The Dew of Their Youth Part 14

And indeed there is little doubt but that Mary Lyon would have kept her word. So far as speech was concerned, my Aunt Jen was silenced. But she was a creature faithful to her prejudices, and could express by her silence and air of injured rect.i.tude more than one less gifted could have put into a parliamentary oration.

Her very heels on the stone floor of the wide kitchen at Heathknowes, where all the business of the house was transacted, fell with little raps of defiance, curt and dry. Her nose in the air told of contempt louder than any words. She laid down the porridge spurtle like a queen abdicating her sceptre. She tabled the plates like so many protests, signed and witnessed. She swept about the house with the glacial chill which an iceberg spreads about it in temperate seas. Her displeasure made winter of our content--of all, that is, except Mary Lyon's. She at least went about her tasks with her usual humming alacrity, turning work over her shoulder as easy as apple-peeling.

Being naturally lazy myself (except as to the reading of books), I took a great pleasure in watching grandmother. Aunt Jen would order you to get some work if she saw you doing nothing--malingering, she called it--yes, and find it for you too, that is, if Mary Lyon were not in the house to tell her to mind her own business.

But you might lie round among grandmother's feet for days, and, except for a stray cuff in pa.s.sing if she actually walked into you--a cuff given in the purest spirit of love and good-will, and merely as a warning of the worse thing that might happen to you if you made her spill the dinner "sowens"--you might spend your days in reading anything from the _Arabian Nights_ in Uncle Eben's old tattered edition to the mighty _Josephus_, all complete with plans and plates--over which on Sundays my grandfather was wont to compose himself augustly to sleep.

Well, Miss Irma and Sir Louis came to my grandmother's house at Heathknowes. Yes, this is the correct version. The house of Heathknowes was Mary Lyon's. The mill in the wood, the farm, the hill pastures--these might be my grandfather's, also the horses and wagons generally, but his power--his "say" over anything, stopped at the threshold of the house, of the byre of cows, at the step of the rumbling little light cart in which he was privileged to drive my grandmother to church and market. In these places and relations he became, instead of the unquestioned master, only as one of ourselves, except that he was neither cuffed nor threatened with "the stick in the corner." All the same, this immunity did not do him much good, for many a sound tongue-lashing did he receive for his sins and shortcomings--indeed, far more so than all the rest of us. For with us, my grandmother had a short and easy way.

"I have not time to be arguing with the likes of you!" she would cry.

And upon the word a sound cuff removed us out of her path, and before we had stopped tingling Mary Lyon had plunged into the next object in hand, satisfied that she had successfully wrestled with at least one problem.

But with grandfather it was different. He had to be convinced--if possible, convicted--in any case overborne.

To accomplish this Mary Lyon would put forth all her powers, in spite of her husband's smiles--or perhaps a good deal because of them. Upon her excellent authority, he was stated to be the most irritating man betwixt the Brigend of Dumfries and the Braes of Glenap.

"Oh, man, say what you have to say," she would cry, when reduced to extremities by the obvious unfairness of his silent mode of controversy, "but don't sit there girning like a self-satisfied monkey!"

"Mother!" exclaimed Aunt Jen, horrified. For she cherished a secret tenderness for my grandfather, perhaps because their natures were so different, "How can you speak so to our father?"

"Wait till you get a man of your ain, Janet," my grandmother would retort, "then you will have new light as to how it is permitted for a woman to speak."

With this retort Aunt Jen was well acquainted, and had to be thankful that it was carried no further, as it often was in the case of any criticisms as to the management of children. In this case Aunt Jen was usually invited not to meddle, on the forcible plea that what a score of old maids knew about rearing a family could be put into a nutsh.e.l.l without risk of overcrowding.

The room at Heathknowes that was got ready for the children was the one off the parlour--"down-the-house," as it was called. Here was a little bed for Miss Irma, her washstand, a chest of drawers, a brush and comb which Aunt Jen had "found," producing them from under her ap.r.o.n with an exceedingly guilty air, while continuing to brush the floor with an air of protest against the whole proceeding.

From the school-house my father sent a hanging bookcase--at least the thing was done upon my suggestion. Agnes Anne carried it and Uncle Ebie nailed it up. At any rate, it was got into place among us. The cot of the child Louis had been arranged in the parlour itself, but at the first glance Miss Irma turned pale, and I saw it would not do.

"I have always been accustomed to have him with me," she said; "it is very kind of you to give us such nice rooms--but--would you mind letting him sleep where I can see him?"

It was Aunt Jen who did the moving without a word, and that, too, with the severe lines of disapproval very nearly completely ruled off her face. It was, in fact, better that they should be together. For while the parlour looked by two small-paned windows across the wide courtyard, the single cas.e.m.e.nt of the little bedroom opened on the orchard corner which my grandfather had planted in the first years of his taking possession.

The house of Heathknowes was of the usual type of large Galloway farm--a place with some history, the house ancient and roomy, the office houses built ma.s.sively in a square, as much for defence as for convenience. You entered by a heavy gate and you closed it carefully after you. From without the walls of the quadrangle frowned upon you unbroken from their eminence, ma.s.sy and threatening as a fortress. The walls were loopholed for musketry, and, in places, still bore marks of the long slots through which the archers had shot their bolts and clothyard shafts in the days before powder and ball.

Except the single gate, you could go round and round without finding any place by which an enemy might enter. The outside appearance was certainly grim, unpromising, inhospitable, and so it seemed to Miss Irma and Sir Louis as they drove up the loaning from the ford.

But within, everything was different. What a smiling welcome they received, my grandfather standing with his hat off, my grandmother with the tears in her motherly vehement eyes, gathering the two wanderers defiantly to her breast as if daring all the world to come on. Behind a little (but not much) was Aunt Jen, a.s.serting her position and rights in the house. She did not seem to see Miss Irma, but to make up, she never took her eyes off the little boy for a moment.

Then my uncles were ranged awkwardly, their hands lonesome for the grip of the plough, the driving reins, or the water-lever at the mill in the woods.

Uncle Rob, our dandy, had changed his coat and put on a new neckcloth, an act which, as all who know a Scots farm town will understand, cost him a mult.i.tude of flouts, jeers and upcasting from his peers.

I was also there, not indeed to welcome them, but because I had accompanied the party from the house of Marnhoul. The White Free Traders had established a post there to watch over one of their best "hidie-holes," even though they had removed all their goods in expectation of the visit of a troop of horse under Captain Sinclair, known to have been ordered up from Dumfries to aid the excise supervisor, as soon as that zealous officer was sure that, the steed being stolen, it was time to lock the stable door.

But when the dragoons came, there was little for them to do. Ned Henderson, the General Surveyor of the Customs and head of the district in all matters of excise, was far too careful a man to allow more to appear than was "good for the country." He knew that there was hardly a laird, and not a single farmer or man of substance who had not his finger in the pie. Indeed, after the crushing national disaster of Darien, this was the direction which speculation naturally took in Scotland for more than a hundred years.

In due time, then, the dragoons arrived, greatly to the interest of all the serving la.s.ses--and some others. There was, of course, a vast deal of riding about, cantering along by-ways, calling upon this or that innocent to account for his presence at the back of a d.y.k.e or behind a whin-bush--which he usually did in the most natural and convincing manner possible.

The woods were searched--the covers drawn. Many birds were disturbed, but of the crew of the _Golden Hind_, or the land smugglers by whose arrival the capture and burning of Marnhoul had been prevented, no trace was found. Even Kate of the Sh.o.r.e's present address was known to but few, and to these quite privately. There was no doubt of her faithfulness. That had been proven, but she knew too much. There were questions which, even unanswered, might raise others.

Several young men, of good family and connections, thought it prudent to visit friends at a distance, and at least one was never seen in the country more.

One of his Majesty's frigates had been sent for to watch the Solway ports, much to the disgust of her officers. For not only had they been expected at the Portsmouth summer station by numerous pretty ladies, but the navigation between Barnhourie and the Back Sh.o.r.e of Leswalt was as full of danger as it was entirely without glory. If they were unlucky, they might be cashiered for losing the ship. If lucky, the revenue men would claim the captured cargo. If they secured the malefactors they would sow desolation in a score of respectable families, with the daughters of which they had danced at Kirkcudbright a week ago.

In Galloway, though a considerable amount of recklessness mingled with the traffic, and there were occasional roughnesses on the high seas and about the ports and anchorages of Holland and the Isle of Man, there was never any of the cruelty a.s.sociated with smuggling along the south coast of England. The smugglers of Suss.e.x killed the informer Chater with blows of their whips. A yet darker tragedy enacted farther west, brought half-a-dozen to a well-deserved scaffold. But, save for the losses in fair fight occasioned by the intemperate zeal of some new broom of a supervisor anxious for distinction, the history of Galloway smuggling had, up to that time, never been stained with serious crime.

Meantime the two Maitlands, Sir Louis and Miss Irma, were safely housed within the defenced place of Heathknowes, guarded by William Lyon and his three stout sons, and mothered by all the hidden tenderness of my grandmother's big, imperious, volcanic heart.

Only my Aunt Jen watched jealously with a half-satisfied air and took counsel with herself as to what the end of these things might be.

CHAPTER XVI

CASTLE CONNOWAY

Meanwhile Boyd Connoway was in straits. Torn between two emotions, he was pleased for once to have found a means of earning his living and that of his family--especially the latter. For his own living was like that of the crows, "got round the country somewhere!" But with the lightest and most kindly heart in the world, Boyd Connoway found himself in trouble owing to the very means of opulence which had brought content to his house.

On going home on the night after the great attack on Marnhoul, weary of directing affairs, misleading the dragoons, whispering specious theories into the ear of the commanding officer and his aides, he had been met at the outer gate of his cabin by a fact that overturned all his notions of domestic economy. Ephraim, precious Ephraim, the Connoway family pig, had been turned out of doors and was now grunting disconsolately, thrusting a ringed nose through the bars of Paradise. Now Boyd knew that his wife set great store by Ephraim. Indeed, he had frequently been compared, to his disadvantage, with Ephraim and his predecessors in the narrow way of pigs. Ephraim was of service. What would the "poor childer," what would Bridget herself do without Ephraim? Bridget was not quite sure whether she kept Ephraim or whether Ephraim kept her. At any rate it was not to Boyd Connoway that she and her offspring were anyways indebted for care and sustenance.

"The craitur," said Bridget affectionately, "he pays the very rint!"

But here, outside the family domain, was Ephraim, the beloved of his wife's heart, actually turned out upon a cold and unfeeling world, and with carefully s.p.a.ced grunts of bewilderment expressing his discontent.

If such were Ephraim's fate, how would the matter go with him? Boyd Connoway saw a prospect of finding a husband and the father of a family turned from his own door, and obliged to return and take up his quarters with this earlier exile.

The Connoway family residence was a small and almost valueless leasehold from the estate of General Johnstone. The house had always been tumbledown, and the tenancy of Bridget and her brood had not improved it externally. The lease was evidently a repairing one. For holes in the thatch roof were stopped with heather, or mended with broad slabs of turf held down with stones and laboriously strengthened with wattle--a marvel of a roof. It is certain that Boyd's efforts were never continuous. He tired of everything in an hour, or sooner--unless somebody, preferably a woman, was watching him and paying him compliments on his dexterity.

The cottage had originally consisted of the usual "but-and-ben"--that is to say, in well regulated houses (which this one was not) of a kitchen--and a room that was not the kitchen. The family beds occupied one corner of the kitchen, that of Bridget and her husband in the middle (including accommodation for the latest baby), while on either side and at the foot, shakedowns were laid out "for the childer," slightly raised from the earthen floor on rude trestles, with a board laid across to receive the bedding. There was nothing at either side to provide against the occupants rolling over, but, as the distance from the ground did not average more than four inches, the young Connoways did not run much danger of accident on that account.

Disputes were, however, naturally somewhat frequent. Jerry or Phil would describe himself as "lying on so many taturs"--Mary or Kitty declare that her bedfellow was "pullin' every sc.r.a.p off of her, that she was!"

To quell these domestic brawls Bridget Connoway kept at the head of the middle bed a long peeled willow, which was known as the "Thin One." The Thin One settled all night disputes in the most evenhanded way. For Bridget did not get out of bed to discriminate. She simply laid on the spot from which the disturbance proceeded till that disturbance ceased.

Then the Thin One returned to his corner while innocent and guilty mingled their tears and resolved to conduct hostilities more silently in future.

In the daytime, however, the "Thick One" held sway, which was the work-hardened palm of Mistress Bridget Connoway's hand. She was ambidextrous in correction--"one was as good as t'other," as Jerry remarked, after he had done rubbing himself and comparing damages with his brother Phil, who had got the left. "There's not a fardin' to pick between us!" was the verdict as the boys started out to find their father, stretched on his favourite sunny mound within sight of the Haunted House of Marnhoul--now more haunted than ever.

But on this occasion Boyd Connoway was on his return, when he met the exiled Ephraim. His meditations on his own probable fate have led the historian into a sketch of the Connoway establishment, which, indeed, had to come in somewhere.

For once Boyd wasted no time. With his wife waiting for him it was well to know the worst and get it over. He opened the door quickly, and intruding his hat on the end of his walking stick, awaited results. It was only for a moment, of course, but Boyd Connoway felt satisfied. His Bridget was not waiting for him behind the door with the potato-beetle as she did on days of great irritation. His heart rose--his courage returned. Was he not a free man, a house-holder? Had he not taken a distinguished part in a gallant action? Bridget must understand this.

Bridget should understand this. Boyd Connoway would be respected in his own house!

Nevertheless he entered hastily, sidling like a dog which expects a kick. He avoided the dusky places instinctively--the door of the "ben"

room was shut, so Bridget could not be lying in wait there. Was it in the little closet behind the kitchen that the danger lurked? The children were in bed, save the two youngest, all quiet, all watching with the large, dreamy blue (Connoway) eyes, or the small, very bright ones (Bridget's) what his fate would be.

He glanced quaintly, with an interrogative lift of his eyebrows, at the bed to the left. Jerry of the twinkling sloe-eyes answered with a quick upturn of the thumb in the direction of the spare chamber.

Boyd Connoway frowned portentously at his eldest son. The youth shook his head. The sign was well understood, especially when helped out with a grin, broad as all County Donegal 'twixt Killibegs and Innishowen Light.