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THE BRANDER.
Mistress Croale was not, after all, the last who arrived at the
Mains. But that the next arrival was accounted for, scarcely
rendered it less marvellous than hers. -- Just after the loss of
Snowball, came floating into the farmyard, over the top of the gate,
with such astonishment of all who beheld that each seemed to place
more confidence in his neighbour's eyes than in his own, a woman on
a raft, with her four little children seated around her, holding the
skirt of her gown above her head and out between her hands for a
sail. She had made the raft herself, by tying some bars of a paling
together, and crossing them with what other bits of wood she could
find -- a brander she called it, which is Scotch for a gridiron, and
thence for a grating. Nobody knew her. She had come down the
Lorrie. The farmer was so struck with admiration of her invention,
daring, and success, that he vowed he would keep the brander as long
as it would stick together; and as it could not be taken into the
house, he secured it with a rope to one of the windows.
When they had the horses safe on the first floor, they brought the
cattle into the lower rooms; but it became evident that if they were
to have a chance, they also must be got up to the same level.
Thereupon followed a greater tumult than before -- such a banging of
heads and hind quarters, of horns and shoulders, against walls and
partitions, such a rushing and thundering, that the house seemed in
more danger from within than from without; for the cattle were worse
to manage than the horses, and one moment stubborn as a milestone,
would the next moment start into a frantic rush. One poor wretch
broke both her horns clean off against the wall, at a sharp turn of
the passage; and after two or three more accidents, partly caused by
over-haste in the human mortals, Donal begged that the business
should be left to him and his mother. His master consented, and it
was wonderful what Janet contrived to effect by gentleness, coaxing,
and suggestion. When Hornie's turn came, Donal began to tie ropes
to her hind hoofs. Mr. Duff objected.
"Ye dinna ken her sae weel as I dee, sir," answered Donal. "She wad
caw her horns intil a man-o-war 'at angert her. An' up yon'er ye
cudna get a whack at her, for hurtin' ane 'at didna deserve 't. I
s' dee her no mischeef, I s' warran'. Ye jist lea' her to me, sir."
His master yielded. Donal tied a piece of rope round each hind
pastern -- if cows have pasterns -- and made a loop at the end. The
moment she was at the top of the stair, he and his mother dropped
each a loop over a horn.
"Noo, she'll naither stick nor fling (gore nor kick)," said Donal:
she could but bellow, and paw with her fore-feet.
The strangers were mostly in Fergus's bedroom; the horses were all
in their owner's; and the cattle were in the remaining rooms.
Bursts of talk amongst the women were followed by fits of silence:
who could tell how long the flood might last! -- or indeed whether the
house might not be undermined before morning, or be struck by one of
those big things of which so many floated by, and give way with one
terrible crash! Mr. Duff, while preserving a tolerably calm
exterior, was nearly at his wits' end. He would stand for half an
hour together, with his hands in his pockets, looking motionless out
of a window, murmuring now and then to himself, "This is clean
ridic'lous!" But when anything had to be done he was active enough.
Mistress Croale sat in a corner, very quiet, and looking not a
little cowed. There was altogether more water than she liked. Now
and then she lifted her lurid black eyes to Janet, who stood at one
of the windows, knitting away at her master's stocking, and casting
many a calm glance at the brown waters and the strange drift that
covered them; but if Janet turned her head and made a remark to her,
she never gave back other than curt if not rude reply. In the
afternoon Jean brought the whisky bottle. At sight of it, Mistress
Croale's eyes shot flame. Jean poured out a glassful, took a sip,
and offered it to Janet. Janet declining it, Jean, invaded possibly
by some pity of her miserable aspect, offered it to Mistress Croale.
She took it with affected coolness, tossed it off at a gulp, and
presented the glass -- not to the hand from which she had taken it,
but to Jean's other hand, in which was the bottle. Jean cast a
piercing look into her greedy eyes, and taking the glass from her,
filled it, and presented it to the woman who had built and navigated
the brander. Mistress Croale muttered something that sounded like a
curse upon scrimp measure, and drew herself farther back into the
corner, where she had seated herself on Fergus's portmanteau.
"I doobt we hae an Ahchan i' the camp -- a Jonah intil the ship!" said
Jean to Janet, as she turned, bottle and glass in her hands, to
carry them from the room.
"Na, na; naither sae guid nor sae ill," replied Janet. "Fowk 'at's
been ill-guidit, no kennin' whaur their help lies, whiles taks to
the boatle. But this is but a day o' punishment, no a day o'
judgment yet, an' I'm thinkin' the warst's near han' ower. -- Gien
only Gibbie war here!"
Jean left the room, shaking her head, and Janet stood alone at the
window as before. A hand was laid on her arm. She looked up. The
black eyes were close to hers, and the glow that was in them gave
the lie to the tone of indifference with which Mistress Croale
spoke.
"Ye hae mair nor ance made mention o' ane conneckit wi' ye, by the
name o' Gibbie," she said.
"Ay," answered Janet, sending for the serpent to aid the dove; "an'
what may be yer wull wi' him?"
"Ow, naething," returned Mistress Croale. "I kenned ane o' the name
lang syne 'at was lost sicht o'."
"There's Gibbies here an' Gibbies there," remarked Janet, probing
her.
"Weel I wat!" she answered peevishly, for she had had whisky enough
only to make her cross, and turned away, muttering however in an
undertone, but not too low for Janet to hear, "but there's nae mony
wee Sir Gibbies, or the warl' wadna be sae dooms like hell."
Janet was arrested in her turn: could the fierce, repellent,
whisky-craving woman be the mother of her gracious Gibbie? Could
she be, and look so lost? But the loss of him had lost her perhaps.
Anyhow God was his Father, whoever was the mother of him.
"Hoo cam ye to tyne yer bairn, wuman?" she asked.
But Mistress Croale was careful also, and had her reasons.
"He ran frae the bluidy han'," she said enigmatically.
Janet recalled how Gibbie came to her, scored by the hand of
cruelty. Were there always innocents in the world, who in their own
persons, by the will of God, unknown to themselves, carried on the
work of Christ, filling up that which was left behind of the
sufferings of their Master -- women, children, infants,
idiots -- creatures of sufferance, with souls open to the world to
receive wrong, that it might pass and cease? little furnaces they,
of the consuming fire, to swallow up and destroy by uncomplaining
endurance -- the divine destruction!
"Hoo cam he by the bonnie nickname?" she asked at length.
"Nickname!" retorted Mistress Croale fiercely; "I think I hear ye!
His ain name an' teetle by law an' richt, as sure's ever there was
a King Jeames 'at first pat his han' to the makin' o' baronets! -- as
it's aften I hae h'ard Sir George, the father o' 'im, tell the
same."
She ceased abruptly, annoyed with herself, as it seemed, for having
said so much.
"Ye wadna be my lady yersel', wad ye, mem?" suggested Janet in her
gentlest voice.
Mistress Croale made her no answer. Perhaps she thought of the days
when she alone of women did the simplest of woman's offices for Sir
George. Anyhow, it was one thing to rush of herself to the verge of
her secret, and quite another to be fooled over it.
"Is't lang sin' ye lost him?" asked Janet, after a bootless pause.
"Ay," she answered, gruffly and discourteously, in a tone intended
to quench interrogation.
But Janet persisted.
"Wad ye ken 'im again gien ye saw 'im?"
"Ken 'im? I wad ken 'im gien he had grown a gran'father. Ken 'im,
quo' she! Wha ever kenned 'im as I did, bairn 'at he was, an' wadna
ken 'im gien he war deid an' an angel made o' 'im! -- But weel I wat,
it's little differ that wad mak!"
She rose in her excitement, and going to the other window, stood
gazing vacantly out upon the rushing sea. To Janet it was plain she
knew more about Gibbie than she was inclined to tell, and it gave
her a momentary sting of apprehension.
"What was aboot him ye wad ken sae weel?" she asked in a tone of
indifference, as if speaking only through the meshes of her work.
"I'll ken them 'at speirs afore I tell," she replied sullenly. -- But
the next instant she screamed aloud, "Lord God Almichty! yon's him!
yon's himsel'!" and, stretching out her arms, dashed a hand through
a pane, letting in an eddying swirl of wind and water, while the
blood streamed unheeded from her wrist.
The same moment Jean entered the room. She heard both the cry and
the sound of the breaking glass.
"Care what set the beggar-wife!" she exclaimed. "Gang frae the
window, ye randy."
Mistress Croale took no heed. She stood now staring from the window
still as a statue except for the panting motion of her sides. At
the other window stood Janet, gazing also, with blessed face. For
there, like a triton on a sea-horse, came Gibbie through the water
on Snowball, swimming wearily.
He caught sight of Janet at the window, and straightway his
countenance was radiant with smiles. Mistress Croale gave a
shuddering sigh, drew back from her window, and betook herself again
to her dark corner. Jean went to Janet's window, and there beheld
the triumphal approach of her brownie, saving from the waters the
lost and lamented Snowball. She shouted to her brother.
"John! John! here's yer Snawba'; here's yer Snawba'."
John ran to her call, and, beside himself with joy when he saw his
favourite come swimming along, threw the window wide, and began to
bawl the most unnecessary directions and encouragements, as if the
exploit had been brought thus far towards a happy issue solely
through him, while from all the windows Gibbie was welcomed with
shouts and cheers and congratulations.
"Lord preserve 's!" cried Mr. Duff, recognizing the rider at last,
"it's Rob Grant's innocent! Wha wad hae thoucht it?"
"The Lord's babes an' sucklin's are gey cawpable whiles," remarked
Janet to herself. -- She believed Gibbie had more faculty than any of
her own, Donal included, nor did she share the prevalent prejudice
of the city that heart and brains are mutually antagonistic; for in
her own case she had found that her brains were never worth much to
her until her heart took up the education of them. But the
intellect is, so much oftener than by love, seen and felt to be
sharpened by necessity and greed, that it is not surprising such a
prejudice should exist.
"Tak 'im roon' to the door." -- "Whaur got ye 'im?" -- "Ye wad best get
'im in at the window upo' the stair." -- "He'll be maist
hungert." -- "Ye'll be some weet, I'm thinkin'!" -- "Come awa' up the
stair, an' tell's a' aboot it." -- A score of such conflicting shouts
assailed Gibbie as he approached, and he replied to them all with
the light of his countenance.
When they arrived at the door, they found a difficulty waiting them:
the water was now so high that Snowball's head rose above the
lintel; and, though all animals can swim, they do not all know how
to dive. A tumult of suggestions immediately broke out. But Donal
had already thrown himself from a window with a rope, and swum to
Gibbie's assistance; the two understood each other, and heeding
nothing the rest were saying, held their own communications. In a
minute the rope was fastened round Snow-ball's body, and the end of
it drawn between his fore-legs and through the ring of his
head-stall, when Donal swam with it to his mother who stood on the
stair, with the request that, as soon as she saw Snowball's head
under the water, she would pull with all her might, and draw him in
at the door. Donal then swam back, and threw his arms round
Snowball's neck from below, while the same moment Gibbie cast his
whole weight of it from above: the horse was over head and ears in
an instant, and through the door in another. With snorting nostrils
and blazing eyes his head rose in the passage, and in terror he
struck out for the stair. As he scrambled heavily up from the
water, his master and Robert seized him, and with much petting and
patting and gentling, though there was little enough difficulty in
managing him now, conducted him into the bedroom to the rest of the
horses. There he was welcomed by his companions, and immediately
began devouring the hay upon his master's bedstead. Gibbie came
close behind him, was seized by Janet at the top of the stair,
embraced like one come alive from the grave, and led, all dripping
as he was, into the room where the women were. The farmer followed
soon after with the whisky, the universal medicine in those parts,
of which he offered a glass to Gibbie, but the innocent turned from
it with a curious look of mingled disgust and gratefulness: his
father's life had not been all a failure; he had done what parents
so rarely effect -- handed the general results of his experience to
his son. The sight and smell of whisky were to Gibbie a loathing
flavoured with horror.
The farmer looked back from the door as he was leaving the room:
Gibbie was performing a wild circular dance of which Janet was the
centre, throwing his limbs about like the toy the children call a
jumping Jack, which ended suddenly in a motionless ecstasy upon one
leg. Having regarded for a moment the rescuer of Snowball with
astonishment, John Duff turned away with the reflection, how easy it
was and natural for those who had nothing, and therefore could lose
nothing, to make merry in others' adversity. It did not once occur
to him that it was the joy of having saved that caused Gibbie's
merriment thus to overflow.
"The cratur's a born idiot!" he said afterwards to Jean; "an' it's
jist a mervel what he's cawpable o'! -- But, 'deed, there's little to
cheese atween Janet an' him! They're baith tarred wi' the same
stick." He paused a moment, then added, "They'll dee weel eneuch i'
the ither warl', I doobtna, whaur naebody has to haud aff o'
themsel's."
That day, however, Gibbie had proved that a man may well afford both
to have nothing, and to take no care of himself, seeing he had,
since he rose in the morning, rescued a friend, a foe, and a beast
of the earth. Verily, he might stand on one leg!
But when he told Janet that he had been home, and had found the
cottage uninjured and out of danger, she grew very sober in the
midst of her gladness. She could say nothing there amongst
strangers, but the dread arose in her bosom that, if indeed she had
not like Peter denied her Master before men, she had like Peter
yielded homage to the might of the elements in his ruling presence;
and she justly saw the same faithlessness in the two failures.
"Eh!" she said to herself, "gien only I had been prayin' i'stead o'
rinnin' awa', I wad hae been there whan he turnt the watter aside!
I wad hae seen the mirricle! O my Maister! what think ye o' me
noo?"
For all the excitement Mistress Croale had shown at first view of
Gibbie, she sat still in her dusky corner, made no movement towards
him, nor did anything to attract his attention, only kept her eyes
fixed upon him; and Janet in her mingled joy and pain forgot her
altogether. When at length it recurred to her that she was in the
room, she cast a somewhat anxious glance towards the place she had
occupied all day. It was empty; and Janet was perplexed to think
how she had gone unseen. She had crept out after Mr. Duff, and
probably Janet saw her, but as one of those who seeing see not, and
immediately forget.
Just as the farmer left the room, a great noise arose among the
cattle in that adjoining; he set down the bottle on a chair that
happened to be in the passage, and ran to protect the partitions.
Exultation would be a poor word wherewith to represent the madness
of the delight that shot its fires into Mistress Croale's eyes when
she saw the bottle actually abandoned within her reach. It was to
her as the very key of the universe. She darted upon it, put it to
her lips, and drank. Yet she took heed, thought while she drank,
and did not go beyond what she could carry. Little time such an
appropriation required. Noiselessly she set the bottle down, darted
into a closet containing a solitary calf, and there stood looking
from the open window in right innocent fashion, curiously
contemplating the raft attached to it, upon which she had seen the
highland woman arrive with her children.
At supper-time she was missing altogether. Nobody could with
certainty say when he had last seen her. The house was searched
from top to bottom, and the conclusion arrived at was, that she must
have fallen from some window and been drowned -- only, surely she
would at least have uttered one cry! Examining certain of the
windows to know whether she might not have left some sign of such an
exit, the farmer discovered that the brander was gone.
"Losh!" cried the orra man, with a face bewildered to shapelessness,
like that of an old moon rising in a fog, "yon'll be her I saw an
hoor ago, hyne doon the water!"
"Ye muckle gowk!" said his master, "hoo cud she win sae far ohn gane
to the boddom?"
"Upo' the bran'er, sir," answered the orra man. "I tuik her for a
muckle dog upon a door. The wife maun be a witch!"
John Duff stared at the man with his mouth open, and for half a
minute all were dumb. The thing was incredible, yet hardly to be
controverted. The woman was gone, the raft was gone, and something
strange that might be the two together had been observed about the
time, as near as they could judge, when she ceased to be observed in
the house. Had the farmer noted the change in the level of the
whisky in his bottle, he might have been surer of it -- except indeed
the doubt had then arisen whether they might not rather find her at
the foot of the stair when the water subsided.
Mr. Duff said the luck changed with the return of Snowball; his
sister said, with the departure of the beggar-wife. Before dark the
rain had ceased, and it became evident that the water had not risen
for the last half-hour. In two hours more it had sunk a quarter of
an inch.
Gibbie threw himself on the floor beside his mother's chair, she
covered him with her grey cloak, and he fell fast asleep. At dawn,
he woke with a start. He had dreamed that Ginevra was in trouble.
He made Janet understand that he would return to guide them home as
soon as the way was practicable, and set out at once.
The water fell rapidly. Almost as soon as it was morning, the
people at the Mains could begin doing a little towards restoration.
But from that day forth, for about a year, instead of the waters of
the Daur and the Lorrie, the house was filled with the gradually
subsiding flood of Jean's lamentations over her house-gear -- one
thing after another, and twenty things together. There was scarcely
an article she did not, over and over, proclaim utterly ruined, in a
tone apparently indicating ground of serious complaint against some
one who did not appear, though most of the things, to other eyes
than hers, remained seemingly about as useful as before. In vain
her brother sought to comfort her with the assurance that there were
worse losses at Culloden; she answered, that if he had not himself
been specially favoured in the recovery of Snowball, he would have
made a much worse complaint about him alone than she did about all
her losses; whereupon, being an honest man, and not certain that she
spoke other than the truth, he held his peace. But he never made
the smallest acknowledgment to Gibbie for the saving of the said
Snowball: what could an idiot understand about gratitude? and what
use was money to a boy who did not set his life at a pin's fee? But
he always spoke kindly to him thereafter, which was more to Gibbie
than anything he could have given him; and when a man is content,
his friends may hold their peace.
The next day Jean had her dinner strangely provided. As her brother
wrote to a friend in Glasgow, she "found at the back of the house,
and all lying in a heap, a handsome dish of trout, a pike, a hare, a
partridge, and a turkey, with a dish of potatoes, and a dish of
turnips, all brought down by the burn, and deposited there for the
good of the house, except the turkey, which, alas! was one of her
own favourite flock."3
In the afternoon, Gibbie re-appeared at the Mains, and Robert and
Janet set out at once to go home with him. It was a long journey
for them -- he had to take them so many rounds. They rested at
several houses, and saw much misery on their way. It was night
before they arrived at the cottage. They found it warm and clean
and tidy: Ginevra had, like a true lady, swept the house that gave
her shelter: that ladies often do; and perhaps it is yet more their
work in the world than they fully understand. For Ginevra, it was
heavenly bliss to her to hear their approaching footsteps; and
before she left them she had thoroughly learned that the poorest
place where the atmosphere is love, is more homely, and by
consequence more heavenly, than the most beautiful even, where law
and order are elements supreme.
"Eh, gien I had only had faith an' bidden!" said Janet to herself as
she entered; and to the day of her death she never ceased to bemoan
her too hasty desertion of "the wee hoosie upo' the muckle rock."
As to the strange woman's evident knowledge concerning Gibbie, she
could do nothing but wait -- fearing rather than hoping; but she had
got so far above time and chance, that nothing really troubled her,
and she could wait quietly. At the same time it did not seem likely
they would hear anything more of the woman herself: no one believed
she could have gone very far without being whelmed, or whumled as
they said, in the fierce waters.
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