Inchbracken Part 2

Roderick, wakening with a start, catches the bridle of the good-natured beast, which has already come to a stand. A middle-aged gentleman is descending a heathery knoll overhanging the road, and carries a salmon rod on his shoulder, and a boy follows with his basket, apparently well filled, and from which there peers a companionable-looking bottle neck.

'Good morning! Captain Drysdale.'

'Good morning, Roddie! Glad to see you after so long.'

'Going to try a last cast at the salmon before the fishing closes? You have every prospect of good sport. The water looked splendid at the bridge as I came over. The spate has fallen, but the water is still brown, and dotted with foam-spots. You will have a fine day's sport.'

'I hope so, lad! And I only wish you were coming with me! Od! Roddie, do you ever think of the jolly days we used to have, when young Kenneth was at home, lad! The fishing! and the days after the grouse!

we expect Kenneth home to-day for three months' leave,--in fact he should have come last night. I wish you were to be with us too, old man!'

'Thanks, Captain John; but that can scarcely be. A minister should have other things to think about,--at least the Presbytery would say so, and I do not think the General would relish the crack of a dissenter's gun on any moor of his.'

'Hang the dissenters! and that weary Free Kirk that has set the people by the ears. I never could understand how they contrived to inveigle a sensible fellow like you--gentle born and bred, and your father's son, in among a crew of canting demagogues.'

'Please don't! Captain Drysdale. Nothing but a conviction that it was right could have led me to take the step, and give up so much of what I valued most. Having that conviction, I am sure even you must approve my acting up to it. My choice has cost me much, but I counted, the cost before I made it. So, as regards the church, we had better "let that flea stick to the wa'" as my beadle says. We might argue till we vexed each other, but neither would be converted to the other's views.'

'Well, Roddie! And probably your beadle says again--"They that will to Cupar, maun to Cupar;"--there's no use speaking, but it's a great pity!--And where, in the name of all that's wonderful, are you trapezing to, at this hour of the morning? And of all the steeds in the country side to carry a douse Free Kirk presbyter, if that is not Patey Soutar the drunken cadger's pony! Bonny on-goings! my lad. What would the 'Residuary' Presbytery, as you are pleased to denominate the church of your fathers say to that? Ha, ha! I doubt not the Free is both free and easy--ha! ha! And what may that be your reverence is carrying home so gingerly? My stars! I believe it is a child!'

At this point the baby disturbed first by the cessation of the pony's rocking gait, and then fairly awakened by the Captain's loud guffaw, lifted up its small voice and wept.

'Indeed, Master Roddie, yours seems to be a very free church indeed!'

'Captain Drysdale, I do think some things should not be said even in jest, which is all you mean, I know. But I do not think I have hitherto so desecrated my sacred calling as to have laid myself open to such insinuations even in jest.'

'Tush, man! Don't be so thin-skinned. One must have his joke. Besides, after all, you have no need to be much vexed, "it is such a little one," as the French girl said to her confessor.' And with a volley of 'ha, ha, ha!' Captain John bounded down the hill.

CHAPTER IV.

_DOWN BY THE BURNSIDE_.

Mary Brown arose even earlier than her wont on the morning that succeeded the gale. The air was fresh and sweet with the scent of bog myrtle, fir, and early heather. The hillsides, new washed, were vividly green in their clothing of pasture coppice and feathery birch.

The sombre moors were warming into crimson when they met the morning sun, and the shadows among the rocks and distant hilltops showed the whole gamut of blues and purple greys.

Mary perforce had to take a morning walk. Their breakfast-room was at some distance from the cottage in which she spent the night, and the sweet air tempted her to extend the stroll through the village to an old bridge that crossed the stream at its western extremity. There she sat down on the stone parapet to sun herself, and thaw out the chilliness which she had absorbed from the walls of her damp little cottage chamber.

How the poor seem to thrive and bloom and flourish into ripe and hearty old age in those houses with their turf and stone walls! vying in health and gaiety with the l.u.s.ty house leek that ridges the roof thatch! Can it be that they are made of another clay from those who walk on planked floors, and shiver at every draught that sifts through an ill-adjusted cas.e.m.e.nt? Mary was no hothouse plant: her health was good, and she had always spent much of her time out of doors, careless of weather; but the clammy dampness and closeness of the little cottage rooms oppressed her, and she now drank in the pure clear air of the hills with thirsty content.

The swiftly pa.s.sing waters beneath the bridge, were a darker brown after the rain, and spotted with patches of white foam, and they sung with a low continuous movement as they slid over the rocks and broke on the piers of the arch. Down the stream on a gra.s.sy flat the village women were spreading out their little heaps of wet linen fresh wrung from the stream, to bleach in the sun. Farther on a few cattle had come down to drink; and beyond that, cottage roofs and palings closed in the view.

In the village street the grey shadows of the cottages alone broke the monotony of the deserted road, till as she looked a figure issued from the door of the inn, and slowly came towards her. The distance was too great to enable her to identify the person; yet some vague a.s.sociation, indefinite but altogether pleasant, was called up by the gait and set of the shoulders as he approached, and added a new chord of feeling which filled up the harmony of the peaceful scene. The breeze flitting through a neighbouring wood came laden with a spicier fragrance of resinous pine, and the hum of vagrant bees mixed with the melody of babbling waters, and all the music of all the sunny mornings she had ever known came back on her with a mysterious gladness as she watched the approaching stranger. He was coming nearer, however, and she turned her head till he would pa.s.s.

The gentleman came forward smoking an early cigar, and likewise enjoying the quiet beauty of the morning. The view looking up the glen was wilder than in other directions. About a mile above the village the woods ended, and the shoulders of the hills swept down into the ascending valley in breadths of green pasture and brown and purple moor, while the jagged outline of the more distant hills, bounded in the background a broad bank of grey which stood sharply out against the transparent horizon.

The steep ascent of the old-fashioned bridge, and its brown stone parapet, picked out in all the sunlit greens and yellows of moss and wall rue, made a bold foreground to the picture, and the sable-clad figure of Mary Brown on the summit, gave life and purpose to the whole.

The gentleman ascended the bridge. Mary's back seemed not unfamiliar to him, but it was only on casting a side-long glance in pa.s.sing that a recognition became possible.

'Mary Brown!'

Mary started. Her thoughts had wandered away in a day-dream; she looked round, and there stood the stranger at her elbow, with both hands held out.

[Ill.u.s.tration: "He was coming nearer, ... she turned her head till he would pa.s.s." Page 24.]

'Ken--Mister--Captain Drysdale!' The light came suddenly into her eyes, and perhaps a shade of warmer color into her cheeks as she gave her hand.

'Why not Kenneth, as of old? Am I to say "Miss Brown?" I fear you have a bad memory for old friends!'

'Not that--but who would have expected to see you here?'

'And who could have thought to see you here,---sitting upon a bridge, in Glen Effick, at seven o'clock in the morning?'

'We live in this village now. But where have you fallen from? When we heard of you last you were at Gibraltar.'

'And so I was till the other day, when the doctors ordered me home on sick leave. But tell me. How come you to be staying in this poor little place? Some of your old charity doings I suppose. Will you not let me drive you over to the manse, my gig is getting ready now. As you may suppose, I was storm-staid here last night, and I am just setting out for home. Though, of course, I shall be only too glad to wait till you are ready to start.'

'Then you have not heard of my dear father's death, and that Roderick has been appointed to the Free Church congregation in the parish.'

'I knew about Doctor Brown, and felt deeply grieved. But I understood Roderick had succeeded him in the parish. The General always said he intended that he should.'

'General Drysdale meant to be very kind; but Roderick has joined the Free Church, so he could not accept, and I fear both the General and Lady Caroline are a good deal displeased. But you know he had to do what he thought right. Tell me, however, have you been very ill?'

'Oh! I have been broiling on that terrible rock all the summer, like the rest, and I had a pretty sharp attack of fever. But the week at sea, coming home, has set me up again. But about you and Roddie,--do you mean to say that for his church crotchets he has dragged you out of the old manse where you were born? And that you and he are living down here? Where do you live, by the way? Not in the village tavern, surely!--with its pipe-smoking and toddy-drinking--and yet I see no place else.'

'We live in the cottages. Several of the villagers each give us a room, so we are not so badly off for s.p.a.ce, though the rooms are pretty far apart.'

'I would not have believed that your brother could have behaved so badly as to bring you down to that. And I did not think my mother would have allowed it. Were you not asked to stay at Inchbracken?'

'I fear she and General Drysdale are too much displeased with my brother for bringing the Free Church controversy into the parish, and with me for following him, even to waste another thought upon either of us. And perhaps, Captain Drysdale, it is wrong in me to stand here talking to you, when I know how deeply we have offended your family.

Perhaps they might not like it.'

'And what then? Miss Brown. Am I still in pinafores at eight-and-twenty, that my mamma is to give consent before I may be allowed to speak to my very oldest friend? Why! Mary, girl, I have had you in my arms before you could walk, and I have fished you out of more than one burn, where you might very well have been drowned if I had not been near. And you know when you were eight years old you promised'--

'Pray stop! Captain Drysdale. Those are old stories, and neither you nor I are to be bound by the foolish speeches of our childhood. Dear old Kilrundle! I shall never forget our happy days there. But things have changed--I think this must be your gig.'

It _was_ his gig, and with a very hearty shake-hands on either side, he got into it, and drove away.

'Prettier than ever,' he kept saying to himself, and the touch of the soft hands and the light in the violet eyes seemed to remain with him, and to vibrate about his heart, like the echo of a pleasant strain, till an hour later be alighted at Inchbracken.

Mary Brown strolled back to the village, her thoughts running on many things at once, the pleasant memories of the long ago and the somewhat sordid experiences of the present. Had Mrs. Sangster of Auchlippie been by, and known what was pa.s.sing in her mind, she would surely have told her she was looking back to the fleshpots of Egypt, and exhorted her to take warning by the melancholy fate of Lot's wife.

Mrs. Sangster was a lady who took a particular interest in her own side of the ecclesiastical contest; and indeed it paid her to do so.

She was the wife of the great man of the congregation, and seeing how mightily her consequence had prospered under the schism, she might well be zealous. From being an unpretending gentleman farmer, and the smallest heritor in the parish, her husband was now one of the few landed proprietors adhering to the Free Church, and one of those, therefore, whom she delighted to honour. Their snug home with its arable land and pastures, had now become a territorial designation attached to his name by an accented 'of,' like a German 'von,' and when he attended the General a.s.sembly at Edinburgh he found himself sitting in committee and on platforms with the Church's solitary Marquis and the great magnates of the cause, while Madame had her seat in the a.s.sembly among the honourable women, behind the Moderator's chair.