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CHAPTER XLVII: PORTLOSSIE AND SCAURNOSE
Meantime things were going rather badly at Portlossie and Scaurnose;
and the factor was the devil of them. Those who had known him
longest said he must be fey, that is doomed, so strangely altered
was his behaviour. Others said he took more counsel with his bottle
than had been his wont, and got no good from it. Almost all the
fishers found him surly, and upon some he broke out in violent rage,
while to certain whom he regarded as Malcolm's special friends,
he carried himself with cruel oppression. The notice to leave at
midsummer clouded the destiny of Joseph Mair and his family, and
every householder in the two villages believed that to take them
in would be to call down the like fate upon himself. But Meg Partan
at least was not to be intimidated. Her outbursts of temper were
but the hurricanes of a tropical heart--not much the less true
and good and steadfast that it was fierce. Let the factor rage as
he would, Meg was absolute in her determination that, if the cruel
sentence was carried out, which she hardly expected, her house
should be the shelter of those who had received her daughter when
her severity had driven her from her home. That would leave her
own family and theirs three months to look out for another abode.
Certain of Blue Peter's friends ventured a visit of intercession
to the factor, and were received with composure and treated with
consideration until their object appeared, when his wrath burst forth
so wildly that they were glad to escape without having to defend
their persons: only the day before had he learned with certainty from
Miss Horn that Malcolm was still in the service of the marchioness,
and in constant attendance upon her when she rode. It almost maddened
him. He had for some time taken to drinking more toddy after his
dinner, and it was fast ruining his temper: his wife, who had from
the first excited his indignation against Malcolm, was now reaping
her reward. To complete the troubles of the fisher folk, the harbour
at Portlossie had, by a severe equinoctial storm, been so filled
with sand as to be now inaccessible at lower than half tide, nobody
as yet having made it his business to see it attended to.
But, in the midst of his anxieties about Florimel and his interest
in Clementina, Malcolm had not been forgetting them. As soon as he
was a little settled in London, he had written to Mr Soutar, and
he to architects and contractors, on the subject of a harbour at
Scaurnose. But there were difficulties, and the matter had been
making but slow progress. Malcolm, however, had insisted, and in
consequence of his determination to have the possibilities of the
thing thoroughly understood, three men appeared one morning on
the rocks at the bottom of the cliff on the west side of the Nose.
The children of the village discovered them, and carried the news;
whereupon, the men being all out in the bay, the women left their
work and went to see what the strangers were about. The moment they
were satisfied that they could make nothing of their proceedings,
they naturally became suspicious. To whom the fancy first occurred,
nobody ever knew, but such was the unhealthiness of the moral
atmosphere of the place, caused by the injustice and severity of
Mr Crathie, that, once suggested, it was universally received that
they were sent by the factor--and that for a purpose only too
consistent with the treatment Scaurnose, they said, had invariably
received ever since first it was the dwelling of fishers! Had not
their fathers told them how unwelcome they were to the lords of
the land? And what rents had they not to pay! and how poor was the
shelter for which they did so much--without a foot of land to
grow a potato in! To crown all, the factor was at length about to
drive them in a body from the place--Blue Peter first, one of the
best as well as the most considerable men among them! His notice
to quit was but the beginning of a clearance. It was easy to see
what those villains were about--on that precious rock, their
only friend, the one that did its best to give them the sole shadow
of harbourage they had, cutting off the wind from the northeast
a little, and breaking the eddy round the point of the Nose! What
could they be about but marking the spots where to bore the holes
for the blasting powder that should scatter it to the winds, and let
death and destruction, and the wild sea howling in upon Scaurnose,
that the cormorant and the bittern might possess it, the owl and
the raven dwell in it? But it would be seen what their husbands and
fathers would say to it when they came home! In the meantime they
must themselves do what they could. What were they men's wives for,
if not to act for their husbands when they happened to be away?
The result was a shower of stones upon the unsuspecting surveyors,
who forthwith fled, and carried the report of their reception to
Mr Soutar at Duff Harbour. He wrote to Mr Crathie, who till then
had heard nothing of the business; and the news increased both his
discontent with his superiors, and his wrath with those whom he had
come to regard as his rebellious subjects. The stiff necked people
of the Bible was to him always now, as often he heard the words,
the people of Scaurnose and the Seaton of Portlossie. And having
at length committed this overt outrage, would he not be justified
by all in taking more active measures against them?
When the fishermen came home and heard how their women had conducted
themselves, they accepted their conjectures, and approved of their
defence of the settlement. It was well for the land loupers, they
said, that they had only the women to deal with.
Blue Peter did not so soon hear of the affair as the rest, for
his Annie had not been one of the assailants. But when the hurried
retreat of the surveyors was described to him in somewhat graphic
language by one of those concerned in causing it, he struck his
clenched fist in the palm of his other hand, and cried,
"Weel saired! There! that's what comes o' yer new--"
He had all but broken his promise, as he had already broken his
faith to Malcolm, when his wife laid her hand on his mouth and
stopped the issuing word. He started with sudden conviction and
stood for a moment in absolute terror at sight of the precipice
down which he had been on the point of falling, then straightway
excusing himself to his conscience on the ground of non intent, was
instantly angrier with Malcolm than before. He could not reflect
that the disregarded cause of the threatened sin was the greater
sin of the two. The breach of that charity which thinketh no evil
maybe a graver fault than a hasty breach of promise.
Peter had not been improving since his return from London. He found
less satisfaction in his religious exercises; was not unfrequently
clouded in temper, occasionally even to sullenness; referred
things oftener than formerly to the vileness of the human nature,
but was far less willing than before to allow that he might himself
be wrong; while somehow the Bible had no more the same plenitude
of relation to the wants of his being, and he rose from the reading
of it unrefreshed. Men asked each other what had come to Blue Peter,
but no one could answer the question. For himself, he attributed
the change, which he could not but recognise, although he did
not understand it, to the withdrawing of the spirit of God, in
displeasure that he had not merely allowed himself to be inveigled
into a playhouse, but, far worse, had enjoyed the wickedness
he saw there. When his wife reasoned that God knew he had gone in
ignorance, trusting his friend, he cried,
"What 's that to him wha judges richteous judgment? What's a' oor
puir meeserable excuzes i' the een 'at can see throu' the wa's o'
the hert! Ignorance is no innocence."
Thus he lied for God! pleading his cause on the principles of hell.
But the eye of his wife was single, and her body full of light;
therefore to her it was plain that neither the theatre nor his
conscience concerning it was the cause of the change: it had to do
with his feelings towards Malcolm. He wronged his Friend in his
heart, half knew it, but would not own it. Fearing to search himself,
he took refuge in resentment, and to support his hard judgment,
put false and cruel interpretations on whatever befell. So that,
with love and anger and wrong acknowledged, his heart was full of
bitterness.
"It 's a' the drumblet (muddied, troubled) luve o' 'im!" said
Annie to herself. "Puir fallow! gien only Ma'colm wad come hame,
an' lat him ken he 's no the villain he taks him for. I'll no
believe mysel' 'at the laad I kissed like my ain mither's son afore
he gaed awa' wad turn like that upo' 's 'maist the meenute he was
oot o' sicht, an' a' for a feow words aboot a fulish play actin'.
Lord bliss us a'! markises is men.
"We'll see, Peter, my man," she said, when the neighbour took her
leave, "whether the wife, though she hasna' been to the ill place,
an' that's surely Lon'on, canna tell the true frae the Cause full
better nor her man, 'at kens sae muckle mair nor she wants to ken?
Lat sit an' lat see."
Blue Peter made no reply; but perhaps the deepest depth in his
fall was that he feared his wife might be right, and he have one
day to stand ashamed before both her and his friend. But there are
marvellous differences in the quality of the sins of different men,
and a noble nature like Peter's would have to sink far indeed to
be beyond redemption. Still there was one element mingling with his
wrongness whose very triviality increased the difficulty of long
delaying repentance: he had been not a little proud at finding
himself the friend of a marquis. From the first they had been
friends, when the one was a youth and the other a child, and had
been out together in many a stormy and dangerous sea. More than
once or twice, driven from the churlish ocean to the scarce less
inhospitable shore, they had lain all night in each other's arms
to keep the life awake within their frozen garments. And now this
marquis spoke English to him! It rankled!
All the time Blue Peter was careful to say nothing to injure Malcolm
in the eyes of his former comrades. His manner when his name was
mentioned, however, he could not honestly school to the conveyance
of the impression that things were as they had been betwixt them.
Folk marked the difference, and it went to swell the general feeling
that Malcolm had done ill to forsake a seafaring life for one upon
which all fishermen must look down with contempt. Some in the Seaton
went so far in their enmity as even to hint at an explanation of
his conduct in the truth of the discarded scandal which had laid
Lizzy's child at his door.
But amongst them was one who, having wronged him thus, and been
convinced of her error, was now so fiercely his partisan as to be
ready to wrong the whole town in his defence: that was Meg Partan,
properly Mistress Findlay, Lizzy's mother. Although the daughter had
never confessed, the mother had yet arrived at the right conclusion
concerning the father of her child--how, she could hardly herself
have told, for the conviction had grown by accretion; a sign here
and a sign there, impalpable save to maternal sense, had led her
to the truth; and now, if anyone had a word to say against Malcolm,
he had better not say it in the hearing of the Partaness.
One day Blue Peter was walking home from the upper town of Portlossie,
not with the lazy gait of the fisherman off work, poised backwards,
with hands in trouser pocket, but stooping care laden with listless
swinging arms. Thus Meg Partan met him--and of course attributed
his dejection to the factor.
"Deil ha'e 'im for an upsettin' rascal 'at hasna pride eneuch to haud
him ohn lickit the gentry's shune! The man maun be fey! I houp he
may, an' I wuss I saw the beerial o' 'im makin' for the kirkyaird.
It's nae ill to wuss weel to a' body 'at wad be left! His nose is
turnt twise the colour i' the last twa month. He'll be drinkin'
byous. Gien only Ma'colm MacPhail had been at hame to haud him in
order!"
Peter said nothing, and his silence, to one who spake out whatever
came, seemed fuller of restraints and meanings than it was. She
challenged it at once.
"Noo, what mean ye by sayin' naething, Peter? Guid kens it's the
warst thing man or woman can say o' onybody to haud their tongue.
It's a thing I never was blamed wi' mysel', an' I wadna du't."
"That's verra true," said Peter.
"The mair weicht's intill't whan I lay 't to the door o' anither,"
persisted Meg. "Peter, gien ye ha'e onything again' my freen' Ma'colm
MacPhail, oot wi' 't like a man, an' no playac' the gunpoother plot
ower again. Ill wull's the warst poother ye can lay i' the boddom
o' ony man's boat. But say at ye like, I s' uphaud Ma'colm again'
the haill poustie o' ye. Gien he was but here! I say't again, honest
laad!"
But she could not rouse Peter to utterance, and losing what little
temper she had, she rated him soundly, and sent him home saying
with the prophet Jonah, "Do I not well to be angry?" for that also
he placed to Malcolm's account. Nor was his home any more a harbour
for his riven boat, seeing his wife only longed for the return
of him with whom his spirit chode: she regarded him as an exiled
king, one day to reappear, and justify himself in the eyes of all,
friends and enemies.
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