John Burnet of Barns Part 4

I spoke earnestly, and her face, which had been filled with mockery, changed gently to something akin to tenderness.

"How little you know of women!" she cried. "I have loved you for years, thinking of you at all times, and now you come to-day, speaking as if you had scarce seen me before. Surely I will bear you company in life, as I have been your comrade at its beginning."

What followed I need scarce tell, since it is but part of the old comedy of life, which our grandfathers and grandmothers played before us, and mayhap our grand-children will be playing even now when our back is turned. Under the spring sky among the lilies we plighted our troth for the years, and I entered from careless youth into the dim and resolute region of manhood.

With a great joy in my heart I rode home. I took the high way over the shoulder of Sc.r.a.pe, for I knew that few folk ever went that road, and I wished to be alone. The birds were singing, the fresh clean air was blowing on my face, and the primroses and wind-flowers made a gay carpet under my horse's feet. All the earth seemed to partake in my gladness.

It was a good world, I thought, full of true hearts, fair faces, and much good; and though I have seen much wickedness and sorrow in my day, I am still of the same way of thinking. It is a brave world; a royal world for brave-hearted men.

When I came to Barns I found that my cousin had gone out an hour since and left my father greatly wondering at my absence. He sat in the chair by the fireplace, looking more withered and old than I had ever seen him. My heart smote me for not staying at his side, and so I sat down by him and told him many things of my doings in Glasgow, and how I desired above all things to see the world, having had my fill of books and colleges. Then I told him what he had long guessed, of my love for Marjory Veitch and the promise which she had given me. He heard me in silence, but when he spoke, his words were cheerful, for he had long liked the la.s.s. He made no refusal, too, to the rest of my plans. "You shall go and see the world, John," he said, "and take my blessing with you. It ill becomes a young mettlesome lad in these stirring times to lounge at home, when he might be wearing a steel breastplate in the King's Guards, or trying the manners of twenty nations. Though I could wish you to bide at home, for I am an old broken man with few pleasures, and I love the sight of your face."

"Nay, I will never leave you," I said, "an you wish it. I am young yet and a boy's road is a long road. Time enough for all."

After this I went out to see if the Weasel had come to any mishap in the last night's ride. I found him as stout as ever, so I saddled him and rode away by the green haughlands up the valley of the Manor, for I longed for motion and air to relieve my spirit: and coming home in the afternoon, I found my cousin returned and sitting with my father in the dining-hall.

He glanced sharply at me when I entered, and I saw by his looks that he was in no good temper. His heavy face was flushed and his s.h.a.ggy eyebrows were lowered more than their wont.

"Where have you been, Gilbert?" I asked. "I found you gone when I came back in the morning."

"I took my horse down to Peebles to the farrier. Its knees were sorely hurt last night on your infernal hills."

Now I knew that this was a lie, for I had looked at his horse before I went out in the morning, and its wounds were so slight that it would have been mere folly to take him to a farrier; and Gilbert, I well knew, was not the man to be in error where horses were concerned. So I judged that he had ridden in the contrary direction, and gone to Dawyck, and, as I inferred from his sour looks, met with no good reception there. I could afford to be generous; I felt a sort of half-pity for his discomfiture, and forbore to ask him any further questions.

We sat down to supper, he and I and my father, in a sober frame of mind.

I was full of my own thoughts, which were of the pleasantest; my cousin was plainly angry with something or other; and my father, in his weakness dimly perceiving that all was not right, set himself to mend matters by engaging him in talk.

"You're a good shot with the musket, they tell me, Gibbie," he said, using the old name which he had called him by when he first came to Barns as a boy, "and I was thinking that it would be a rare ploy for you and John to go down the water to Traquair, where Captain Keith's horse are lying. He is an old friend of mine, and would be blithe to see any of my kin. They tell me he has great trials of skill in all exercises, and that he has gathered half the gentry in the place about him."

"John," said my cousin in a scornful voice, "John is too busily employed at Dawyck to care much for anything else. A flighty maid is a sore burden on any man."

"I would have you learn, Master Gilbert," I said angrily, "to speak in a better way of myself and my friends. You may be a very great gentleman elsewhere, but you seem to leave your gentility behind when you come here."

Now my cousin and I were of such opposite natures that I took most things seriously, while he found matter for a jest in all-yet not in full good-nature, but with a touch of acrid satire.

"Even a barn-door c.o.c.k will defend his own roost. How one sees the truth of proverbs!"

And then he added that which I will not set down, but which brought my father and myself to our feet with flashing eyes and quivering lips. I would have spoken, but my father motioned me to be silent.

"Gilbert," he said, his voice shaking with age and anger, "you will leave this house the morn. I will have no scoundrelly fellow of your kidney here. You are no true nephew of mine, and G.o.d pity the father that begat you."

My cousin smiled disdainfully and rose from his chair. "Surely I will go and at once when my hospitable uncle bids me. The entertainment in this d.a.m.ned hole is not so good as to keep me long. As for you, Cousin John," and he eyed me malignantly, "you and I will meet some day, where there are no dotards and wenches to come between us. Then I promise you some sport. Till then, farewell. I will down to Peebles to-night and trouble you no more." With a wave of his hand he was gone, and five minutes later we heard his horse's hooves clatter over the stones of the yard.

When he was gone his conduct came back to my father with a rush, and he fell to upbraiding himself for his breach of hospitality and family honour. He would have me call Gilbert back, and when I showed him how futile it was, fell into low spirits and repented in great bitterness.

Now the worst of this day's business remains to be told. For when I looked at my father some time after I found him sunk in his chair with his face as pale as death. With the help of Jean Morran and Tam Todd I got him to bed, from which he never rose, but pa.s.sed peacefully away in the fear of G.o.d two days later. The heat into which he had been thrown was the direct cause, and though I could not very well lay the thing to my cousin's charge when the man was already so far down the vale of years, yet in my heart I set it against him. Indeed from this day I date my antagonism to the man, which before had been a mere boyish rivalry.

I stayed with my father to the end. Just before he died he bade me come near and gave me his blessing, bidding me be a better gentleman than he had been. We did not bury him in the Kirk of Lyne, for he had always said he never could abide to lie within walls. but on a green flat above Tweed, where the echo of the river and the crying of moorbirds are never absent from his grave.

CHAPTER VII

THE PEGASUS INN AT PEEBLES AND HOW A STRANGER RETURNED FROM THE WARS

Of my doings for some months after my father's death I must tell hastily. I fell heir to the lands of Barns, and being of age entered at once into my possession. The place remained the same as in my father's time, the same servants and the same ways about the house. I lived simply as I had always lived, spending my days in seeing to the land, in field sports, and some little study, for I had not altogether forsaken the Muses. But all the time I felt as one who is kept at home against his will, being conscious of a restlessness and an inclination to travel which was new to me, but which I doubt not is common to all young men at this time of life. I talked much with Tam Todd of the lands which he had visited, and heard of the Dutch towns with their strange shipping, their ca.n.a.ls and orderly houses, and of the rough Norlanders, clad in the skins of wild animals, who came down to the Swedish markets to trade; of the soldiery of Germany and France and the Scots who had gone over there to push their fortunes with their swords; and what I loved best, of the salt sea with its boundless waste of waters and wild tales of shipwreck. Formerly I had been wont often to bid Tam sharply to hold his peace when he entered on one of his interminable narrations; but now I sat and drank in every word like a thirsty man. It was the winter-time, when the roads were often snowed up and all the folk of the place gathered in the great kitchen at nights round the fire; so it was the time for stories and we had our fill of them.

One bl.u.s.tering day, the first Monday, I think, after the New Year, when the ice was beginning to melt from the burns and a wet, cold wind from the north-west was blowing, I rode down to Peebles to settle some matters about money with Saunders Blackett, who had managed my father's affairs and was now intrusted with mine. All things were done to my satisfaction; so bethinking myself that the way to Barns was cold and long and that it was yet early in the afternoon, being scarce four o'clock, I found myself thinking pleasantly of the warm inn-parlour of the _Pegasus_, so thither I went.

The _Pegasus_ or "Peg" Inn stands at the corner of the Northgate and the High Street, a black-gabled building, once the town-house of the Govans of Cardrona, and still retaining marks of its gentility in the arms carved above the door. A great sign flapped in the wind, bearing on a white ground a gorgeous representation of a winged horse soaring through clouds. The landlord at this time was one Horsbrock, a portly, well-looking man, who claimed to be kin to the Horsbrocks of that ilk and held his chin two inches higher in consequence. The place was famed in all the country round for good wine and comfort.

I stabled my horse and, bidding the host bring me a bottle of Rhenish (so fine a thing it is to have succeeded to lands and money), I went into the low-ceilinged room where the company sat. It was panelled in a darkish wood, and hung round with old weapons, halberds and falchions and what not, which glimmered brightly in the firelight. A narrow window gave it light, but now it sufficed only to show the grey winter dusk coming swiftly on. Around the fire sat some few of the men of Peebles, warming themselves and discussing the landlord's ale and the characters of their neighbours.

They rose to give me welcome when I entered, for my name and family were well known in the countryside.

"It's awfu' weather for man and beast, Laird," said an old man with a bent back, but still hale and hearty in the face. "A snawy winter I can abide, and a wet yin, but drizzlin', dreepin', seepin' weather wi' a wind that taks the heart out o' ye is mair than my patience can stand."

"You have little need to speak, you folk," I said, "living in a well-paved town with stones beneath your feet and nothing more to do than go round a street corner all day. Up at Barns, with Tweed swirling in at the yard gate, and the stables flowing like a linn, and the wind playing cantrips day and night in and out of the windows, you might talk."

"Ay, but, good sir," put in a thin voice which came from a little man I had seen at the bowling-green, "ye may thank the Lord for a roof abune your heids and dry claes to put on, when sae many G.o.dly folks are hiding like pelicans in the wilderness among the high hills and deep mosses. I bless the Lord that my faither, that sant o' the Kirk, is not living in thae evil times. He was a man o' a truly great spirit, and had he been alive, I'se warrant he wad hae been awa to join them. He was aye strong on his conscience. 'John Look-up' so the G.o.dless called him. 'John Look-up,' said my mother, 'ye'll never be pleased till we're a' joltin'

in a cairt to the Gra.s.smarket o' Edinburgh. And a braw sicht ye'll be, hanging there like a hoodie-craw wi' a' your bairns aside ye.' Ay, these were often her words, for she had a sarcastic tongue."

"Jock Look-up, my man," said another, "I kenned your faither a' his days, and he was na the man to hang. He lookit up and he lookit a'

ways. He was yin whae could baith watch and pray. Gin ye were mair like him, ye wad be a mair thrivin' man."

"Aboot the hill-folk," said the old man who had first spoken, drinking his ale and turning up the measure to see that no more was left, "did ye ever hear o' my son Francie and what happened to him when he gaed awa to Moffat wi' 'oo'? He gaed ower by Traquair and keepit the road till he got to Moffat, for he had a horse that wasna ower sure o' its feet on the hills. But when he had it a' sellt, whae does he meet in wi' but Wull Hislop the travelling packman, whae's sair needing a beast. So Francie sells him his horse and comes aff hame walking ower the muirs.

He gaed up Moffat Water and ower the muckle hill they ca'

Corriefragauns, and got on nane sae bad till he cam to the awfu' craigs abune Loch Skene. He was walking briskly, thinking o' hame and the siller in his pouch and how he wad win to Peebles that nicht, when he saw afore him the awfu'est sicht that ever he had seen. It was a man o'

maybe the same heicht as himsel, wi' a heid of red hair, and nae claes to speak o', but just a kind o' clout about his middle. He began to speak in an outlandish voice and Francie kenned at yince that he maun be yin o' thae Hieland deevils brocht doun to hunt up the Whigs. He was for Francie's money, and he oot wi' a big knife and flashed it up and doun. But this was no to Francie's liking. 'Put that doun, ye ill-looking deevil,' says he, 'ye'll find I'm nane o' your hill-folk, but an honest man frae Peebles wi' a nieve as hard as your heid's saft, and if ye dinna let me by, I'll put ye in the loch as sure as my name's Francie Trummle.' The body understood him brawly, and wi' a grunt slunk aff among the heather, and Francie had nae mair bother wi' him. But O!

it's an awfu' thing to think o' men o' your ain blood hunted and killed wi' thae foreign craturs. It maks me half-mindit to turn Whig mysel."

"Dinna fash yoursel, Maister Trummle," said a younger man, a farmer by his looks, "ye're better bidin' in peace and quiet at hame. The Lord never meant folk to gang among hills and peat-bogs, unless after sheep.

It's clean against the order o' things. But there's yae thing that reconciles me to this Whig-hunting. They're maistly wast-country folk, and wast-country folk are an ill lot, aye shoving their nebs where they're no want it. There's no mony Whigs in Tweeddale. Na, na, they're ower canny."

Master Turnbull made as if he would have answered, when a clatter of feet was heard in the pa.s.sage, and the door opened. Two men entered, one a great swarthy fellow well known for his poaching escapades when the salmon came up the water, and the other, Peter Crustcrackit the tailor. They did not enter in company, for Peter swaggered in with as gallant an air as two bent legs and a small body could permit, while the other slunk in with a half-apologetic look, glancing keenly round to see who were the other occupants of the room.

"The 'Peg' is honoured with your company tonight, I see," said Peter, making a bow to me. "'Tis the finest gathering that I remember: the Laird o' Barns, worthy Maister Trumbull, myself, and my honoured freend, Maister Simon Doolittle."

The black fisher lifted his face from the ale which the landlord had brought. "Your guid health, gentlemen. I'm prood o' your company, though I'm no just fit for't, since I'm no half an 'oor oot o' the Dookit Pool."

All eyes were turned to the speaker, and we saw that his clothes hung limp and wet.

"And pray, how did you get there, Maister Doolittle? Was't by the working o' Providence, or the wiles o' sinfu' man?"

"A mixture o' baith. I took a bit daunder up Tweed to the Castle Rock to see how the water was rinnin'. It's been raither grimily for fishin'

o' late. Ye a' ken the rocks that they're no exactly the sort o' place that a man wad choose for dancin' a reel in tackety boots. Weel, I was admiring the works o' G.o.d as manifested in a big, deep, swirlin' hole, when afore ever I kenned I was admirin' the hole frae the middle o't. I was gey near chokit wi' Tweed water, but I wabbled a bit, and syne grippit a birk and held on."