Kate Carnegie and Those Ministers Part 7

"You wish to know? Well, all day I 've been fishing down the stream, and am coming home, very tired, very dirty, very happy, and I meet my mother just outside those trees. I am boasting of the fish that I have caught, none of which, I 'm sure, can be less than half a pound. She is rating me for my appearance and beseeching me to keep at a distance.

Then I go home and down into the vaulted kitchen, where Janet's mother gives me joyous welcome, and produces dainties saved from dinner for my eating. The trouts are now at biggest only a quarter of a pound, for they have to be cooked as a final course, but those that were hooked and escaped are each a pound, except one in the hole below Lynedoch Bridge, which was two pounds to an ounce. Afterwards I make a brave attempt to rehea.r.s.e the day in the gunroom to Sandie, who first taught me to cast a line, and fall fast asleep, and, being shaken up, sneak off to bed, creeping slowly up the stair, where the light is falling, to the little room above yours, where, as I am falling over, I seem to hear my mother's voice as in this sighing of the wind. Ah me, what a day it was! And you, Kit?"

"Oh, I was back in the convent with my nuns, and Sister Flora was trying to teach me English grammar in good French, and I was correcting her in bad French, and she begins to laugh because it is all so droll.

'I am Scotch, and I teach you English all wrong, and you tell me what I ought to say in French which is all wrong; let us go into the garden,'

for she was a perfect love, and always covered my faults. I am sitting in the arbour, and the Sister brings a pear that has fallen. 'I do not think it is wicked,' she says, and I say it is simply a duty to eat up fallen pears, and we laugh again. As we sit, they are singing in the chapel, and I hear 'Ave Maria, ora pro n.o.bis.' Then I think of you, and the tears will come to my eyes, and I try to hide my face, but the Sister understands and comforts me. 'Your father is a gallant gentleman, and the good G.o.d pities you, and will keep him in danger,'

and I fondle the Sister, and wonder whether any more pears have fallen.

How peaceful it is within that high wall, which is rough and forbidding outside, but inside it is hung with greenery, and among the leaves I see pears and peaches. But I missed you, dad," and Kate touched her father, for they had a habit of just touching each other gently when together.

"Do you really think we have been in India, and that you have a dozen medals, and I am . . . an old maid?"

"Certainly not, Kit, a mere invention--we are boy and girl, and . . .

we 'll go on to the view."

Suddenly they came out from the shade into a narrow lane of light, where some one of the former time, with an eye and a soul, had cleared a pa.s.sage among the trees, so that one standing at the inner end and looking outwards could see the whole Glen, while the outstretched branches of the beeches shaded his eyes. Morning in the summer-time about five o'clock was a favourable hour, because one might see the last mists lift, and the sun light up the face of Ben Urtach, and evening-tide was better, because the Glen showed wonderfully tender in the soft light, and the Grampians were covered with glory. But it was best to take your first view towards noon, for then you could trace the Tochty upwards as it appeared and reappeared, till it was lost in woods at the foot of Glen Urtach, with every spot of interest on either side.

Below the kirk it ran broad and shallow, with a bank of brushwood on one side and a meadow on the other, fringed with low bushes from behind which it was possible to drop a fly with some prospects of success, while in quite unprotected situations the Drumtochty fish laughed at the tempter, and departed with contemptuous whisks of the tail. Above the haughs was a little mill, where flax was once spun and its lade still remained, running between the Tochty and the steep banks down which the glen descended to the river. Opposite this mill the Tochty ran with strength, escaping from the narrows of the bridge, and there it was that Weelum MacLure drove across Sir George in safety, because the bridge was not for use that day. Whether that bridge was really built by Marshall Wade in his great work of pacifying the Highlands is very far from certain, but Drumtochty did not relish any trifling with its traditions, and had a wonderful pride in its solitary bridge, as well it might, since from the Beeches nothing could well be more picturesque. Its plan came nearly to an inverted V, and the apex was just long enough to allow the horses to rest after the ascent, before they precipitated themselves down the other side. During that time the driver leant on the ledge, and let his eye run down the river, taking in the Parish Kirk above and settling on the Lodge, just able to be seen among the trees where the Tochty below turned round the bend.

What a Drumtochty man thought on such occasions he never told, but you might have seen even Whinnie nod his head with emphasis. The bridge stood up clear of banks and woods, grey, uncompromising, unconventional, yet not without some grace of its own in its high arch and abrupt descents. One with good eyes and a favouring sun could see the water running underneath, and any one caught its sheen higher up, before a wood came down to the water's edge and seemed to swallow up the stream. Above the wood it is seen again, with a meal mill on the Tochty left nestling in among the trees, and one would call it the veriest burn, but it was there that Posty lost his life to save a little child. And then it dwindles into the thinnest thread of silver, and at last is seen no more from the beeches. From the Tochty the eye makes its raids on north and south. The dark, ma.s.sy pine-woods on the left side of the glen are broken at intervals by fields as they threaten to come down upon the river, and their shelter lends an air of comfort and warmth to the glen. On the right the sloping land is tilled from the bank above the river up to the edge of the moor that swells in green and purple to the foot of the northern rampart of mountains, but on this side also the glen here and there breaks into belts of fir, which fling their kindly arms round the scattered farm-houses, and break up the monotony of green and gold with squares of dark green foliage and the brown of the tall, bare trunks. Between the meandering stream and the cultivated land and the woods and the heather and the distant hills, there was such a variety as cannot be often gathered into the compa.s.s of one landscape.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Among the great trees.]

"And all our own," cried Kate in exultation; "let us congratulate ourselves."

"I only wish it were, la.s.sie. Why, did n't you understand we have only these woods and a few acres of ploughed land now?"

"You stupid old dad; I begin to believe that you have had no education.

Of course the Hays have got the land, but we have the view and the joy of it. This is the only place where one can say to a stranger, 'Behold Drumtochty,' and he will see it at a flash and at its best."

"You 're brighter than your father, Kit, and a contented la.s.sie to boot, and for that word I'll take you straight to the Pleasaunce."

"What a charming name; it suggests a fairy world, with all sorts of beautiful things and people."

"Quite right, Kit"--leading the way down to a hollow, surrounded by wood and facing the sun, the General opened a door in an ivy-covered wall--"for there is just one Pleasaunce on the earth, and that is a garden."

It had been a risk to raise certain people's expectations and then bring them into Tochty garden, for they can be satisfied with no place that has not a clean-shaven lawn and beds of unvarying circles, pyrethrum, calceolaria, and geranium, and brakes of rare roses, and gla.s.s-houses with orchids worth fifty pound each, which is a garden in high life, full of luxury, extravagance, weariness. As Kate entered, a moss rose which wandered at its will caught her skirt, and the General cut a blossom which she fastened in her breast, and surely there is no flower so winsome and fragrant as this homely rose.

"Like yourself, Miss Carnegie," and the General rallied his simple wit for the occasion, "very sweet and true, with a thorn, too, if one gripped it the wrong way."

Whereat he made believe to run, and had the better speed because there were no gravel walks with boxwood borders here, but alleys of old turf that were pleasant both to the touch and the eye. In the centre where all the ways met he capitulated with honours of war, and explained that he had intended to compare Kate to a violet, which was her natural emblem, but had succ.u.mbed to the temptation of her eyes, "which make men wicked, Kit, with the gleam that is in them."

"Is n't it a tangle?" Which it was, and no one could look upon it without keen delight, unless he were a horticultural pedant in whom the appreciation of nature had been killed by parterres. There was some principle of order, and even now, when the Pleasaunce is a wilderness, the traces can be found. A dwarf fruit tree stood at every corner, and between the trees a three-foot border of flowers kept the peas and potatoes in their places. But the borders were one sustained, elaborate, glorified disorder. There were roses of all kinds that have ever gladdened poor gardens and simple hearts--yellow tea roses, moss roses with their firm, shapely buds, monthly roses that bore nearly all the year in a warm spot, the white briar that is dear to north country people, besides standards in their glory, with full round purple blossom. Among the roses, compa.s.sing them about and jostling one another, some later, some earlier in bloom, most of them together in the glad summer days, one could find to his hand wall-flowers and primroses, sweet-william and dusty-miller, daisies red and white, forget-me-nots and pansies, pinks and carnations, marigolds and phloxes of many varieties. The confusion of colours was preposterous, and showed an utter want of aesthetic sense. In fact, one may confess that the Lodge garden was only one degree removed from the vulgarity and prodigality of nature. There was no taste, no reserve, no harmony about that garden. Nature simply ran riot and played according to her will like a child of the former days, bursting into apple blossom and laburnum gold and the bloom of peas and the white strawberry flower in early summer, and then, later in the year, weaving garlands of blazing red, yellow, white, purple, round beds of stolid roots and brakes of currant bushes. There was a copper beech, where the birds sang, and from which they raided the fruit with the skill of Highland caterans.

The Lodge bees lived all day in this garden, save when they went to reinforce their sweetness from the heather bloom. The big trees stood round the place and covered it from every wind except the south, and the sun was ever blessing it. There was one summer-house, a ma.s.s of honeysuckle, and there they sat down as those that had come back to Eden from a wander year.

"Well, Kit?"

"Thank G.o.d for our Pleasaunce." And they would have stayed for hours, but there was one other spot that had a fascination for the General neither years nor wars had dulled, and he, who was the most matter-of-fact and romantic of men, must see and show it to his daughter before they ceased.

"A mile and more, Kit, but through the woods and by the water all the way."

Sometimes they went down a little ravine made by a small burn fighting and wearing its way for ages to the Tochty, and stood on a bridge of two planks and a handrail thrown over a tiny pool, where the water was resting on a bed of small pebbles. The oak copse covered the sides of the tiny glen and met across the streamlet, and one below could see nothing but greenery and the glint of the waterfall where the burn broke into the bosky den from the bare heights above. Other times the path, that allowed two to walk abreast if they wished very much and kept close together, would skirt the face of the high river bank, and if you peeped down through the foliage of the clinging trees you could see the Tochty running swiftly, and the overhanging branches dipping in their leaves. Then the river would make a sweep and forsake its bank, leaving a peninsula of alluvial land between, where the geranium and the hyacinth and the iris grew in deep, moist soil. One of these was almost clear of wood and carpeted with thick, soft turf, and the river beside it was broad and shining.

"We shall go down here," said the General, "and I will show you something that I count the finest monument in Perthshire, or maybe in broad Scotland."

In the centre of the sward, with trees just touching it with the tips of their branches, was a little square, with a simple weather-beaten railing. And the General led Kate to the spot, and stood for a while in silence.

"Two young Scottish la.s.sies, Kate, who died two hundred years ago, and were buried here, and this is the ballad--

"'Bessie Bell and Mary Grey They were twa bonnie la.s.sies, They biggit a hoose on yonder brae And theikit it ower wi' rashes.'"

Then the General and Kate sat down by the river edge, and he told her the deathless story,--how in the plague of 1666 they fled to this district to escape infection; how a lover came to visit one of them and brought death in his kiss; how they sickened and died; how they were laid to rest beside the Tochty water; and generations have made their pilgrimage to the place, so wonderful and beautiful is love. They loved, and their memory is immortal.

Kate rested her chin on her hand and gazed at the running water, which continued while men and women live and love and die.

"He ought not to have come; it was a cowardly, selfish act, but I suppose," added the General, "he could not keep away."

"Be sure she thought none the less of him for his coming, and I think a woman will count life itself a small sacrifice for love," and Kate went over to the grave.

A thrush was singing as they turned to go, and nothing was said on the way home till they came near the Lodge.

"Who can that be going in, Kate? He seems a padre."

"I do not know, unless it be our fellow traveller from Muirtown; but he has been redressing himself, and is not improved.

"Father," and Kate stayed the General, as they crossed the threshold of their home, "we have seen many beautiful things to-day, for which I thank you; but the greatest was love."

CHAPTER VII.

A WOMAN OF THE NEW DISPENSATION.

Carmichael's aunt, who equipped his house, was determined on one point, and would not hear of a clerical housekeeper for her laddie. Margaret Meiklewham--a woman of a severe countenance, and filled with the spirit of the Disruption--who had governed the minister of Pitscowrie till his decease, and had been the terror of callow young probationers, offered herself, and gave instances of her capability.

"Gin ye leave yir nephew in my hands, ye needna hae ony mair concern.

A 'll manage him fine, an' hand him on the richt road. Ye may lippen tae 't, a' wesna five and thirty year wi' Maister MacWheep for naethin'.

"He wes a wee fractious and self-willed at the off-go, an' wud be wantin' this an' that for his denner, but he sune learned tae tak' what wes pit afore him; an' as for gaein' oot withoot tellin' me, he wud as sune hae thocht o' fleein'; when he cam' in he keepit naethin' back at his tea.

"Preachin' wes kittle wark in Pitscoorie, for the fouk were awfu'

creetics, though they didna maybe think sae muckle o' themselves as Drumtochty. A' aye githered their jidgment through the week, an' gin he hed made a slip meddling wi' warks or sic-like in his sermon, it wes pit richt next Sabbath, and sovereignty whuppit in at the feenish.

"Ye ken the Auld Kirk hes tae be watchit like a cat wi' a moose, an'

though a' say it as sudna, Maister MacWheep wud hae made a puir job o'

the business himsel'. The pairish meenister wes terrible plausible, an' askit oor man tae denner afore he wes settled in his p.o.o.pit, an' he wes that simple, he wud hae gaen," and Margaret indicated by an uplifting of her eyebrows the pitiable innocence of MacWheep.

"Ye guidit him, nae doot?" inquired Carmichael's aunt, with interest.

"'Maister MacWheep,' says I," and Miss Meiklewham's lips were very firm, "'a 'll no deny that the Auld Kirk is Christian, an' a've never said that a Moderate cudna be savit, but the less trokin' (trafficking) ye hae wi' them the better. There 's maybe naethin' wrang wi' a denner, but the next thing 'll be an exchange o' p.o.o.pits, and the day ye dae that ye may close the Free Kirk.'