Chapter II: The Second Letter

_Hubert Blake to Sophy Meredith._

THE CASTLE FARM, MUIRBURN, N.B.
_September 15._

DEAR SOPHY,

I think I shall like this place, and shall probably stay till the beginning of winter. I have begun a large picture of a really beautiful spot which I found close by two days ago, and I should like to see my painting well on to completion before I return, lest I should be tempted to leave it unfinished, like so many others, when I get back to town.

I had a very hospitable welcome from Mr. Lindsay on the night I arrived. He met me at the door--a tall, broad-shouldered, upright man, perhaps sixty years of age, with the regular Scotch type of features, large nose, and high cheek-bones. I could see, even at first, that he is the sort of man it would not be pleasant to quarrel with.

He led me into a wide passage, and thence into a large low-roofed kitchen with a stone floor. Here there were seated two or three men and as many women, whom I took to be farm-servants. There was no light in the place, except that which came from a bit of ‘cannel’ coal, stuck in the peat fire. The women were knitting; the men were doing nothing. No one took the trouble of rising as we passed, except one of the young men who went to look after the mare.

After crossing the kitchen we passed through a narrow passage, and entered a pleasant and good-sized room in which a large coal fire and a moderator lamp were burning.

Did you ever see a perfectly beautiful woman, Sophy? I doubt it. I never did till I saw Margaret Lindsay. I was so astonished to see a lady at the Castle Farm that I positively stared at the girl for a moment, but she came forward and shook hands with the utmost self-possession.

‘I’m afraid you have had a cold drive, Mr. Blake,’ she said; and though she spoke in a very decidedly Scotch accent, the words did not sound so harshly from her lips as they had done when spoken by her father. For the first time I thought that the Doric might have an agreeable sound.

I will try to tell you what Margaret is like. She must be nearly twenty years of age, for she is evidently older than her brother, but her complexion is that of a girl of sixteen, by far the finest and softest I ever saw. She is tall, but not too tall for elegance. Her eyes are brown, like her father’s, and her hair is a dark chestnut. Her features are simply perfect--low forehead, beautifully moulded eyebrows, short upper lip--you can imagine the rest. You will say that my description would fit a marble bust nearly as well as a girl of nineteen, and your criticism would be just. Margaret’s face is rather wanting in expression. It is calm, reserved, not to say hard. But her deliberate almost proud manner suits her admirably.

I can see you smiling to yourself, and saying that you understand now my anxiety to get my picture finished before I leave the farm. All I can say is, you never were more mistaken in your life. I am not falling in love with this newly-discovered beauty, and I certainly don’t intend to do anything so foolish. But I could look at her face by the hour together. I wonder whether there are any capabilities of passion under the cold exterior.

I took an opportunity when Alec was out of the room to narrate our little adventure by the way, and just as I finished my recital the hero of the story came in.

‘So you managed to get run into on the way home, Alec,’ said his father, with a look of displeasure. ‘I should think you might have learned to drive by this time.’

The lad’s face flushed, but he made no answer.

‘Is the mare hurt?’ asked the old man.

‘No, she wasn’t touched,’ answered his son. ‘One of the wheels will want a new spoke; that’s all.’

‘And is that nothing, sir?’

‘No one could possibly have avoided the collision, such as it was,’ said I; ‘and I’ve seldom seen a pluckier thing than Alec did.’

The old man looked at me, and immediately changed the subject.

When tea (a remarkably substantial meal, by the way) was over, the farm-servants and the old woman who acts as housemaid were called into the large parlour in which we were sitting for prayers, or, as they call it here, ‘worship.’ I can’t say I was edified, Sophy. I dare say I am not a particularly good judge of these matters, but really there seemed to me a very slight infusion of worship about the ceremony. First of all Bibles were handed round, and Mr. Lindsay proceeded to read a few lines from a metrical version of the Psalms, beginning in the middle of a Psalm for the excellent reason that they had left off at that point on the preceding evening. Then they began to sing the same verses to a strange, pathetic melody. Margaret led the tune, and it was a pleasure to listen to her sweet unaffected notes, but the rough grumble of the old men and Betty’s discordant squeak produced a really ridiculous effect. Then a chapter was read from the Bible, and then we rose up, turned round, and knelt down. Mr. Lindsay began an extempore prayer, which was partly an exposition of the chapter we had just heard read, and partly an address to the Almighty, which I won’t shock you by describing. At the end of the prayer were some practical petitions, amongst them one on behalf of ‘the stranger within our gates,’ by which phrase your humble servant was indicated. The instant the word ‘Amen’ escaped from the lips of my host, there was a sudden shuffling of feet, and the little congregation had risen to their feet and were in full retreat before I had realized that the service was at an end. I fully expected that this conduct would have called down a reproof from Mr. Lindsay, but it seemed to be accepted on all hands as the ordinary custom. Half an hour afterwards I was in bed, and sound asleep.

I awoke next morning to a glorious day. The harvest is late in these parts, you know, and the ‘happy autumn fields,’ some half cut, some filled with ‘stooks’ of corn, were stretching before my window down to a hollow, which I judged to be the bed of a river.

After breakfast I had an interview with my host, and managed to get my future arrangements put upon a proper footing. Of course I could not stay here for an indefinite time at Mr. Lindsay’s expense; and though at first he scouted the proposal, I got him to consent that I should set up an establishment of my own in two half-empty rooms--the house is twice as large as the family requires--and be practically independent. I could see that the old man had a struggle between his pride and his love of hospitality on the one hand, and the prospect of letting part of his house to a good tenant on the other; but I smoothed matters a little by asking to be allowed to remain as his guest until Monday. Poor man, I am sorry for him. He used to be a well-to-do if not a wealthy ‘laird,’ and owned not only the Castle Farm, but one or two others. Now, in consequence of his having become surety for a friend who left him to pay the piper, and as a result of several bad seasons, he has been forced to sell one farm and mortgage the others so heavily that he is practically worse off than if he were a tenant of the mortgagees. This ‘come down’ in the world has soured his temper, and developed a stinginess which I think is foreign to his real nature. I fancy, too, he had a great loss when his wife died. She was a woman, I am told, of education and refinement. It must have been from her that Margaret got her beauty, and Alec his fine eyes.

But I have not told you what the neighbourhood is like. Well, the farmhouse is built on the side of a knoll, and at the top is a very respectable ruin. The castle, from which the farm takes its name, must have been a strong place at one time. The keep is still standing, and its walls are quite five feet thick. Besides the keep, time has spared part of the front, some of the buttresses, and some half-ruined doorways and windows. But the whole place is overgrown with weeds and nettles. No one takes the slightest interest in this relic of another age: nobody could tell me who built it, or give me even a shred of a legend about its history.

As I was wandering about the walls of the ruin, trying to select a point from which to sketch it, I was joined by Alec Lindsay. He had one or two books under his arm; and he stopped short on seeing me, as if he had not expected to find anyone there.

‘Don’t let me interrupt you,’ I said, beginning to move away. ‘You make this place your study, I see.’

‘Sometimes I bring my books up here,’ he replied. ‘There is a corner under the wall of the tower which is quite sheltered from the wind. Even the rain can hardly reach it, and I have a glorious view of the sunset when I sit there on fine evenings.’

‘I should like to see the place,’ said I, anxious to put the lad at his ease; and he led me to a corner among the ruins, from which, as he said, a wide view was obtained.

Near at hand were pastures and harvest-fields. Beyond them was the bed of the river, fringed with wood, and the horizon was bounded by low moorland hills.

‘From the top of that one,’ said Alec, pointing to one of the hills, ‘you can catch a glint of the sea. It shines like a looking-glass. I would like to see it near at hand.’

‘Have you never been to the seaside?’ I asked.

I must have betrayed my surprise by my voice, for the boy blushed as he answered:

‘No; I have been to Glasgow once or twice, but I have never been to the salt water.’ (The seaside is always spoken of as ‘the coast’ or ‘the salt water’ in this part of the country.) ‘I have never been beyond Muirburn, except once or twice, in my life,’ he added, as the look of discontent which I fancied I had detected in his face grew stronger.

‘May I look at your books?’ I asked, by way of changing the subject.

‘Oh yes; they’re not much to look at,’ he said with a blush.

I took them up--a Greek grammar, and a school-book containing simple passages of Greek for translation, with a vocabulary at the end of the volume.

‘Is this how you spend your leisure time?’ I asked.

‘Not always--not very often,’ answered Alec. ‘Often I am lazy and go in for Euclid and algebra--I like them far better than Greek. And sometimes,’ he added with hesitation, as if he were confessing a fault--‘sometimes I waste my time with a novel.’

‘I would not call it wasting time if you read good novels,’ said I. ‘What do you read?’

‘Only Sir Walter and old volumes of _Blackwood_; they are all I have got.’

‘You could not do better, in my opinion,’ said I emphatically. ‘Such books are just as necessary for your education as a Greek delectus.’

‘Do you think so?’ said the lad, with wondering eyes. ‘These are not my father’s notions.’

‘Shall I leave you to your work now?’ I asked, rising from the heather on which we were lying.

‘I like to have you to talk to,’ said Alec, half shyly, half frankly. ‘I seldom do get anyone to talk to.’

‘You have your sister,’ I said involuntarily.

‘Margaret is not like me. She has her own thoughts and her own ways; besides, she is a girl. Will you come and see the “Lover’s Leap?” It’s a bonny place.’

‘Where is it?’

‘Only half a mile up the Logan.’

‘You mean the stream that runs through the valley down there?’

‘No; that’s the Nethan. The Logan falls into it about a mile farther up.’

We were descending the knoll as we talked; and on our way we saw a field where the reapers were at work. As we approached, we saw a tall form leave the field and come towards us. It was Alec’s father.

‘I think, Alec,’ said the old man, ‘you would be better employed helping to stack the corn, if you’re too proud to take a hand at the shearing, rather than walking about doing nothing.’

The lad blushed furiously, and made no answer.

‘Alec meant to have been at work over his books,’ said I; ‘but he was kind enough to show me something of the neighbourhood. It doesn’t matter in the least, Alec; I can easily find my way alone.’

‘Oh, if you have any need for the boy, that’s another matter,’ said Mr. Lindsay.

I protested again that I could find my way perfectly well, and moved off, while Alec turned into the field with a set look about his mouth that was not pleasant to see.

The cause of the discontent I had seen in the lad’s face was plain enough now. He is treated like a child, as if he had no mind or will of his own. I wonder how the boy will turn out. It seems to me a toss-up; or rather, the chances are that he will break away altogether, and ruin himself.

I went on my way to the bank of the river, by the side of a double row of Scotch firs. It was one of those perfect September days when the air is still warm, when a thin haze is hanging over all the land, when there is no sound to be heard but now and then the chirp of a bird, or the far-off lowing of cattle--a day in which it is enough, and more than enough, to sit still and drink in the silent influences of earth and heaven, when anything like occupation seems an insult to the sweetness and beauty of nature. Across the little river was a large plantation of firs, growing almost to the water’s edge; and I could feel the balmy scent of them in the air.

As I reached the river I overtook Margaret Lindsay, who was walking a little way in advance of me. She had a book under her arm, an old volume covered in brown leather. We greeted each other, and I soon found that she was bound, like myself, for the ‘Lover’s Leap.’

‘I will show you the place,’ she said; ‘we must cross the river here.’

As she spoke she stepped on a large flat stone that lay at the water’s edge; and I saw that a succession of such stones, placed at intervals of about a yard, made a path by which the river could be crossed. The current was pretty strong, and as the water was rushing fast between the stones (which barely showed their heads above the stream), I hastened to offer Margaret my hand. But the girl only glanced at me with a look of surprise, and with the nearest approach to a smile which I had seen in her face, she shook her head and began to walk over the stepping-stones with as much composure as if she had been moving across a floor. Now and then she had to make a slight spring to gain the next stone, and she did so with the ease and grace of a fawn. I followed a little way behind, and when we had gained the opposite side we walked in single file along the riverbank, till we came to the spot where the Logan came tumbling and dancing down the side of a rather steep hill to meet the larger stream. The hill was covered with brushwood and bracken, and a few scattered trees; but a path seemed to have been made through the bushes, and up this path we began to scramble. Once or twice I ventured to offer Margaret my hand, but she declined my help, saying that she could get on better alone.

After a few minutes of this climbing, Margaret suddenly moved to one side, and sprang down to a tiny morsel of gravelly beach, at the side of the burn. I followed her, and was fairly entranced by what I saw. A little way above us the gorge widened, allowing us to see the trees, which, growing on either side of the brook, interlaced their branches above it. From beneath the trees the stream made a clear downward leap, of perhaps thirty or forty feet, into a pool--the pool at our feet--which was so deep that it seemed nearly as black as ink. The music of the waterfall filled the air so that we could hardly catch the sound of each other’s words; and if we moved to the farther end of the little margin of beach, we heard, instead of the noise of the waterfall, the sweet babbling of the burn over its stony bed.

‘Do you often come here?’ I asked, as we stood at the edge of the stream, some little distance from the fall.

‘Yes, pretty often when I wish to be alone, or to have an hour’s quiet reading.’

‘As you do to-day,’ said I; ‘that’s as much as to say that you want to have an hour’s quiet reading now.’

‘So I do,’ said the girl calmly.

‘Or, in other words, that it is time for me to take myself off.’

‘I did not mean that,’ said Margaret, with perfect placidity. ‘Would you like to go up to the top of the linn?’

‘Very much,’ said I, and we scrambled up the bank to the upper level of the stream, and gazed down upon the black rushing water and the dark pool beneath, with its fringe of cream-coloured foam.

‘So this is the “Lover’s Leap,”’ I remarked.

‘Yes,’ said Margaret. ‘They say that once a young man was carrying off his sweetheart, when her father and brothers pursued them. The girl was riding on a pillion behind her lover. As the only way of escape, he put his horse at the gap over our heads--it must have been narrower in those days than it is now--missed it, and both himself and the lady were killed in the fall.’

‘Dreadful!’ I exclaimed.

‘Of course it isn’t true,’ pursued Margaret tranquilly.

‘Why not?’ I asked.

‘Oh, such stories never are; they are all romantic nonsense.’

‘How different your streams are from those in the south,’ said I, after a pause; ‘Tennyson’s description of a brook would hardly suit this one.’

‘What is that?’ she inquired.

‘Don’t you know it?’ I asked, letting my surprise get the better of my good manners.

‘No, I never heard it,’ she said, without the least tinge of embarrassment; so I repeated the well-known lines, to which Margaret listened with her eyes still fixed on the rushing water.

‘They are very pretty,’ said the girl, when I had finished; ‘but I should not care for a brook like that. I should think it would be very much like a canal, wouldn’t it?--only smaller. I like my own brook better; and I like Burns’s description of one better than Tennyson’s.’

‘Has Burns described a brook? I wish you would quote it to me,’ said I.

‘Surely you know the lines,’ said Margaret; ‘they are in “Hallowe’en.”’

I assured her I did not, and in a low clear voice she repeated:

‘Whyles owre a linn the burnie plays,
As through the glen it wimples;
Whyles round a rocky scaur it strays;
Whyles in a wiel it dimples.
Whyles glitterin’ to the noontide rays,
Wi’ bickerin’, dancin’ dazzle,
Whyles cookin’ underneath the braes,
Below the spreading hazel.’

‘I think they are beautiful lines, so far as I understand them,’ was my verdict. ‘What is “cookin’,” for example? I know it does not mean frying, or anything of that kind, but----’

I stopped, for the girl looked half offended at my poor little attempt to be funny at the expense of a Scotch word.

‘There is no word for it in English, that I know of,’ she said. ‘It means crouching down, contentedly, in a comfortable place. If you saw a hen on a windy day under a stook of corn, you might say it was “cooking” there.’

‘Thank you,’ I replied; ‘I won’t forget. And now I must be off, for I know you came here to read.’

If in my vanity I had hoped for permission to remain, I was disappointed. Nothing of the kind was forthcoming.

‘I hope you have got an interesting book,’ said I, wondering what the old brown-leather volume could be.

‘You might not think it very interesting,’ answered Margaret, raising her lovely eyes to mine, as tranquilly as if she had been speaking of a newspaper. ‘It is only a volume of old sermons. Good-bye till dinner-time, Mr. Blake;’ and so saying she turned to seek her favourite nook, at the side of the waterfall.

‘Old sermons!’ I exclaimed to myself as I left her. ‘What a singular girl she is. Fancy----’

But my reflections were cut short, for I ‘lifted up mine eyes’ and saw a mountain ash--they call them ‘rowan trees’ here--full of berries.

Sophy, such a tree is the most beautiful object in nature; there is no way of describing it, no way of putting its beauty into words. If you doubt what I say, look well at the next one you see, and then tell me if I am wrong. Good-night.

Ever yours affectionately,
HUBERT BLAKE.

P.S.--I mean to get M. to sit for her portrait to-morrow; but I see that in order to gain this end I shall have to use all my skill in diplomacy, both with the young lady and with her respected father.

H. B.