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THE LAIRD.
Thomas Galbraith was by birth Thomas Durrant, but had married an
heiress by whom he came into possession of Glashruach, and had,
according to previous agreement, taken her name. When she died he
mourned her loss as well as he could, but was consoled by feeling
himself now first master of both position and possession, when the
ladder by which he had attained them was removed. It was not that
she had ever given him occasion to feel that marriage and not
inheritance was the source of his distinction in the land, but that
having a soul as keenly sensitive to small material rights as it was
obtuse to great spiritual ones, he never felt the property quite his
own until his wife was no longer within sight. Had he been a little
more sensitive still, he would have felt that the property was then
his daughter's, and his only through her; but this he failed to
consider.
Mrs. Galbraith was a gentle sweet woman, who loved her husband, but
was capable of loving a greater man better. Had she lived long
enough to allow of their opinions confronting in the matter of their
child's education, serious differences would probably have arisen
between them; as it was, they had never quarrelled except about the
name she should bear. The father, having for her sake -- so he said
to himself -- sacrificed his patronymic, was anxious that in order to
her retaining some rudimentary trace of himself in the ears of men,
she should be overshadowed with his Christian name, and called
Thomasina. But the mother was herein all the mother, and obdurate
for her daughter's future; and, as was right between the two, she
had her way, and her child a pretty name. Being more sentimental
than artistic, however, she did not perceive how imperfectly the
sweet Italian Ginevra concorded with the strong Scotch Galbraith.
Her father hated the name, therefore invariably abbreviated it
after such fashion as rendered it inoffensive to the most
conservative of Scotish ears; and for his own part, at length, never
said Ginny, without seeing and hearing and meaning Jenny. As Jenny,
indeed, he addressed her in the one or two letters which were all he
ever wrote to her; and thus he perpetuated the one matrimonial
difference across the grave.
Having no natural bent to literature, but having in his youth
studied for and practised at the Scotish bar, he had brought with
him into the country a taste for certain kinds of dry reading,
judged pre-eminently respectable, and for its indulgence had brought
also a not insufficient store of such provender as his soul mildly
hungered after, in the shape of books bound mostly in
yellow-calf -- books of law, history, and divinity. What the books of
law were, I would not foolhardily add to my many risks of blundering
by presuming to recall; the history was mostly Scotish, or connected
with Scotish affairs; the theology was entirely of the New England
type of corrupted Calvinism, with which in Scotland they saddle the
memory of great-souled, hard-hearted Calvin himself. Thoroughly
respectable, and a little devout, Mr. Galbraith was a good deal more
of a Scotchman than a Christian; growth was a doctrine unembodied in
his creed; he turned from everything new, no matter how harmonious
with the old, in freezing disapprobation; he recognized no element
in God or nature which could not be reasoned about after the forms
of the Scotch philosophy. He would not have said an Episcopalian
could not be saved, for at the bar he had known more than one good
lawyer of the episcopal party; but to say a Roman Catholic would not
necessarily be damned, would to his judgment have revealed at once
the impending fate of the rash asserter. In religion he regarded
everything not only as settled but as understood; but seemed aware
of no call in relation to truth, but to bark at anyone who showed
the least anxiety to discover it. What truth he held himself, he
held as a sack holds corn -- not even as a worm holds earth.
To his servants and tenants he was what he thought just -- never
condescending to talk over a thing with any of the former but the
game-keeper, and never making any allowance to the latter for
misfortune. In general expression he looked displeased, but meant
to look dignified. No one had ever seen him wrathful; nor did he
care enough for his fellow-mortals ever to be greatly vexed -- at
least he never manifested vexation otherwise than by a silence that
showed more of contempt than suffering.
In person, he was very tall and very thin, with a head much too
small for his height; a narrow forehead, above which the brown hair
looked like a wig; pale-blue, ill-set eyes, that seemed too large
for their sockets, consequently tumbled about a little, and were
never at once brought to focus; a large, but soft-looking nose; a
loose-lipped mouth, and very little chin. He always looked as if
consciously trying to keep himself together. He wore his
shirt-collar unusually high, yet out of it far shot his long neck,
notwithstanding the smallness of which, his words always seemed to
come from a throat much too big for them. He had greatly the look
of a hen, proud of her maternal experiences, and silent from conceit
of what she could say if she would. So much better would he have
done as an underling than as a ruler -- as a journeyman even, than a
master, that to know him was almost to disbelieve in the good of
what is generally called education. His learning seemed to have
taken the wrong fermentation, and turned to folly instead of wisdom.
But he did not do much harm, for he had a great respect for his
respectability. Perhaps if he had been a craftsman, he might even
have done more harm -- making rickety wheelbarrows, asthmatic pumps,
ill-fitting window-frames, or boots with a lurking divorce in each
welt. He had no turn for farming, and therefore let all his land,
yet liked to interfere, and as much as possible kept a personal
jurisdiction.
There was one thing, however, which, if it did not throw the laird
into a passion -- nothing, as I have said, did that -- brought him
nearer to the outer verge of displeasure than any other, and that
was, anything whatever to which he could affix the name of
superstition. The indignation of better men than the laird with
even a confessedly harmless superstition, is sometimes very amusing;
and it was a point of Mr. Galbraith's poverty-stricken religion to
denounce all superstitions, however diverse in character, with equal
severity. To believe in the second sight, for instance, or in any
form of life as having the slightest relation to this world, except
that of men, that of animals, and that of vegetables, was with him
wicked, antagonistic to the Church of Scotland, and inconsistent
with her perfect doctrine. The very word ghost would bring upon his
face an expression he meant for withering scorn, and indeed it
withered his face, rendering it yet more unpleasant to behold.
Coming to the benighted country, then, with all the gathered wisdom
of Edinburgh in his gallinaceous cranium, and what he counted a vast
experience of worldly affairs besides, he brought with him also the
firm resolve to be the death of superstition, at least upon his own
property. He was not only unaware, but incapable of becoming aware,
that he professed to believe a number of things, any one of which
was infinitely more hostile to the truth of the universe, than all
the fancies and fables of a countryside, handed down from
grandmother to grandchild. When, therefore, within a year of his
settling at Glashruach, there arose a loud talk of the Mains, his
best farm, as haunted by presences making all kinds of tumultuous
noises, and even throwing utensils bodily about, he was nearer the
borders of a rage, although he kept, as became a gentleman, a calm
exterior, than ever he had been in his life. For were not ignorant
clodhoppers asserting as facts what he knew never could take place!
At once he set himself, with all his experience as a lawyer to aid
him, to discover the buffooning authors of the mischief; where there
were deeds there were doers, and where there were doers they were
discoverable. But his endeavours, uninterrmitted for the space of
three weeks, after which the disturbances ceased, proved so utterly
without result, that he could never bear the smallest allusion to
the hateful business. For he had not only been unhorsed, but by his
dearest hobby.
He was seated with a game pie in front of him, over the top of which
Ginevra was visible. The girl never sat nearer her father at meals
than the whole length of the table, where she occupied her mother's
place. She was a solemn-looking child, of eight or nine, dressed in
a brown merino frock of the plainest description. Her hair, which
was nearly of the same colour as her frock, was done up in two
triple plaits, which hung down her back, and were tied at the tips
with black ribbon. To the first glance she did not look a very
interesting or attractive child; but looked at twice, she was sure
to draw the eyes a third time. She was undeniably like her father,
and that was much against her at first sight; but it required only a
little acquaintance with her face to remove the prejudice; for in
its composed, almost resigned expression, every feature of her
father's seemed comparatively finished, and settled into harmony
with the rest; its chaos was subdued, and not a little of the
original underlying design brought out. The nose was firm, the
mouth modelled, the chin larger, the eyes a little smaller, and full
of life and feeling. The longer it was regarded by any seeing eye,
the child's countenance showed fuller of promise, or at least of
hope. Gradually the look would appear in it of a latent sensitive
anxiety -- then would dawn a glimmer of longing question; and then,
all at once, it would slip back into the original ordinary look,
which, without seeming attractive, had yet attracted. Her father
was never harsh to her, yet she looked rather frightened at him; but
then he was cold, very cold, and most children would rather be
struck and kissed alternately than neither. And the bond cannot be
very close between father and child, when the father has forsaken
his childhood. The bond between any two is the one in the other; it
is the father in the child, and the child in the father, that reach
to each other eternal hands. It troubled Ginevra greatly that, when
she asked herself whether she loved her father better than anybody
else, as she believed she ought, she became immediately doubtful
whether she loved him at all.
She was eating porridge and milk: with spoon arrested in
mid-passage, she stopped suddenly, and said: --
"Papa, what's a broonie?"
"I have told you, Jenny, that you are never to talk broad Scotch in
my presence," returned her father. "I would lay severer commands
upon you, were it not that I fear tempting you to disobey me, but I
will have no vulgarity in the dining-room."
His words came out slowly, and sounded as if each was a bullet
wrapped round with cotton wool to make it fit the barrel. Ginevra
looked perplexed for a moment.
"Should I say brownie, papa?" she asked.
"How can I tell you what you should call a creature that has no
existence?" rejoined her father.
"If it be a creature, papa, it must have a name!" retorted the
little logician, with great solemnity.
Mr. Galbraith was not pleased, for although the logic was good, it
was against him.
"What foolish person has been insinuating such contemptible
superstition into your silly head?" he asked. "Tell me, child," he
continued, "that I may put a stop to it at once."
He was rising to ring the bell, that he might give the orders
consequent on the information he expected: he would have asked
Mammon to dinner in black clothes and a white tie, but on
Superstition in the loveliest garb would have loosed all the dogs of
Glashruach, to hunt her from the property. Her next words, however,
arrested him, and just as she ended, the butler came in with fresh
toast.
"They say," said Ginevra, anxious to avoid the forbidden Scotch,
therefore stumbling sadly in her utterance, "there's a
broonie -- brownie -- at the Mains, who dis a' -- does all the work."
"What is the meaning of this, Joseph?" said Mr. Galbraith, turning
from her to the butler, with the air of rebuke, which was almost
habitual to him, a good deal heightened.
"The meanin' o' what, sir?" returned Joseph, nowise abashed, for to
him his master was not the greatest man in the world, or even in the
highlands. "He's no a Galbraith," he used to say, when more than
commonly provoked with him.
"I ask you, Joseph," answered the laird, "what this -- this outbreak
of superstition imports? You must be aware that nothing in the
world could annoy me more than that Miss Galbraith should learn
folly in her father's house. That staid servants, such as I had
supposed mine to be, should use their tongues as if their heads had
no more in them than so many bells hung in a steeple, is to me a
mortifying reflection."
"Tongues as weel's clappers was made to wag, sir; an, wag they wull,
sir, sae lang's the tow (string) hings oot at baith lugs," answered
Joseph. The forms of speech he employed were not unfrequently
obscure to his master, and in that obscurity lay more of Joseph's
impunity than he knew. "Forby (besides), sir," he went on, "gien
tongues didna wag, what w'y wad you, 'at has to set a' thing richt,
come to ken what was wrang?"
"That is not a bad remark, Joseph," replied the laird, with woolly
condescension. "Pray acquaint me with the whole matter."
"I hae naething till acquaint yer honour wi', sir, but the
ting-a-ling o' tongues," replied Joseph; "an' ye'll hae till
arreenge't like, till yer ain settisfaction."
Therewith he proceeded to report what he had heard reported, which
was in the main the truth, considerably exaggerated -- that the work
of the house was done over night by invisible hands -- and the work of
the stables, too; but that in the latter, cantrips were played as
well; that some of the men talked of leaving the place; and that Mr.
Duff's own horse, Snowball, was nearly out of his mind with fear.
The laird clenched his teeth, and for a whole minute said nothing.
Here were either his old enemies again, or some who had heard the
old story, and in their turn were beating the drum of consternation
in the ears of superstition.
"It is one of the men themselves," he said at last, with outward
frigidity. "Or some ill-designed neighbour," he added. "But I shall
soon be at the bottom of it. Go to the Mains at once, Joseph, and
ask young Fergus Duff to be so good as step over, as soon as he
conveniently can."
Fergus was pleased enough to be sent for by the laird, and soon told
him all he knew from his aunt and the men, confessing that he had
himself been too lazy of a morning to take any steps towards
personal acquaintance with the facts, but adding that, as Mr.
Galbraith took an interest in the matter, "he would be only too
happy to carry out any suggestion he might think proper to make on
the subject.
"Fergus," returned the laird, "do you imagine things inanimate can
of themselves change their relations in space? In other words, are
the utensils in your kitchen endowed with powers of locomotion? Can
they take to themselves wings and fly? Or to use a figure more to
the point, are they provided with members necessary to the washing
of their own -- persons, shall I say? Answer me those points,
Fergus."
"Certainly not, sir," answered Fergus solemnly, for the laird's face
was solemn, and his speech was very solemn.
"Then, Fergus, let me assure you, that to discover by what agency
these apparent wonders are effected, you have merely to watch. If
you fail, I will myself come to your assistance. Depend upon it,
the thing when explained will prove simplicity itself."
Fergus at once undertook to watch, but went home not quite so
comfortable as he had gone; for he did not altogether,
notwithstanding his unbelief in the so-called supernatural, relish
the approaching situation. Belief and unbelief are not always quite
plainly distinguishable from each other, and Fear is not always
certain which of them is his mother. He was not the less resolved,
however, to carry out what he had undertaken -- that was, to sit up
all night, if necessary, in order to have an interview with the
extravagant and erring -- spirit, surely, whether embodied or not,
that dared thus wrong "domestic awe, night-rest, and neighbourhood,"
by doing people's work for them unbidden. Not even to himself did
he confess that he felt frightened, for he was a youth of nearly
eighteen; but he could not quite hide from himself the fact that he
anticipated no pleasure in the duty which lay before him.
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