Chapter XXVIII: After Many Days

It was a Sunday morning in winter. For nearly a fortnight Airlie moor had been lying under a black frost. The wind that whistled through the leafless woods and swept over the hard ground was bitterly cold; the sky was grey and cheerless; the far stretch of the sea was more than usually desolate. The winter had come soon on the heels of autumn; and already all the manifold signs of life which had marked the summer were nipped off and dead. The woods were silent; the murmur of the moorland rivulet had been hushed, for its narrow channel contained a mass of ice; and the stripped and bare fields over which the piercing wind blew were hard as iron.

Then there was one night's snow; and in a twinkling the whole scene was changed. On the Saturday night a certain stranger had arrived in Ardrossan, and put up at an inn there. He had come down from Glasgow in a third-class carriage, and had had a sufficiently cheerless journey. But now, on this Sunday morning, when he got up, and went out, lo! there was a new world all around him. The sun was shining brightly over the great white fields; the trees hung heavy with the snow; the straggling groups of men and women coming in from the country to church, moved ghostlike and silent along the white roads; and the sea outside had caught a glimmer of misty yellow from the sunlight, and was almost calm. The bright and clear atmosphere was exhilarating, although yet intensely cold; and as this solitary adventurer issued forth from the town, and took his way up to the high country, the keen air brought a glow of colour into his young and healthy face. The frost had evidently neither stiffened his limbs nor congealed his blood; and yet even when the brisk exercise had made him almost uncomfortably warm, he still kept his Scotch cap well down over his forehead, while the collar of his topcoat was pulled up so as to conceal almost the whole of the rest of his face.

His light and springy step took him rapidly over the ground, and his spirits rose with the fresh air and the joyous exercise. He began to sing "Drumclog," Sunday morning as it was. Then, when he had gained a higher piece of country, and turned to look round him on the spacious landscape--when he saw the far hills and the valleys shining in the sunlight, the snow lying thick and soft on the evergreens, and the sea grown blue and silvery around the still whiteness of the land--he drew a long breath, and said to himself:

"Wouldn't it be worth while to live twenty years in Glasgow to catch a glimpse of such a picture as that, and get a mouthful of the clear air?"

By-and-by he came in sight of Airlie, and then he moderated his pace. Over the silence of the snow he could hear the sharp clanging of a bell. A dark line of stragglers was visible on the whiteness of the moor, on their way to the small church, the roof of which sparkled in the sunlight. Beyond that again, and higher up, was the dusky wall of the Manse, over which looked some of the windows of the house. One of the panes caught the sun at an angle, and sent out into the clear atmosphere a burning ray of light, which glittered over the moor like a yellow star.

At last he came to a dead stop, by the side of a piece of coppice. He heard voices behind him, and, turning, saw two or three people coming up the road. Evidently wishing to avoid them, he jumped over the low hedge by the side of the path, and made his way a little distance into the wood. The thickness and softness of the feathery snow deadened every sound.

But when he looked towards the road again, he saw that through the leafless trees it might be possible for any one to descry him; and so he went on again, gradually getting down into a hollow, until, suddenly, he found himself confronted by a man. The two looked at each other; the one alarmed, the other annoyed. At last, the elder of the two called out:

"Cot pless me, is it you, indeed and mirover?"

The younger of the two men did not answer, but began to look about, and, after a brief search, picked up a bit of string and wire which lay plainly marked on the snow.

"Neil, Neil, is this how ye spend the Sabbath morning?" said he.

"And wass you thinking, sat bit o' string wass mine?" said Neil, indignantly, "when it is John M'Kendrick will ask me to go out and watch sa men frae the iron-works sat come up to steal sa rabbits!"

"Oh! ye were sent out to watch the poachers?"

"Jist sat," said Neil the Pensioner, looking rather uncomfortably at the snare in the other's hands.

"Do ye ken where leears gang to?" said the Whaup--for he it was.

"Toots, toots, man!" said the Pensioner, insidiously, "what is sa harm if a body rins against a bit rabbit? There is mair o' them san we can a' eat; and when ye stand in sa wood, wi' your legs close, sey rin just clean against your feet, and it will pe no human man could keep his fingers aff. And what for are ye no at sa kirk yersel', Maister Tammas?"

"Look here, Neil," said the Whaup, decisively, "I have come down from Glasgow for an hour or so; and nobody in Airlie maun ken any thing about it. Do ye understand? As soon as the folk are in church, I am going up to the Manse; and I will make Leezibeth swear not to tell. As for you, Neil, if ye breathe a word o't, I'll hae ye put in Ayr jail for poaching.

"It wassna poaching," said Neil, in feeble protest.

"Now tell me all about the Airlie folk," said the Whaup. "What has happened? What have they been doing?"

"Ye will ken sat nothing ever happens in Airlie," said Neil, with a slight touch of contempt; "there hassna been a funeral or any forgatherin' for a lang time, and there is mair change in you, Maister Tammas, than in Airlie. You will have pecome quite manly-like, and it is only sa short while you will pe away. Mirover, sare is more life going on in Glasgow--eh, Maister Tammas?"

The old Pensioner spoke wistfully about Glasgow, which he knew had plenty of funerals, marriages, and other occasions for dram-drinking.

"Is my cousin as much better as they said?"

"Oh, she will pe much petter, but jist as white as the snaw itsel'. I wass up to see her on sa Wednesday nicht, and she will say to me--'Neil, where iss your fiddle?' but who would ha' socht o' taking up sa fiddle? And I did have a dram, too."

"Probably," said the Whaup. "Lord Earlshope--what has become of him?"

"Nobody will know what hass come to him, for he is not here since sey all went away in sa yacht. I tit hear, mirover, he wass in France--and sare is no knowing what will happen to a man in sat country, ever since Waterloo. But Lord Earlshope will pe safer if he will tell them sat he is English. Sey canna bear sa Scotch ever since what we did at Waterloo, as I will have told you often, but sa English--I do not sink it will matter much harm to them in France."

"I should think not, Neil. It was the Highlanders settled them that day, wasn't it?"

"I will tell you," said Neil, drawing himself up to his full height. "It wass Corporal Mackenzie said to me, at six o'clock in sa morning--'Neil,' said he, 'sare will be no Bonypart at the end o' this day, if I can get at him wis my musket.' Now Corporal Mackenzie was a strong, big man----"

"Neil, you have told me all that before," said the Whaup. "I know that you and Corporal Mackenzie took a whole battery captive--men, horses, and guns. You told me before."

"And if a young man hass no pride in what his country hass done; if he will not hear it again and again," said Neil, with indignation, "it is not my fault."

"Another time, Neil, we will go over the story from end to end. There, the bells have just stopped. I must get on now to the Manse. Remember, if you let a human being know you saw me in Airlie this day, it will be Ayr jail for ye."

The Pensioner laughed, and said:

"You wass always a goot hand at a joke, Maister Tammas."

"Faith, you won't find it any joke, Neil," said the Whaup, as he bade good-bye to the old man, and went off.

As he crossed the moor--the white snow concealing deep ruts filled with crackling ice, into which he frequently stumbled--he saw the beadle come out and shut the outer door of the church. Not a sign of life was now visible as far as the eye could see--only the white heights and hollows, with dark lines of hedges, and the grey twilight of the woods. The sun still shone on the Manse windows, and as he drew near a thrush flew out of one of the short firs in front of the house, bringing down a lot of snow with the flutter of its wings.

He lifted the latch gently, and walked into the front garden. A perfect stillness reigned around. Everybody was evidently at church--unless, indeed, Leezibeth might have been left with Coquette. The Whaup looked over the well-known scene of many an exploit. He slipped round the house, too, to have a glimpse at the rest of the premises. A blackbird flew out of one of the bushes with a cry of alarm. A robin came hopping forward on the snow and cocked up its black and sparkling eye at the intruder. There were two or three round patches of snow on the walls of the stable; and the Whaup, recognising these traces, knew that his brothers must have been having high jinks there this morning before the Manse had awoke.

Then he went back and cautiously entered the hall. What was this low and monotonous sound he heard issuing from the parlour? He applied his ear to the door, and heard Leezibeth reading out, in a measured and melancholy way, a chapter of Isaiah.

"What does that mean?" thought the Whaup. "She never used to read to herself. Can she be reading to Coquette; and is that the enlivening drone with which she seeks to interest an invalid?"

It seemed to him, also, that if Leezibeth were reading to Coquette, she was choosing passages with a sinister application. He heard the monotonous voice go on:--"_Come down, and sit in the dust, O virgin daughter of Babylon; sit on the ground; there is no throne, O daughter of the Chaldeans; for thou shalt no more be called tender and delicate._" The cheeks of the Whaup began to burn red with something else than the cold. He knew not that Leezibeth had altogether overcome her old dislike for the girl, and waited on her with an animal-like fondness and submissiveness. The Whaup took it for granted that these texts were chosen as a reproof and admonition--part of the old persecution; and so, without more ado, he opened the door brusquely, and walked in.

A strange scene met his eyes. Coquette, pale and death-like, lay on a sofa, with her large, dark eyes fixed wistfully on the fire. She evidently heard nothing. Leezibeth sat on a chair at the table, with a large Family Bible before her. There was no trace of a sick room in this hushed and warm apartment, in which the chief light was the red glow of the fire; and yet it was so silent, save for the low murmuring of these texts, and the girl looked so sad and so phantom-like, that a great chill laid hold of his heart. Had they been deceiving him in their letters?