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THE BROONIE.
Things had gone on in this way for several weeks -- if Gibbie had not
been such a small creature, I hardly see how they could for so
long -- when one morning the men came in to breakfast all out of
temper together, complaining loudly of the person unknown who would
persist in interfering with their work. They were the louder that
their suspicions fluttered about Fergus, who was rather overbearing
with them, and therefore not a favourite. He was in reality not at
all a likely person to bend back or defile hands over such labour,
and their pitching upon him for the object of their suspicion,
showed how much at a loss they were. Their only ground for
suspecting him, beyond the fact that there was no other whom by any
violence of imagination they could suspect, was, that, whatever else
was done or left undone in the stable, Snowball, whom Fergus was
fond of, and rode almost every day, was, as already mentioned, sure
to have something done for him. Had he been in good odour with
them, they would have thought no harm of most of the things they
thought he did, especially as they eased their work; but he carried
himself high, they said, doing nothing but ride over the farm and
pick out every fault he could find -- to show how sharp he was, and
look as if he could do better than any of them; and they fancied
that he carried their evil report to his father, and that this
underhand work in the stable must be part of some sly scheme for
bringing them into disgrace. And now at last had come the worst
thing of all: Gibbie had discovered the corn-bin, and having no
notion but that everything in the stable was for the delectation of
the horses, had been feeding them largely with oats -- a delicacy with
which, in the plenty of other provisions, they were very sparingly
supplied; and the consequences had begun to show themselves in the
increased unruliness of the more wayward amongst them. Gibbie had
long given up resorting to the ceiling, and remained in utter
ignorance of the storm that was brewing because of him.
The same day brought things nearly to a crisis; for the overfed
Snowball, proving too much for Fergus's horsemanship, came rushing
home at a fierce gallop without him, having indeed left him in a
ditch by the roadside. The remark thereupon made by the men in his
hearing, that it was his own fault, led him to ask questions, when
he came gradually to know what they attributed to him, and was
indignant at the imputation of such an employment of his mornings to
one who had his studies to attend to -- scarcely a wise line of
defence where the truth would have been more credible as well as
convincing -- namely, that at the time when those works of
supererogation could alone be effected, he lay as lost a creature as
ever sleep could make of a man.
In the evening, Jean sought a word with Donal, and expressed her
surprise that he should be able to do everybody's work about the
place, warning him it would be said he did it at the expense of his
own. But what could he mean, she said, by wasting the good corn to
put devilry into the horses? Donal stared in utter bewilderment.
He knew perfectly that to the men suspicion of him was as
impossible as of one of themselves. Did he not sleep in the same
chamber with them? Could it be allusion to the way he spent his
time when out with the cattle that Mistress Jean intended? He was
so confused, looked so guilty as well as astray, and answered so far
from any point in Jean's mind, that she at last became altogether
bewildered also, out of which chaos of common void gradually dawned
on her mind the conviction that she had been wasting both thanks and
material recognition of service, where she was under no obligation.
Her first feeling thereupon was, not unnaturally however
unreasonably, one of resentment -- as if Donal, in not doing her the
kindness her fancy had been attributing to him, had all the time
been doing her an injury; but the boy's honest bearing and her own
good sense made her, almost at once, dismiss the absurdity.
Then came anew the question, utterly unanswerable now -- who could it
be that did not only all her morning work, but, with a passion for
labour insatiable, part of that of the men also? She knew her
nephew better than to imagine for a moment, with the men, it could
be he. A good enough lad she judged him, but not good enough for
that. He was too fond of his own comfort to dream of helping other
people! But now, having betrayed herself to Donal, she wisely went
farther, and secured herself by placing full confidence in him. She
laid open the whole matter, confessing that she had imagined her
ministering angel to be Donal himself: now she had not even a
conjecture to throw at random after the person of her secret
servant. Donal, being a Celt, and a poet, would have been a brute
if he had failed of being a gentleman, and answered that he was
ashamed it should be another and not himself who had been her
servant and gained her commendation; but he feared, if he had made
any such attempt, he would but have fared like the husband in the
old ballad who insisted that his wife's work was much easier to do
than his own. But as he spoke, he saw a sudden change come over
Jean's countenance. Was it fear? or what was it? She gazed with
big eyes fixed on his face, heeding neither him nor his words, and
Donal, struck silent, gazed in return. At length, after a pause of
strange import, her soul seemed to return into her deep-set grey
eyes, and in a broken voice, low, and solemn, and fraught with
mystery, she said,
"Donal, it's the broonie!"
Donal's mouth opened wide at the word, but the tenor of his thought
it would have been hard for him to determine. Celtic in kindred and
education, he had listened in his time to a multitude of strange
tales, both indigenous and exotic, and, Celtic in blood, had been
inclined to believe every one of them for which he could find the
least raison d'ˆtre. But at school he had been taught that such
stories deserved nothing better than mockery, that to believe them
was contrary to religion, and a mark of such weakness as involved
blame. Nevertheless, when he heard the word broonie issue from a
face with such an expression as Jean's then wore, his heart seemed
to give a gape in his bosom, and it rushed back upon his memory how
he had heard certain old people talk of the brownie that used, when
their mothers and grandmothers were young, to haunt the Mains of
Glashruach. His mother did not believe such things, but she
believed nothing but her New Testament! -- and what if there should be
something in them? The idea of service rendered by the hand of a
being too clumsy, awkward, ugly, to consent to be seen by the more
finished race of his fellow-creatures, whom yet he surpassed in
strength and endurance and longevity, had at least in it for Donal
the attraction of a certain grotesque yet homely poetic element. He
remembered too the honour such a type of creature had had in being
lapt around for ever in the airy folds of L'Allegro. And to think
that Mistress Jean, for whom everybody had such a respect, should
speak of the creature in such a tone! -- it sent a thrill of horrific
wonder and delight through the whole frame of the boy: might, could
there be such creatures? And thereupon began to open to his
imagination vista after vista into the realms of might-be
possibility -- where dwelt whole clans and kins of creatures,
differing from us and our kin, yet occasionally, at the cross-roads
of creation, coming into contact with us, and influencing us not
greatly, perhaps, yet strangely and notably. Not once did the real
brownie occur to him -- the small, naked Gibbie, far more marvellous
and admirable than any brownie of legendary fable or fact, whether
celebrated in rude old Scots ballad for his taeless feet, or
designated in noble English poem of perfect art, as lubber fiend of
hairy length.
Jean Mavor came from a valley far withdrawn in the folds of the
Gormgarnet mountains, where in her youth she had heard yet stranger
tales than had ever come to Donal's ears, of which some had perhaps
kept their hold the more firmly that she had never heard them even
alluded to since she left her home. Her brother, a hard-headed
highlander, as canny as any lowland Scot, would have laughed to
scorn the most passing reference to such an existence; and Fergus,
who had had a lowland mother -- and nowhere is there less of so-called
superstition than in most parts of the lowlands of Scotland -- would
have joined heartily in his mockery. For the cowherd, however, as I
say, the idea had no small attraction, and his stare was the
reflection of Mistress Jean's own -- for the soul is a live mirror, at
once receiving into its centre, and reflecting from its surface.
"Div ye railly think it, mem?" said Donal at last.
"Think what?" retorted Jean, sharply, jealous instantly of being
compromised, and perhaps not certain that she had spoken aloud.
"Div ye railly think 'at there is sic craturs as broonies, Mistress
Jean?" said Donal.
"Wha kens what there is an' what there isna?" returned Jean: she was
not going to commit herself either way. Even had she imagined
herself above believing such things, she would not have dared to say
so; for there was a time still near in her memory, though unknown to
any now upon the farm except her brother, when the Mains of
Glashruach was the talk of Daurside because of certain inexplicable
nightly disorders that fell out there; the slang rows, or the Scotch
remishs (a form of the English romage), would perhaps come nearest
to a designation of them, consisting as they did of confused noises,
rumblings, ejaculations; and the fact itself was a reason for
silence, seeing a word might bring the place again into men's mouths
in like fashion, and seriously affect the service of the farm; such
a rumour would certainly be made in the market a ground for
demanding more wages to fee to the Mains. "Ye haud yer tongue,
laddie," she went on; "it's the least ye can efter a' 'at's come an'
gane; an' least said's sunest mendit, Gang to yer wark."
But either Mistress Jean's influx of caution came too late, and
someone had overheard her suggestion, or the idea was already abroad
in the mind bucolic and georgic, for that very night it began to be
reported upon the nearer farms, that the Mains of Glashruach was
haunted by a brownie who did all the work for both men and maids -- a
circumstance productive of different opinions with regard to the
desirableness of a situation there, some asserting they would not
fee to it for any amount of wages, and others averring they could
desire nothing better than a place where the work was all done for
them.
Quick at disappearing as Gibbie was, a very little cunning on the
part of Jean might soon have entrapped the brownie; but a
considerable touch of fear was now added to her other motives for
continuing to spend a couple of hours longer in bed than had
formerly been her custom. So that for yet a few days things went on
much as usual; Gibbie saw no sign that his presence was suspected,
or that his doings were offensive; and life being to him a constant
present, he never troubled himself about anything before it was
there to answer for itself.
One morning the long thick mane of Snowball was found carefully
plaited up in innumerable locks. This was properly elf-work, but no
fairies had been heard of on Daurside for many a long year. The
brownie, on the other hand, was already in every one's mouth -- only a
stray one, probably, that had wandered from some old valley away in
the mountains, where they were still believed in -- but not the less a
brownie; and if it was not the brownie who plaited Snowball's mane,
who or what was it? A phenomenon must be accounted for, and he who
will not accept a theory offered, or even a word applied, is
indebted in a full explanation. The rumour spread in long slow
ripples, till at last one of them struck the membrana tympani of the
laird, where he sat at luncheon in the House of Glashruach.
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