Chapter II

"BUT LOOKING BACK, BOYS, IT IS ALL LIKE A DREAM."

Was it a gleam of pleasure, or the flush from the firelight, that spread over old Eean's face as Frank Fielding made his quiet but ingenuous request, to be favoured with a story?

The fisherman smiled, and now the rugged lineaments of his face softened wonderfully. He did not answer directly, however.

Eppie, his wife, had drawn near to the circle round the fire with her great black spinning-wheel, and it was towards her that Eean turned. Surely too it was for her that smile was intended.

He stretched out his left arm, the one that was nearest to his wife, and laid his hand on her lap. There was something very touching in this simple act, and in the tender look that accompanied it. For a moment or two the birring of the spinning-wheel ceased as Eppie took her husband's hand in both of hers.

He had really asked a question, though not in words; but it was in words that Eppie replied.

"Yes, Eean, yes," she said. "What for no tell the story?"

"Our story, Eppie."

"Ay, ay, our story, Eean."

Birr--rr--rr went the spinning-wheel again; and I'm not sure there was not some moisture in Eppie's eyes as she bent once more over her work.

It was a very old-fashioned pipe of clay that Eean now lit with a morsel of burning peat, and when he got it to go he placed over the bowl the white iron lid which was attached by a tiny chain to the stalk. Then he leaned back in his chair, and for a time seemed intent only on watching the blue rings of smoke, that went curling up towards the blackened rafters of the humble cottage.

"Boys, boys," he said slowly at last, "it is a long, long time ago since my real life-story began. Thirty years and over, lads. Is that not so, Eppie?"

Birr--rr--rr! went the spinning-wheel.

"Imphm," assented Eppie.

"But go on, Eean," she continued; "and if ye ravel in the thread o' your discoorse, I'll try to pit ye straight again."

Thus encouraged, Eean took a few more pulls at his pipe and went on.

"Thirty years seem a long time to look forward to; but looking back, boys, why it's all like a dream. Yet, my lads, life has no business to be a dream. 'Life is real, life is earnest,' as the hymn says; and if your eyes don't open before you are out of your teens, I tell you this, it is a poor look out for you in after-life.

"I notice a weary kind of a light in your eyes, young Master Frank. I know what you're thinking: 'The old man is not telling a story, he's only preaching.' But the ways of old men must be borne with. So patience for a moment, boy; patience!

"I was born with a silver spoon in my mouth. Oh, not a big one, I assure you! But I knew right well that when twenty-one I should have a few thousands to begin life with; and it was this very knowledge, I believe, that made me careless and a dreamer.

"My father was a Highlander, like myself. He _had_ been rich, but he had also been a soldier, and squandered all his own money, though he retired on half-pay with fame and glory; for on many a blood-red field in India his sword had rang and clashed, and his slogan been heard wherever the battle raged the fiercest.

"That was my father, and I was his only son. I had a dear mother that doted on me, and could scarcely bear to have me out of her sight. She would have me to be a child even when I was seventeen years of age. I tell you that up till that age I did nothing on earth but dream my life away. I was to be something great _in futuro_. There was a castle building for me somewhere, in which I should live when a man. The good fairies were building it, I suppose; but woe is me, boys, fairy promises are but like soap-bubbles that rise and float on the soft summer air, all glitter and beauty, then--burst.

"I was a poet in those days--they tell me I am a bard still--but I fear my verses have lost the fire and frenzy of youth. Never mind, in those dear foolish days I learned nothing that was not pleasant, I did nothing I could not find pleasure in. With gun on shoulder I used to start for the hill. Too often my gun was thrown on the heather, and I lay down beside it in the sun to versify and dream. Or I might take my fishing-rod, and with my dog Kooran at my heels, set off for the lonesome tarn or mountain burn; but, ah, me! the fish seldom rose to my flies, and the streamlet sang to me, and I to the streamlet--there was music in everything around me, in the sailing clouds, in the waving broom, the drooping birch-trees and dark solemn pines themselves.

"Did my conscience never tell me I was doing wrong? It did at times. There were moments when the stern realities of life used to force themselves upon my thoughts. Surely man was made and meant for something better than to be an idle dreamer. Then I would start and awake as if from a lethargy. I would look around me, and even blush to see all men busy but myself, all creatures toiling, yet all, all happier even than I.

"What should I be? What should I be? How often the question would keep recurring to my mind. Be a soldier like my father? No, I cared not for camps and fighting. Be a sailor, and go sailing over the world. Yes, that was better; but the work, it was the work I feared. To sail on, on, on, for ever over sunlit summer seas would have suited me. But seas are not always sunlit, and storms arise, and--no, I would not be a sailor.

"Why not live to sing as Byron, Ossian, and Burns had done? But I must have some one else save the birds and streams and trees to sing to. Then a gloomy spell came over the spirit of my dream, and I thought myself the most miserable of all created beings. The linnet that sang among the golden furze, his nest not far away, seemed to laugh at me. The linnet had love. The wild deer in the forest shook their antlered heads, and appeared to despise me in my forlornness, they were as happy as the summer's day was glad and long. The eagle that floated high above the clouds mocked me. He could soar. Oh, how I wished and wanted to soar! Everything too about me was so lovely, I had a poet's eye for beauty. Even the metallic lustre on the beetles that crept through the grass shot rays of pleasure to my heart. 'Was it possible,' I said to myself one day, as I lounged by a river side. 'Was it possible for me to transfer some of the beauty I saw around me to canvas? Why not? Others have done so. I had been to the great city of London, I had revelled in picture-galleries, all the memory of pictures I had seen came back to me now with a force I had never felt before. Hurrah!' I shouted, starting up, 'I will be an artist. I will build my own castles. Away, fairies, away I'll dream no more. I'll be a man. I am a man.'

"My poor dog must have thought I'd gone mad. I broke my fishing-rod across my knee and flung it far into the dark brown stream, and once more shouted till the wild coneys fled into their holes on the cairney hill sides.

"No, my mother did not object; I should have the best of teachers; the best of teaching; I should go to London; go to Rome. My pictures should be hung, I'd make wealth and fame, her darling boy should be----"

Here old Eean paused for a moment. He shook the ashes from his pipe with a gesture almost of anger.

"Dreams! Dreams! Dreams!" he muttered.

"Boys, I had not learned the art of application early enough in youth, I was thoughtless, my dear mother said in excuse for me, and thoughtlessness was natural to youth.

"But, oh, lads, listen! Thoughtlessness is not, should not be, natural to youths. Life's stern battle is all before them; should they be thoughtless or careless as they gird up their loins to meet the foe? Life's stormy ocean is rolling resistlessly on towards their frail barques; how shall they mount those heaving seas, how fight against wind and tempest, if they trust all to blind chance? I tell you what--and he who tells you knows--that thoughtfulness must be your guide to every good in life; ay, and to the world beyond as well, Oh, my dear lads, grasp these truths, and never, never forget them! Act on them too, and they will make you men, yes, heroes.

"But I am preaching now. Forgive me, and my tale--alas! it is an all too common one as far as it regards myself--shall soon be told.

"I was not by any means what is called a wild youth, while pursuing my studies under masters in London, and elsewhere: the ordinary and sinful frivolities of youths about town had no charm for me. I loathed them, and despised the empty-headed fools who gave way to them. I did not quarrel with these men, I simply avoided them. I preferred my own company to theirs, and my own thoughts. I was often to be seen alone at the play, or opera, or alone in the picture galleries. It was a pity for me I did not visit the latter in company with art critics, but I had found out that some of these were lacking not only in knowledge but in honesty, so I avoided them all, as a child who has been burned fears flame in any and every form.

"Did I work well? I worked fairly well. My fault, and it is a radical one, was, that I was in too great a hurry to be a painter--the rudiments of drawing were to me a weary task. Like a boy I gloated over colour and effect. But I had one picture hung. Oh, bless that day for just one reason--it made my poor dear mother happy! When she received the letter in which I announced my success, she shed more tears over it than if the missive had been one announcing the death of a dear friend. Yes, they were tears of joy.

"Did my single success have a good effect on me? Alas! no, the very reverse. I fancied myself--fool that I was--upon a mountain top of fame and glory. High up among the rosy clouds of sunrise, with all the world at my feet. I determined to do no more work for a time, not genuine study at least--I should set out on a grand walking tour! What a happy idea I thought this was! Mind you, I still was the poet at heart, and Nature in every form still appealed to me. I had come to hate my sky-high studio in London, the dusty winding stairs that led to it, its furniture and furnishings, and even the outlook from its windows.

"I was like a boy while preparing for this grand tour. For more than a week my time by day was occupied in shopping. All my purchases might soon have been made had I been content with the ordinary outfit of a walking artist. But this would not suit my vanity. I believe I was a rather handsome young man then. Was I not, Eppie?"

Birr-rr-rr went the wheel. No word came from Eppie, only a smile lit up her face for a moment.

"So," continued Eean, "I determined to take heavy baggage as well as a knapsack and cudgel. This I would arrange to be sent on by train or coach. Guns, fishing-rod and tackle, books, the best of novels, the best of poets, I even took dress suits. Yes, boys, I feel ashamed now when I think of it, but my vanity led me to believe that I should be fêted and feasted at the houses of the wealthy.

"Away I went, and for many weeks of wandering I was truly happy. I worked too by fits and starts, and my portfolios were getting filled with pretty bits that I culled upon my rambles. I had not yet found out, nor could I have believed, that rural England was so charmingly sweet and pretty. No great wonder that I lingered therein for months and months. True, my dress suits were never once taken out from the trunk that contained them, nor was any squire or nobleman ever likely, I began to think, to invite the wandering artist to dinner or give him even a day's fishing or shooting. Was this fame then? Surely everyone had heard of the rising artist who had had a picture hung. And prettily criticised too. Well, I did not break my heart. I ate my humble meals and slept at village inns, and if I was taken for anything at all by the villagers, it was either for 'a kind of surveyor,' a 'strolling sign painter,' or 'something in tea.'

"But during these long rambles there had been the glamour of spring, and the glory of summer, over all the land, and I was contented and happy.

"I hardly ever thought of writing even, wicked that I was, to my mother. But when at last the summer commenced, and I saw one day a pale yellow splash of foliage on a green ash tree, as if some tint of last night's sunset had fallen on it and lingered there, I bethought me of the purple and crimson heather on the bonnie Highland hills of my wild native land. And in a week's time I was home at my father's house.

"Oh, I had been working hard, I told my mother.

"'I know,' she said, 'and I expected to see you wan and pale, dear boy, instead of rosy red.'

"Then I told her all--where I had been, and spread out before her my portfolios of crude unfinished bits.

"'They will work up, and work into noble pictures when I return to town,' I said.

"It was thus I deceived myself and her.

"I next set out to study the beauties of hill scenery of straths and glens, of loch and stream and torrent, of weird pine forests, far in the depths of rugged mountain passes, of sheep and shepherds' shielings, and of everything that makes up the stern silent grandeur of the Scottish Highlands.

"One day I found myself seated high up the glen here with the reek of this same wee village rising blue above the birchen trees, with the great Atlantic Ocean sobbing on the sandy beach, or breaking into whitest foam against that long ridge of darkest rock that runs westward yonder to meet and welcome the rolling seas. There were white clouds afloat in the sky's blue, there were white sails dotting the blue of the sea, there was the buzz of insect life in the heather all around me, and the afternoon was warm and soft. Had I fallen asleep I wonder? I know not. But I started up at last inspired with a new idea.

"It was an idea that made my cheeks tingle with pleasurable emotion.

"I should write a book, a book that would make me famous. I should in this book wed together the harp and the easel, the thistle and the rose.

"Let me explain to you, boys, for I can see you hardly catch my meaning. The book, then, was to embrace both poetry and painting, the wild songs I should sing of my own mountain land; the illustrations all from my own pencil and brush, hence _The Harp and the Easel_. But the scenery should be touches from Nature in both Scotland and England, hence the title of _The Thistle and the Rose_.

"I went down the mountain side at the rush, vaulting as vaults the deer, so strong, so well, so happy was I that my very feet seemed to spurn the turf on which I trode.

"But was it turf? No, surely it was air. So filled with the inspiration of my grand idea was I, that I appeared no longer on earth or even belonging to it.

"Boys, these last words of mine contain a grim kind of a joke which you will at once see. I made just one vault too many, then I was indeed walking on air, and no longer on earth. I was falling, falling, falling! Oh, it did seem such a long, long time ere I reached the foot of that rocky cliff! Then all was a blank.

"I had fallen as it were into sudden darkness, and but for a pine-tree on which I bad luckily alighted, and which lowered me earthward all torn and bleeding, it might have been the darkness of death.

"Eppie, wife, heap more peats upon the fire and stir the blazing drift-wood. Listen, lads, to the moaning wind; surely that is hail that rattles so against the panes. Frank, it is well you haven't to make your way through moor and forest to-night with Bunko."

"I shouldn't have minded being with poor Bunko, sir, I assure you, because I like to be out in storms; but then I could not have heard the conclusion of your story."

"And must I conclude to-night?"

"Oh, sir, yes! You're just coming to the best of it."

"Well, boys, well," said the old bard, "you must be humoured."