Читать книгу White Heather: A Novel (Volume 1 of 3) - William Black - Страница 2

We may now follow Ronald Strang as he walks along to his cottage, which, with its kennels and its shed for hanging up the slain deer, stands on a little plateau by the roadside, a short distance from the inn. The moonlight night is white and beautiful, but far from silent; for the golden plover are whistling and calling down by the lochside, and the snipe are sending their curious harsh note across the moorland wastes. Moreover, he himself seems to be in a gay mood (perhaps glad to be over the embarrassment of a first meeting with the stranger), and he is conversing amicably with his little terrier. The subject is rats. Whether the wise little Harry knows all that is said need not be determined; but he looks up from time to time and wags his stump of a tail as he trots placidly along. And so they get up to the cottage and enter, for the outer door is on the latch, thieves being unheard of in this remote neighbourhood; though here Harry hesitates, for he is uncertain whether he is to be invited into the parlour or not. But the next moment all consideration of this four-footed friend is driven out of his master's head. Ronald had expected to find the parlour empty, and his little sister, at present his sole housekeeper, retired to rest. But the moment he opens the door, he finds that not only is she there, sitting by the table near to the solitary lamp, but that she has a companion with her. And well he knows who that must be.

'Dear me, Miss Douglas,' he exclaimed, 'have I kept you so late!'

The young lady, who now rose, with something of a flush over her features – for she had been startled by his sudden entrance – was certainly an extraordinarily pretty creature: not so much handsome, or distinguished, or striking, as altogether pretty and winning and gentle-looking. She was obviously of a pure Highland type: the figure slender and graceful, the head small and beautifully formed; the forehead rather square for a woman, but getting its proper curve from the soft and pretty hair; the features refined and intelligent; the mouth sensitive; the expression a curious sort of seeking to please, as it were, and ready to form itself into an abundant gratitude for the smallest act of kindness. Of course, much of this look was owing to her eyes, which were the true Highland eyes; of a blue gray these were, with somewhat dark lashes; wide apart, and shy, and apprehensive, they reminded one of the startled eyes of some wild animal; but they were, entirely human in their quick sympathy, in their gentleness, in their appeal to all the world, as it were, for a favouring word. As for her voice – well, if she used but few of the ordinary Highland phrases, she had undoubtedly a considerable trace of Highland accent; for, although her father was an Edinburgh man, her mother (as the elderly lady very soon let her neighbours know) was one of the Stuarts of Glengask and Orosay; and then again Meenie had lived nearly all her life in the Highlands, her father never having risen above the position of a parish doctor, and welcoming even such local removals as served to improve his position in however slight a way.

'Maggie,' said Miss Douglas (and the beautiful wide-apart eyes were full of a shy apology), 'was feeling a little lonely, and I did not like to leave her.'

'But if I had known,' said he, 'I would not have stayed so late. The gentleman that is come about the shooting is a curious man; it's no the salmon and the grouse and the deer he wants to know about only; it's everything in the country. Now, Maggie, lass, get ye to bed. And I will see you down the road, Miss Douglas.'

'Indeed there is no need for that,' said Meenie, with downcast eyes.

'Would ye have a bogle run away with ye?' he said good-naturedly.

And so she bade good-night to the little Maggie, and took up some books and drawings she had brought to beguile the time withal; and then she went out into the clear night, followed by the young gamekeeper.

And what a night it was – or rather, might have been – for two lovers! The wide waters of the loch lay still and smooth, with a broad pathway of silver stretching away into the dusk of the eastern hills; not a breath of wind stirred bush or tree; and if Ben Clebrig in the south was mostly a bulk of shadow, far away before them in the northern skies rose the great shoulders of Ben Loyal, pallid in the moonlight, the patches of snow showing white up near the stars. They had left behind them the little hamlet – which merely consisted of a few cottages and the inn; they were alone in this pale silent world. And down there, beneath the little bridge, ran the placid Mudal Water: and if they had a Bible with them? – and would stand each on one side of the stream? – and clasp hands across? It was a night for lovers' vows.

'Maggie is getting on well with her lessons,' the pretty young lady said, in that gentle voice of hers. 'She is very diligent.'

'I'm sure I'm much obliged to ye, Miss Douglas,' was the respectful answer, 'for the trouble ye take with her. It's an awkward thing to be sae far from a school. I'm thinking I'll have to send her to my brother in Glasgow, and get her put to school there.'

'Oh, indeed, indeed,' said she, 'that will be a change now. And who will look after the cottage for you, Ronald?'

She addressed him thus quite naturally, and without shyness; for no one ever dreamed of calling him anything else.

'Well, I suppose Mrs. MacGregor will give the place a redd1 up from time to time. But a keeper has but half learned his business that canna shift for himself; there's some of the up-country lodges with ne'er a woman-body within a dozen miles o' them.'

'It is your brother the minister that Maggie will be going to?' she said.

'Oh yes; he is married, and has a family of his own; she will be comfortable there.'

'Well, it is strange,' said she, 'that you should have a brother in Glasgow, and I a sister, and that your mother should be Highland and mine too.'

But this was putting himself and her on much too common a footing; and he was always on his guard against that, however far her gentleness and good-nature might lead her.

'When is your father coming back, Miss Douglas?' said he.

'Well, I really do not know,' she said. 'I do not think he has ever had so wide a district to attend to, and we are never sure of his being at home.'

'It must be very lonely for a young lady brought up like you,' he ventured to say, 'that ye should have no companions. And for your mother, too; I wonder she can stand it.'

'Oh no,' she said, 'for the people are so friendly with us. And I do not know of any place that I like better.'

By this time they were come to the little wooden gate of the garden, and he opened that for her. Before them was the cottage, with its windows, despite the moonlight on the panes, showing the neat red blinds within. She gave him her hand for a second.

'Good night, Ronald,' said she pleasantly.

'Good night, Miss Douglas,' said he; 'Maggie must not keep you up so late again.'

And therewith he walked away back again along the white road, and only now perceived that by some accident his faithful companion Harry had been shut in when they left. He also discovered, when he got home, that his sister Maggie had been so intent puzzling over some arithmetical mysteries which Meenie had been explaining to her, that she had still further delayed her going to bed.

'What, what?' said he, good-humouredly. 'Not in bed yet, lass?'

The little red-headed, freckled-faced lassie obediently gathered up her belongings, but at the door she lingered for a moment.

'Ronald,' said she, timidly, 'why do ye call Meenie "Miss Douglas?" It's not friendly.'

'When ye're a bit older, lass, ye'll understand,' he said, with a laugh.

Little Maggie was distressed in a vague way, for she had formed a warm affection for Meenie Douglas, and it seemed hard and strange that her own brother should show himself so distant in manner.

'Do you think she's proud? for she's not that,' the little girl made bold to say.

'Have ye never heard o' the Stuarts of Glengask?' said he; and he added grimly, 'My certes, if ye were two or three years older, I'm thinking Mrs. Douglas would have told ye ere now how Sir Alexander used to call on them in Edinburgh every time he came north. Most folk have heard that story. But however, when Meenie, as ye like to call her, goes to live in Edinburgh or Glasgow, or some o' the big towns, of course she'll be Miss Douglas to every one, as she ought to be here, only that she's taken a fancy to you, and, my lass, fairly spoils ye with her kindness. Now, off with ye, and dinna fash your head about what I or any one else calls her; if she's content to be Meenie to you, ye should be proud enough.'

As soon as she was gone he stirred up the peats, lit his pipe, and drew in a chair to the small table near the fire. It was his first pipe that evening, and he wished to have it in comfort. And then, to pass the time, he unlocked and opened a drawer in the table, and began to rummage through the papers collected there – all kinds of shreds and fragments they were, scored over mostly in pencil, and many of them bearing marks as if the writing had been done outside in the rain.

The fact was, that in idle times, when there was no trapping to be done, or shooting of hoodie-crows, or breaking-in of young dogs, he would while away many an hour on the hillside or along the shores of the loch by stringing verses together. They were done for amusement's sake. Sometimes he jotted them down, sometimes he did not. If occasionally, when he had to write a letter to a friend of his at Tongue, or make some request of his brother in Glasgow, he put these epistles into jingling rhyme, that was about all the publication his poetical efforts ever achieved; and he was most particular to conceal from the 'gentry' who came down to the shooting any knowledge that he scribbled at all. He knew it would be against him. He had no wish to figure as one of those local poets (and alas! they have been and are too numerous in Scotland) who, finding within them some small portion of the afflatus of a Burns, or a Motherwell, or a Tannahill, are seduced away from their lawful employment, gain a fleeting popularity in their native village, perhaps attain to the dignity of a notice in a Glasgow or Edinburgh newspaper, and subsequently and almost inevitably die of drink, in the most abject misery of disappointment. No; if he had any ambition it was not in that direction; it was rather that he should be known as the smartest deerstalker and the best trainer of dogs in Sutherlandshire. He knew where his strength lay, and where he found content. And then there was another reason why he could not court newspaper applause with these idle rhymes of his. They were nearly all about Meenie Douglas. Meenie-olatry was written all across those scribbled sheets. And of course that was a dark secret known only to himself; and indeed it amused him, as he turned over the loose leaves, to think that all the Stuarts of Glengask and Orosay (and that most severe and terrible of them all, Mrs. Douglas) could not in the least prevent his saying to Meenie just whatever he pleased – within the wooden confines of this drawer. And what had he not said? Sometimes it was but a bit of careless singing —

Well, now, supposing you are far away up on Ben Clebrig's slopes, a gun over your shoulder, and idly looking out for a white hare or a ptarmigan, if you take to humming these careless rhymes to some such tune as 'Cherry Ripe,' who is to hinder? The strongest of all the south winds cannot carry the tidings to Glengask nor yet to Orosay's shores. And so the whole country-side – every hill and stream and wood and rock – came to be associated with Meenie, and saturated with the praise and glory of her. Why, he made the very mountains fight about her!

But at this moment, as he turned over this mass of scraps and fragments, there was one, much more audacious than the rest, that he was in search of, and when he found it a whimsical fancy got into his head. If he were to make out a fair copy of the roughly scrawled lines, and fold that up, and address it to Meenie, just to see how it looked? He took out his blotting-pad, and selected the best sheet of note-paper he could find; and then he wrote (with a touch of amusement, and perhaps of something else, too, in his mind the while) thus —

He carefully folded the paper and addressed it outside – so:

Miss Wilhelmina Stuart Douglas,

Care of James Douglas, Esq., M.D.,

Inver-Mudal,

Sutherlandshire.

And then he held it out at arm's length, and regarded it, and laughed, in a contemptuous kind of way, at his own folly.

'Well,' he was thinking to himself, 'if it were not for Stuart of Glengask, I suppose the day might come when I could send her a letter like that; but as it is, if they were to hear of any such madness, Glengask and all his kith and kin would be for setting the heather on fire.'

He tossed the letter back on the blotting-pad, and rose and went and stood opposite the blazing peats. This movement aroused the attention of the little terrier, who immediately jumped up from his snooze and began to whimper his expectation. Strang's heart smote him.

'God bless us!' he said aloud. 'When a lass gets into a man's head, there's room for nothing else; he'll forget his best friends. Here, Harry, come along, and I'll get ye your supper, my man.'

He folded up the blotting-pad and locked it in the drawer, blew out the candles, called Harry to follow him into the kitchen, where the small terrier was duly provided for and left on guard. Then he sought out his own small room. He was whistling as he went; and, if he dreamt of anything that night, be sure it was not of the might and majesty of Sir Alexander Stuart of Glengask and Orosay. These verses to Meenie were but playthings and fancies – for idle hours.