the world of late. Two or three years ago, when your father lived, what a merry boy you were! But your father, once a thrifty crofter, had been reduced to a humble shepherd, and when that broke his heart, and the Lord took him, his brave boy Kennie left school and tended the sheep, and his industry supports a widowed mother. Ay, lad, Kennie, it will gang hard on you and hard on your mother to leave Glen Alva.”

Kenneth looked the picture of despair. His flute had fallen from his hand, and lay unheeded among the brackens.

“To leave my mother,” he muttered, speaking apparently to himself, “to go into a foreign land, that were bad, but to know that the very glen itself was altered, the old kirk roofless, the houses heaps of ruins, to have nothing to look back to, nothing at home to love – oh! Duncan, Duncan, that wouldn’t be absence from home; it would be banishment, Duncan, banishment and exile.”

“Let us try no’ to think about it, Kennie. Dinna look so woe-begone, man, or you’ll mak’ me sorry that I’ve told you.”

The boy turned quickly round.

“Oh! but say you’ve been but joking. Say it is not true, Duncan.”

“Oh hey!” was Duncan’s answer – a big sigh, that was all.

“But you know,” said Duncan, after a pause, “nobody is sure yet of anything.”

The boy laughed now.

“Ha! ha! yes,” he cried, tearing himself away from gloomy thoughts. “We’ll have hope. We won’t think about it, will we? Ha! ha! no, we won’t think about it. And I’ll never say a single word to my mother about the matter. It may pass, you know.

“And so,” he continued, “you really like my cave. Well, little Archie, your son, will often be here with me. And you must come too, and we’ll have such fun. I wonder if the ptarmigans will build next year in the same place as they did last. Mind when the snow falls you’ll take me for a day’s white hare hunting, won’t you? It is such grand sport, and you promised, you know. What tune did you say I was to play? Something merry. Oh! yes, I know – ”

Kenneth recovered his flute from among the brackens as he spoke, and rattled off into as merry a reel as ever witches danced to in “Alloway’s auld haunted kirk.”

“First-rate!” cried Duncan, clapping his hands, while even Kooran barked for joy, and Shot’s voice gave gladsome echo at the cave’s mouth. “First-rate! man; that’s the kind o’ music to banish the bogies. Losh! Kennie, music like that would have made Methuselah himsel’ grow young again. That it would.”

It was late that evening ere the two friends found themselves down the glen again, but when they bade each other good-night and walked briskly homewards there was not a thought in their hearts of evil to come; they were each as happy as the lark that carols o’er spring corn.