Barr Amelia E.
Scottish sketches
CHAPTER III
Alas, how often do Christ's words, "I come not to bring peace, but a sword," prove true. George Selwyn went away, but the seed he had dropped in this far-off corner of Scotland did not bring forth altogether the peaceable fruits of righteousness. In fact, as we have seen, it had scarcely begun to germinate before the laird and the dominie felt it to be a root of bitterness between them. For if Crawford knew anything he knew that Tallisker would never relinquish his new work, and perhaps if he yielded to any reasonable object Tallisker would stand by him in his project.
He did not force the emigration plan upon his notice. The summer was far advanced; it would be unjustifiable to send the clan to Canada at the beginning of winter. And, as it happened, the subject was opened with the dominie in a very favorable manner. They were returning from the moors one day and met a party of six men. They were evidently greatly depressed, but they lifted their bonnets readily to the chief. There was a hopeless, unhappy look about them that was very painful.
"You have been unsuccessful on the hills, Archie, I fear."
"There's few red deer left," said the man gloomily. "It used to be deer and men; it is sheep and dogs now."
After a painful silence the dominie said,
"Something ought to be done for those braw fellows. They canna ditch and delve like an Irish peasant. It would be like harnessing stags in a plough."
Then Crawford spoke cautiously of his intention, and to his delight the dominie approved it.
"I'll send them out in Read & Murray's best ships. I'll gie each head o' a family what you think right, Tallisker, and I'll put £100 in your hands for special cases o' help. And you will speak to the men and their wives for me, for it is a thing I canna bear to do."
But the men too listened eagerly to the proposition. They trusted the dominie, and they were weary of picking up a precarious living in hunting and fishing, and relying on the chief in emergencies. Their old feudal love and reverence still remained in a large measure, but they were quite sensible that everything had changed in their little world, and that they were out of tune with it. Some few of their number had made their way to India or Canada, and there was a vague dissatisfaction which only required a prospect of change to develop. As time went on, and the laird's plan for opening the coal beds on his estate got known, the men became impatient to be gone.
In the early part of March two large ships lay off the coast waiting for them, and they went in a body to Crawford Keep to bid the chief "farewell." It was a hard hour, after all, to Crawford. The great purpose that he had kept before his eyes for years was not at that moment sufficient. He had dressed himself in his full chieftain's suit to meet them. The eagle's feather in his Glengary gave to his great stature the last grace. The tartan and philibeg, the garters at his knee, the silver buckles at his shoulder, belt, and shoon, the jewelled mull and dirk, had all to these poor fellows in this last hour a proud and sad significance. As he stood on the steps to welcome them, the wind colored his handsome face and blew out the long black hair which fell curling on his shoulders.
Whatever they intended to say to him, when they thus saw him with young Colin by his side they were unable to say. They could only lift their bonnets in silence. The instincts and traditions of a thousand years were over them; he was at this moment the father and the chief of their deepest affection. One by one they advanced to him. He pressed the hands of all. Some of the older men—companions of his youth in play and sport—he kissed with a solemn tenderness. They went away silently as they came, but every heart was full and every eye was dim. There was a great feast for them in the clachan that night, but it was a sombre meeting, and the dominie's cheerful words of advice and comfort formed its gayest feature.
The next day was calm and clear. The women and children were safely on board soon after noon, and about four o'clock the long boats left the shore full of men. Tallisker was in the front one. As they pulled away he pointed silently to a steep crag on the shingly beach. The chief stood upon it. He waved his bonnet, and then the long-pent feelings of the clan found vent in one long, pitiful Gallic lament, O hon a rie! O hon a rie! For a few moments the boats lay at rest, no man was able to lift an oar. Suddenly Tallisker's clear, powerful voice touched the right chord. To the grand, plaintive melody of St. Mary's he began the 125th Psalm,
"They in the Lord that firmly trust
shall be like Sion hill,
Which at no time can be removed,
but standeth ever still.
As round about Jerusalem
the mountains stand alway;
The Lord his folk doth compass so
from henceforth and for aye."
And thus singing together they passed from their old life into a new one.
Colin had been indignant and sorrowful over the whole affair. He and Helen were still young enough to regret the breaking of a tie which bound them to a life whose romance cast something like a glamour over the prosaic one of more modern times. Both would, in the unreasonableness of youthful sympathy, have willingly shared land and gold with their poor kinsmen; but in this respect Tallisker was with the laird.
"It was better," he said, "that the old feudal tie should be severed even by a thousand leagues of ocean. They were men and not bairns, and they could feel their ain feet;" and then he smiled as he remembered how naturally they had taken to self-dependence. For one night, in a conversation with the oldest men, he said, "Crawfords, ye'll hae to consider, as soon as you are gathered together in your new hame, the matter o' a dominie. Your little flock in the wilderness will need a shepherd, and the proper authorities maun be notified."
Then an old gray-headed man had answered firmly, "Dominie, we will elect our ain minister. We hae been heart and soul, every man o' us, with the Relief Kirk; but it is ill living in Rome and striving wi' the pope, and sae for the chief's sake and your sake we hae withheld our testimony. But we ken weel that even in Scotland the Kirk willna hirple along much farther wi' the State on her back, and in the wilderness, please God, we'll plant only a Free Kirk."
The dominie heard the resolve in silence, but to himself he said softly, "They'll do! They'll do! They'll be a bit upsetting at first, maybe, but they are queer folk that have nae failings."
A long parting is a great strain; it was a great relief when the ships had sailed quite out of sight. The laird with a light heart now turned to his new plans. No reproachful eyes and unhappy faces were there to damp his ardor. Everything promised well. The coal seam proved to be far richer than had been anticipated, and those expert in such matters said there were undoubted indications of the near presence of iron ore. Great furnaces began to loom up in Crawford's mental vision, and to cast splendid lustres across his future fortunes.
In a month after the departure of the clan, the little clachan of Traquare had greatly changed. Long rows of brick cottages, ugly and monotonous beyond description, had taken the place of the more picturesque sheilings. Men who seemed to measure everything in life with a two-foot rule were making roads and building jetties for coal-smacks to lie at. There was constant influx of strange men and women—men of stunted growth and white faces, and who had an insolent, swaggering air, intolerably vulgar when contrasted with the Doric simplicity and quiet gigantic manhood of the mountain shepherds.
The new workers were, however, mainly Lowland Scotchmen from the mining districts of Ayrshire. The dominie had set himself positively against the introduction of a popish element and an alien people; and in this position he had been warmly upheld by Farquharson and the neighboring proprietors. As it was, there was an antagonism likely to give him full employment. The Gael of the mountains regarded these Lowland "working bodies" with something of that disdain which a rich and cultivated man feels for kin, not only poor, but of contemptible nature and associations. The Gael was poor truly, but he held himself as of gentle birth. He had lived by his sword, or by the care of cattle, hunting, and fishing. Spades, hammers, and looms belonged to people of another kind.
Besides this great social gulf, there were political and religious ones still wider. That these differences were traditional, rather than real, made no distinction. Man have always fought as passionately for an idea as for a fact. But Dominie Tallisker was a man made for great requirements and great trusts. He took in the position with the eye of a general. He watched the two classes passing down the same streets as far apart as if separated by a continent, and he said, with a very positive look on his face, "These men are brethren and they ought to dwell in unity; and, God helping Dugald Tallisker, they will do it, yes, indeed, they will."
CHAPTER IV
In a year after the departure of the clan, the clachans of Crawford and Traquare had lost almost all traces of their old pastoral character. The coal pit had been opened, and great iron furnaces built almost at its mouth. Things had gone well with Crawford; the seam had proved to be unusually rich; and, though the iron had been found, not on his land, but on the extreme edge of Blair, he was quite satisfied. Farquharson had struck hands with him over it, and the Blair iron ore went to the Crawford furnaces to be smelted into pig iron.
Crawford had grown younger in the ardent life he had been leading. No one would have taken him to be fifty-five years old. He hardly thought of the past; he only told himself that he had never been as strong and clear-headed and full of endurance, and that it was probable he had yet nearly half a century before him. What could he not accomplish in that time?
But in every earthly success there is a Mordecai sitting in its gate, and Colin was the uncomfortable feature in the laird's splendid hopes. He had lounged heartlessly to and from the works; the steady, mechanical routine of the new life oppressed him, and he had a thorough dislike for the new order of men with whom he had to come in contact. The young Crawfords had followed him about the hills with an almost canine affection and admiration. To them he was always "the young laird." These sturdy Ayrshire and Galloway men had an old covenanting rebelliousness about them. They disputed even with Dominie Tallisker on church government; they sang Robert Burns' most democratic songs in Crawford's very presence.
Then Colin contrasted them physically with the great fellows he had been accustomed to see striding over the hills, and he despised the forms stunted by working in low seams and unhealthy vapors and the faces white for lack of sunshine and grimy with the all-pervading coal dust. The giants who toiled in leather masks and leather suits before the furnaces suited his taste better. When he watched them moving about amid the din and flames and white-hot metal, he thought of Vulcan and Mount Ætna, and thus threw over them the enchantments of the old Roman age. But in their real life the men disappointed him. They were vulgar and quarrelsome; the poorest Highland gillie had a vein of poetry in his nature, but these iron-workers were painfully matter of fact; they could not even understand a courtesy unless it took the shape of a glass of whiskey.
It was evident to the laird that the new life was very distasteful to his heir; it was evident to the dominie that it was developing the worst sides of Colin's character. Something of this he pointed out to Helen one morning. Helen and he had lately become great friends, indeed, they were co-workers together in all the new labors which the dominie's conscience had set him. The laird had been too busy and anxious about other matters to interfere as yet with this alliance, but he promised himself he would do so very soon. Helen Crawford was not going to nurse sick babies and sew for all the old women in the clachan much longer. And the night-school! This was particularly offensive to him. Some of the new men had gone there, and Crawford was sure he was in some way defrauded by it. He thought it impossible to work in the day and study an hour at night. In some way he suffered by it.
"If they werna in the schoolroom they would be in the Change House," Tallisker had argued.
But the laird thought in his heart that the whiskey would be more to his advantage than the books. Yet he did not like to say so; there was something in the dominie's face which restrained him. He had opened the subject in that blustering way which always hides the white feather somewhere beneath it, and Tallisker had answered with a solemn severity,
"Crawford, it seems to be your wark to mak money; it is mine to save souls. Our roads are sae far apart we arena likely to run against each other, if we dinna try to."
"But I don't like the way you are doing your wark; that is all, dominie."
"Mammon never did like God's ways. There is a vera old disagreement between them. A man has a right to consider his ain welfare, Crawford, but it shouldna be mair than the twa tables o' the law to him."
Now Tallisker was one of those ministers who bear their great commission in their faces. There was something almost imperial about the man when he took his stand by the humblest altar of his duty. Crawford had intended at this very time to speak positively on the subject of his own workers to Tallisker. But when he looked at the dark face, set and solemn and full of an irresistible authority, he was compelled to keep silence. A dim fear that Tallisker would say something to him which would make him uncomfortable crept into his heart. It was better that both the dominie and conscience should be quiet at present.
Still he could not refrain from saying,
"You hae set yoursel' a task you'll ne'er win over, dominie. You could as easy mak Ben-Cruchan cross the valley and sit down by Ben-Appin as mak Gael and Lowlander call each other brothers."
"We are told, Crawford, that mountains may be moved by faith; why not, then, by love? I am a servant o' God. I dinna think it any presumption to expect impossibilities."
Still it must be acknowledged that Tallisker looked on the situation as a difficult one. The new workers to a man disapproved of the Established Church of Scotland. Perhaps of all classes of laborers Scotch colliers are the most theoretically democratic and the most practically indifferent in matters of religion. Every one of them had relief and secession arguments ready for use, and they used them chiefly as an excuse for not attending Tallisker's ministry. When conscience is used as an excuse, or as a weapon for wounding, it is amazing how tender it becomes. It pleased these Lowland workers to assert a religious freedom beyond that of the dominie and the shepherd Gael around them. And if men wish to quarrel, and can give their quarrel a religious basis, they secure a tolerance and a respect which their own characters would not give them. Tallisker might pooh-pooh sectional or political differences, but he was himself far too scrupulous to regard with indifference the smallest theological hesitation.
One day as he was walking up the clachan pondering these things, he noticed before him a Highland shepherd driving a flock to the hills. There was a party of colliers sitting around the Change House; they were the night-gang, and having had their sleep and their breakfast, were now smoking and drinking away the few hours left of their rest. Anything offering the chance of amusement was acceptable, and Jim Armstrong, a saucy, bullying fellow from the Lonsdale mines, who had great confidence in his Cumberland wrestling tricks, thought he saw in the placid indifference of the shepherd a good opportunity for bravado.
"Sawnie, ye needna pass the Change House because we are here. We'll no hurt you, man."
The shepherd was as one who heard not.
Then followed an epithet that no Highlander can hear unmoved, and the man paused and put his hand under his plaid. Tallisker saw the movement and quickened his steps. The word was repeated, with the scornful laugh of the group to enforce it. The shepherd called his dog—
"Keeper, you tak the sheep to the Cruchan corrie, and dinna let are o' them stray."
The dumb creature looked in his face assentingly, and with a sharp bark took the flock charge. Then the shepherd walked up to the group, and Jim Armstrong rose to meet him.
"Nae dirks," said an old man quietly; "tak your hands like men."
Before the speech was over they were clinched in a grasp which meant gigantic strength on one side, and a good deal of practical bruising science on the other. But before there was an opportunity of testing the quality of either the dominie was between the men. He threw them apart like children, and held each of them at arm's length, almost as a father might separate two fighting schoolboys. The group watching could not refrain a shout of enthusiasm, and old Tony Musgrave jumped to his feet and threw his pipe and his cap in the air.
"Dugald," said the dominie to the shepherd, "go your ways to your sheep. I'll hae nae fighting in my parish.
"Jim Armstrong, you thrawart bully you, dinna think you are the only man that kens Cumberland cantrips. I could fling you mysel' before you could tell your own name;" and as if to prove his words, he raised an immense stone, that few men could have lifted, and with apparent ease flung it over his right shoulder. A shout of astonishment greeted the exploit, and Tony Musgrave—whose keen, satirical ill-will had hitherto been Tallisker's greatest annoyance—came frankly forward and said, "Dominie, you are a guid fellow! Will you tak some beer wi' me?"
Tallisker did not hesitate a moment.
"Thank you, Tony. If it be a drink o' good-will, I'll tak it gladly."
But he was not inclined to prolong the scene; the interference had been forced upon him. It had been the only way to stop a quarrel which there would have been no healing if blood had once been shed. Yet he was keenly alive to the dignity of his office, and resumed it in the next moment. Indeed, the drinking of the glass of good-will together was rather a ceremonial than a convivial affair. Perhaps that also was the best. The men were silent and respectful, and for the first time lifted their caps with a hearty courtesy to Tallisker when he left them.
"Weel! Wonders never cease!" said Jim Armstrong scornfully. "To see Tony Musgrave hobnobbing wi' a black-coat! The deil must 'a' had a spasm o' laughing."
"Let the deil laugh," said Tony, with a snap of his grimy fingers. Then, after a moment's pause, he added, "Lads, I heard this morning that the dominie's wheat was spoiling, because he couldna get help to cut it. I laughed when I heard it; I didna ken the man then. I'm going to-morrow to cut the dominie's wheat; which o' you will go wi' me?"
"I!" and "I!" and "I!" was the hearty response; and so next day Traquare saw a strange sight—a dozen colliers in a field of wheat, making a real holiday of cutting the grain and binding the sheaves, so that before the next Sabbath it had all been brought safely home.
CHAPTER V
But during these very days, when the dominie and his parishioners were drawing a step closer to each other, the laird and his son were drifting farther apart. Crawford felt keenly that Colin took no interest in the great enterprises which filled his own life. The fact was, Colin inherited his mother's, and not his father's temperament. The late Lady Crawford had been the daughter of a Zetland Udaller, a pure Scandinavian, a descendant of the old Vikings, and she inherited from them a poetic imagination and a nature dreamy and inert, though capable of rousing itself into fits of courage that could dare the impossible. Colin would have led a forlorn hope or stormed a battery; but the bare ugliness and monotony of his life at the works fretted and worried him.
Tallisker had repeatedly urged a year's foreign travel. But the laird had been much averse to the plan. France, in his opinion, was a hotbed of infidelity; Italy, of popery; Germany, of socialistic and revolutionary doctrines. There was safety only in Scotland. Pondering these things, he resolved that marriage was the proper means to "settle" the lad. So he entered into communication with an old friend respecting his daughter and his daughter's portion; and one night he laid the result before Colin.
Colin was indignant. He wanted to marry no woman, and least of all women, Isabel McLeod.
"She'll hae £50,000!" said the laird sententiously.
"I would not sell myself for £50,000."
"You'd be a vera dear bargain at half the price to any woman, Colin. And you never saw Isabel. She was here when you were in Glasgow. She has the bonniest black e'en in Scotland, and hair like a raven's wing."
"When I marry, sir, I shall marry a woman like my mother: a woman with eyes as blue as heaven, and a face like a rose. I'll go, as you did, to Shetland for her."
"There isna a house there fit for you to take a wife from, Colin, save and except the Earl's ain; and his daughter, the Lady Selina, is near thirty years old."
"There are my second cousins, Helga and Saxa Vedder."
Then the laird was sure in his own heart that Tallisker's advice was best. France and Italy were less to be feared than pretty, portionless cousins. Colin had better travel a year, and he proposed it. It hurt him to see how eagerly his heir accepted the offer. However, if the thing was to be done, it was best done quickly. Letters of credit suitable to the young laird's fortune were prepared, and in less than a month he was ready to begin his travels. It had been agreed that he should remain away one year, and if it seemed desirable, that his stay might even be lengthened to two. But no one dreamed that advantage would be taken of this permission.
"He'll be hamesick ere a twelvemonth, laird," said the dominie; and the laird answered fretfully, "A twelvemonth is a big slice o' life to fling awa in far countries."
The night before Colin left he was walking with his sister on the moor. A sublime tranquillity was in the still September air. The evening crimson hung over the hills like a royal mantle. The old church stood framed in the deepest blue. At that distance the long waves broke without a sound, and the few sails on the horizon looked like white flowers at sea.
"How beautiful is this mansion of our father!" said Helen softly. "One blushes to be caught worrying in it, and yet, Colin, I fear to have you go away."
"Why, my dear?"
"I have a presentiment that we shall meet no more in this life. Nay, do not smile; this strange intelligence of sorrow, this sudden trembling in a soul at rest, is not all a delusion. We shall part to-morrow, Colin. Oh, darling brother, where shall we meet again?"
He looked into the fair, tender face and the eager, questioning eyes, and found himself unable to reply.
"Remember, Colin! I give you a rendezvous in heaven."
He clasped her hand tightly, and they walked on in a silence that Colin remembered often afterwards. Sometimes, in dreams, to the very end of his life, he took again with Helen that last evening walk, and his soul leaned and hearkened after hers. "I give you a rendezvous in heaven!"
In the morning they had a few more words alone. She was standing looking out thoughtfully into the garden. "Are you going to London?" she asked suddenly.
"Yes."
"You will call on Mr. Selwyn?"
"I think so."
"Tell him we remember him—and try to follow, though afar off, the example he sets us."
"Well, you know, Helen, I may not see him. We never were chums. I have often wondered why I asked him here. It was all done in a moment. I had thought of asking Walter Napier, and then I asked Selwyn. I have often thought it would have pleased me better if I had invited Walter."
"Sometimes it is permitted to us to do things for the pleasure of others, rather than our own. I have often thought that God—who foresaw the changes to take place here—sent Mr. Selwyn with a message to Dominie Tallisker. The dominie thinks so too. Then how glad you ought to be that you asked him. He came to prepare for those poor people who as yet were scattered over Ayrshire and Cumberland. And this thought comforts me for you, Colin. God knows just where you are going, dear, and the people you are going to meet, and all the events that will happen to you."
The events and situations of life resemble ocean waves—every one is alike and yet every one is different. It was just so at Crawford Keep after Colin left it. The usual duties of the day were almost as regular as the clock, but little things varied them. There were letters or no letters from Colin; there were little events at the works or in the village; the dominie called or he did not call. Occasionally there were visitors connected with the mines or furnaces, and sometimes there were social evening gatherings of the neighboring young people, or formal state dinners for the magistrates and proprietors who were on terms of intimacy with the laird.
For the first year of Colin's absence, if his letters were not quite satisfactory, they were condoned. It did not please his father that Colin seemed to have settled himself so completely in Rome, among "artists and that kind o' folk," and he was still more angry when Colin declared his intention of staying away another year. Poor father! How he had toiled and planned to aggrandize this only son, who seemed far more delighted with an old coin or an old picture than with the great works which bore his name. In all manner of ways he had made it clear to his family that in the dreamy, sensuous atmosphere of Italian life he remembered the gray earnestness of Scottish life with a kind of terror.
Tallisker said, "Give him his way a little longer, laird. To bring him hame now is no use. People canna thole blue skies for ever; he'll be wanting the moors and the misty corries and the gray clouds erelong." So Colin had another year granted him, and his father added thousand to thousand, and said to his heart wearily many and many a time, "It is all vexation of spirit."
At the end of the second year Crawford wrote a most important letter to his son. There was an opening for the family that might never come again. All arrangements had been made for Colin to enter the coming contest for a seat in Parliament. The Marquis of B– had been spoken to, and Crawford and he had come to an understanding Crawford did not give the particulars of the "understanding," but he told Colin that his "political career was assured." He himself would take care of the works. Political life was open to his son, and if money and influence could put him in the House of Peers, money should not be spared.
The offer was so stupendous, the future it looked forward to so great, Crawford never doubted Colin's proud, acquiescence. That much he owed to a long line of glorious ancestors; it was one of the obligations of noble birth; he would not dare to, neglect it.
Impatiently he waited Colin's answer. Indeed, he felt sure Colin would answer such a call in person. He was disappointed when a letter came; he had not known, till then, how sure he had felt of seeing his son. And the letter was a simple blow to him. Very respectfully, but very firmly, the proposition was declined. Colin said he knew little of parties and cabals, and was certain, at least, that nothing could induce him to serve under the Marquis of B–. He could not see his obligations to the dead Crawfords as his father did. He considered his life his own. It had come to him with certain tastes, which he meant to improve and gratify, for only in that way was life of any value to him.
The laird laid the letter in Tallisker's hands without a word. He was almost broken-hearted. He had not yet got to that point where money-making for money's sake was enough. Family aggrandizement and political ambition are not the loftiest motives of a man's life, but still they lift money-making a little above the dirty drudgery of mere accumulation. Hitherto Crawford had worked for an object, and the object, at least in his own eyes, had dignified the labor.
In his secret heart he was angry at Colin's calm respectability. A spendthrift prodigal, wasting his substance in riotous living, would have been easier to manage than this young man of æsthetic tastes, whose greatest extravagance was a statuette or a picture. Tallisker, too, was more uneasy than he would confess. He had hoped that Colin would answer his father's summons, because he believed now that the life he was leading was unmanning him. The poetical element in his character was usurping an undue mastery. He wrote to Colin very sternly, and told him plainly that a poetic pantheism was not a whit less sinful than the most vulgar infidelity.
Still he advised the laird to be patient, and by no means to answer Colin's letter in a hurry. But only fixed more firmly the angry father's determination. Colin must come home and fulfil his wish, or he must time remain away until he returned as master. As his son, he would know him no more; as the heir of Crawford, he would receive at intervals such information as pertained to that position. For the old man was just in his anger; it never seemed possible to him to deprive Colin of the right of his heritage. To be the 13th Laird of Crawford was Colin's birthright; he fully recognized his title to the honor, and, as the future head of the house, rendered him a definite respect.
Of course a letter written in such a spirit did no good whatever. Nothing after it could have induced Colin to come home. He wrote and declined to receive even the allowance due to him as heir of Crawford. The letter was perfectly respectful, but cruelly cold and polite, and every word cut the old man like a sword.
