The McBrides Part 5

When we came on to good heather again Dan stopped me.

"Bide a wee, bide a wee, James," and he took a step from me, and there came at my very ear the lone night-cry of a gull, so weird and melancholy a sound, that but for a low laugh beside me again I would have sworn the bird had pa.s.sed in the darkness.

"Listen," says he; "I startled ye first with your Christian name, and ye were so made up wi' it, ye wid believe a gull brushed your lug; but listen, Hamish, listen."

From out of the night came the answer, and in my mind there came the picture I had often watched, the grey night seas and the lonely gull flying low, and ever and anon voicing its cry as though it mourned the lost spirit of the deep.

"There's just the two roads, you see, the sh.o.r.e road and the hill road, and a strange foot carries far, and there's aye a lad on the watch when the 'turf's in.'"

So that was Wee Neil's message; McGilp and his crew would be ash.o.r.e, as many as could be spared from the schooner, and we were making for the Turf Inn, and as we travelled I asked why it came to be called that.

"It's a long story," said Dan, "but maybe ye'll have noticed a hole in a smiddy wall, where they will be throwing out the ashes. Well, in this lonely place here, there werena many to trouble, and it cam' to be known that a man could get a dram if he paid for it, and as much as he liked to be payin' for. Well, well, a stranger cam' in one day and asked refreshment and got it, and then he plankit down a gowden guinea and waited for his change, for the stranger was a ganger, and here was a capture just waitin' for him.

"Well, he waited and waited and cracked away wi' the la.s.s, for there seemed n.o.body about but just Meg the gleevitch, and she had talk eno'

for five men, and a trim pair o' ankles forbye.

"'I'll be goin' now, mistress,' says the stranger, rising.

"'I'm sorry for that,' says Meg, and looked as if she meant it.

"'If ye'll just give me my change. . . .'

"'Change!' she cries, 'G.o.d save us, change; we sell naething here,' and she lifted the guinea oot the old jug on the shelf and handed it back.

'I thought it was just a present,' says she, makin' eyes at him, 'for a thankfu' man's free wi' his siller. Ye were lucky to get the only drop o' drink in the hoose,'--and that was true enough, for the time they had been talkin' and Meg kiltin' her skirt tae kind o' divert the stranger's attention, the lads had the keg in a safe place. Aweel, and so he had just to take shank's mare for it. I'll come back tae the hole in the wa'. There was one in the old house, and Meg cut a divot and stuffed the hole wi' it if there was nae danger, and if she had word o' excis.e.m.e.n or gaugers on the lookout for smuggling she took the turf oot, and that's how the place got it's name (and why we pa.s.s the word that the 'turf's in' if there's word o' a run), but it must have hurt Meg to gie back the guinea, for she's a wild long eye for siller."

We were now close to a white house, stone built and thatched, set among big plane-trees, and looking to the sea. At the door I heard Gaelic songs and great laughing, and then we went inside. At first I saw nothing but two ship's lanthorns, swung from hooks such as we use to hang hams on, and the blazing fire, where a ship's timber burned with wee blue flames licking out, as the fire got at the salt of the seven seas. Then I made out the swarthy faces turned to us, and heard Dan's name voiced by the revellers, and a woman, stout built and perky but still young, that I took to be Meg the gleevitch, from her bird-like way of making little rushes, or, as we express it, "fleein' at things,"

brought us steaming gla.s.ses of toddy, so strong that I think she had watered the whisky with more whisky, for the tears started to my eyes as I drank my first drink. But I felt fine and warm inside for all that. Captain McGilp, as tough a looking seaman as ever shook out a reef, hoisted himself beside Dan. He had not mind of me, I think.

"We did yon business o' Scaurdale's," he whispered, "and got the len'

of a cow to keep the wean in milk, and I'll no' say but I forget where the beast came frae, for it's in the barrel now, what's left o't. The wean's in France in a convent among the nuns, where I'm envying her her innocence," and the captain became so wild and heedless in his speech that I drew away. "Ho, my c.o.c.kerel," says he, "Miss Mim-mou (mim-mouth), that's the bonniest wie I ken o' gettin' yir wesan cut,"

and to Dan, "There's a lot o' the stallion to that colt." This would mean that I resembled my father, the minister now dead, for he survived my mother, the Laird's sister, by but a few years.

"Let the lad be, Jock McGilp, or you and me'll be cuttin' wesands,"

says Dan, and I could have flown at the burly smuggler's throat for the joy of Dan's backing.

"It'll be his first night, hey? Well, look at McNeilage there; he's been drunk fifteen flaming years."

"A bonny mate that--fifteen flaming years."

The mate slowly lifted his head, which had sunk on his ma.s.sive chest, and as I saw his face I grew amazed, for he resembled nothing so much as a good-living, well-fed minister.

"I ha' used the sea, Cap'n, in my time. I loved the nuns and the virgins in San Iago afore we made a bonfire o' it, ay the holy nuns, but they skirled. Here's tae them, they were good while they lasted,"

and the unholy wretch smacked his lips as though he relished the memory more than the drink.

"Sanny McNeilage, they ca' me. I've seen what I've seen and what ye'll never see--I've seen the decks red for a week and all hands drunk;" and then he turned to me, and his face shone with kindliness, "Are ye any man wi' a cutla.s.s, my lad?"

"No," says I, for my blood boiled at the thought of the nuns, "I wish I were."

"So do I," says he in a pitiful voice.

"All that was before your mother died," says a young lad at his elbow, fierce Ronny McKinnon, and the mate put his head in his arms and his shoulders shook with his greetin', while nods and winks went round the G.o.dless crew.

"She was English, my poor old mother," he cried, "and I would lay down my d.a.m.ned soul for her, but she died fifteen year ago, and she could not say 'wee tatties' in the English when she slipped her cable, for she turned into Gaelic--yes," and he looked up, the tears in his eyes and rolling down his cheeks. I think I never saw anything so hateful, but then I saw his hand at his hanger and his big shoulders haunching.

"Will any o' ye be denying it?" he murmured in his pitiful voice, and then through the tears I saw the devil mocking, and knew why the crew hastened to rea.s.sure him.

Meg, the gleevitch, kept the drink going and threw more wood on the fire. "Drink up," she cries, "it's a rid tinker's night this."

"Why red tinkers, Meg?" says Dan, raising his head from close confab wi' the captain.

"Ye ken the story fine," says she, "how the weans hiv the red hair tae keep them warm maybe, lying oot."

"Not me, my la.s.s," says Dan; "sit down here beside me and tell us."

And as we took our drink she told us of the red tinkers and when they took to the road.

"Indeed, and that will be a good story too," said an old shepherd by the fireside, with his dogs at his feet, "and I will be tellin' you another, if you will be caring. . . ."

It wore on to the small hours of the morning, and c.o.c.ks began to crow, and yet we sat. Indeed, by that time I was seeing two fires, and I knew that most of the crew slept as they sat or sprawled, and the mate was again weeping and leering round for some one to fight, as though his seeming gentleness would entice a stranger. Dan was parrying with Meg, for in her story she had made great stress on a gipsy la.s.s, and all with knowing looks in Dan's direction; but at last we made our homeward way, of which I remember little, except that Dan had me on his back on the worst of the road, and I was singing.

Next morning I was ill, and black looks I got at the breakfast, although my aunt was kind enough and I caught her smiling at me, for I suppose I must have cut a queer enough figure, but my uncle was very stern. After I had made some pretence of eating, I rose, and he asked me, in his grandest manner, to come to him in an hour.

He was among his books, for he was more of a bookworm than his folks, and standing in front of the fire as I entered.

"Hamish," said he, "I thought more of ye. Dan is no model to follow,"

says he; "forbye, your head is not so strong, if that be any excuse for drink and devilry on his pairt. I ken of his ongoings, but I hold my peace, for he minds his work, and I have a promise to his father, my brother, that's lying far frae his kith and kin in the field of Malplaquet. Let this be a warning to ye, Hamish, for this morning ye were looking lamentable," says he, "just lamentable."

CHAPTER V.

MIRREN STUART'S ERRAND.

The shame of my first night's ploy at the Turf Inn lay heavy on me for a while, and then I would be thinking of the swarthy crew with their knives and their fierce oaths at the cards, of the spluttering glowing fire and the old men of the glens in the glow of it, and when I heard the wind moan and cry in the planting in the night, I longed to hear the old dread stories of a people long dead who had raised great stones on our wind-swept moors, and marked their heroes' resting-places with cairns.

Something of this I told to Dan as we gathered in the sheep from the far hills on the day before the big storm. I mind it fine, the grey heavy sky, the bursts of wind that rose ever and anon in the hills, and died away with an eerie cry, and made me think that all the winds had word to gather somewhere, and were hastening to the feast like corbies to a dying ewe.

There was the smell of snow in the air, and the moss pools were frozen hard, and beautiful it was to see the stag-horn moss entombed in the clear ice, and the wee water-plants, pale and cold and pitiful, at the bottom of the pools. Round the far marches we gathered--the wild shy wethers, seeing the dogs, paused as if to question the right of the intruders, and then bounded away like goats, and in my mind's eye I see yet the whitey-yellow wool where the wind ruffled the fleeces. Dan was very quiet that day, speaking seldom except to the dogs.

"There's something no canny coming, Hamish," said he; "I feel it in my banes. We're but puir craturs when a's said and done. A pig can see the wind, and there's them that can hear the gra.s.s growing, but a man just breenges on, blin', blin', and fou o' pride."

And again, "Ye've a terrible hankerin' for bawkins,[1] Hamish. I whiles think ye will be some old Druid priest come back that's forgotten the word o' power, but kens dimly in his mind that the white glistening berries o' the oak and the old standing stanes are freens.

Ye're no feart o' bawkins, and ye're never tired o' hearing about them.

Aweel, it's a kind o' bravery I envy ye, for weel I mind that first time I heard the Black Hound o' Nourn bay. I can feel the tingle of fear run in my bones yet when I think o' the dogs leaving me alane in that unchancey wood, and that devil beast near me in the dark."

By this time we were at Bothanairidh, maybe a heather mile from Craignaghor, the flock heading quietly in and the dogs at heel, and at a bare hawthorn tree Dan stopped.

"An' this, Hamish, will be another o' your freens," said he. "There's many a lilting laugh hidden in the ears o' this old tree, for here it was the cailleachs cam' tae spin in the long summer forenights, when everybody left their hames and took their beasts tae the hill for the summer. There were no d.y.k.es or hedges in those days, and the beasts had to be herded on the hill if the crops were to come to anything.

Aweel, the men a' went to the fishing and a' the weemen stayed at Bothanairidh, and in the evenings the young la.s.sies would be making great laughing while the cailleachs span; and once, long long ago, when the crotal was young on the rocks on the moors, there came a swarthy lad and said fareweel tae his la.s.s under this tree. There was red wild blood in the boy, and before he came back he had seen a many men swing from the yard-arm. Ay, when he did return, he met a red bride, for another had awaited his coming.