|
|
|
Prev
| Next
| Contents
A WALK.
The cottage to which Mr. Galbraith had taken Ginevra, stood in a
suburban street -- one of those small, well-built stone houses common,
I fancy, throughout Scotland, with three rooms and a kitchen on its
one floor, and a large attic with dormer windows. It was low and
wide-roofed, and had a tiny garden between it and the quiet street.
This garden was full of flowers in summer and autumn, but the tops
of a few gaunt stems of hollyhocks, and the wiry straggling creepers
of the honeysuckle about the eaves, was all that now showed from the
pavement. It had a dwarf wall of granite, with an iron railing on
the top, through which, in the season, its glorious colours used to
attract many eyes, but Mr. Galbraith had had the railing and the
gate lined to the very spikes with boards: the first day of his
abode he had discovered that the passers-by -- not to say those who
stood to stare admiringly at the flowers, came much too near his
faded but none the less conscious dignity. He had also put a lock
on the gate, and so made of the garden a sort of propylon to the
house. For he had of late developed a tendency towards taking to
earth, like the creatures that seem to have been created ashamed of
themselves, and are always burrowing. But it was not that the late
laird was ashamed of himself in any proper sense. Of the dishonesty
of his doings he was as yet scarcely half conscious, for the proud
man shrinks from repentance, regarding it as disgrace. To wash is
to acknowledge the need of washing. He avoided the eyes of men for
the mean reason that he could no longer appear in dignity as laird
of Glashruach and chairman of a grand company; while he felt as if
something must have gone wrong with the laws of nature that it had
become possible for Thomas Galbraith, of Glashruach, Esq., to live
in a dumpy cottage. He had thought seriously of resuming his
patronymic of Durrant, but reflected that he was too well known to
don that cloak of transparent darkness without giving currency to
the idea that he had soiled the other past longer wearing. It would
be imagined, he said, picking out one dishonesty of which he had not
been guilty, that he had settled money on his wife, and retired to
enjoy it.
His condition was far more pitiful than his situation. Having no
faculty for mental occupation except with affairs, finding nothing
to do but cleave, like a spent sailor, with hands and feet to the
slippery rock of what was once his rectitude, such as it was, trying
to hold it still his own, he would sit for hours without moving -- a
perfect creature, temple, god, and worshipper, all in one -- only that
the worshipper was hardly content with his god, and that a worm was
gnawing on at the foundation of the temple. Nearly as motionless,
her hands excepted, would Ginevra sit opposite to him, not quieter
but more peaceful than when a girl, partly because now she was less
afraid of him. He called her, in his thoughts as he sat there,
heartless and cold, but not only was she not so, but it was his
fault that she appeared to him such. In his moral stupidity he
would rather have seen her manifest concern at the poverty to which
he had reduced her, than show the stillness of a contented mind.
She was not much given to books, but what she read was worth
reading, and such as turned into thought while she sat. They are
not the best students who are most dependent on books. What can be
got out of them is at best only material: a man must build his house
for himself. She would have read more, but with her father beside
her doing nothing, she felt that to take a book would be like going
into a warm house, and leaving him out in the cold. It was very sad
to her to see him thus shrunk and withered, and lost in thought that
plainly was not thinking. Nothing interested him; he never looked
at the papers, never cared to hear a word of news. His eyes more
unsteady, his lips looser, his neck thinner and longer, he looked
more than ever like a puppet whose strings hung slack. How often
would Ginevra have cast herself on his bosom if she could have even
hoped he would not repel her! Now and then his eyes did wander to
her in a dazed sort of animal-like appeal, but the moment she
attempted response, he turned into a corpse. Still, when it came,
that look was a comfort, for it seemed to witness some bond between
them after all. And another comfort was, that now, in his misery,
she was able, if not to forget those painful thoughts about him
which had all these years haunted her, at least to dismiss them when
they came, in the hope that, as already such a change had passed
upon him, further and better change might follow.
She was still the same brown bird as of old -- a bird of the twilight,
or rather a twilight itself, with a whole night of stars behind it,
of whose existence she scarcely knew, having but just started on the
voyage of discovery which life is. She had the sweetest, rarest
smile -- not frequent and flashing like Gibbie's, but stealing up from
below, like the shadowy reflection of a greater light, gently
deepening, permeating her countenance until it reached her eyes,
thence issuing in soft flame. Always however, an soon as her eyes
began to glow duskily, down went their lids, and down dropt her head
like the frond of a sensitive plant, Her atmosphere was an embodied
stillness; she made a quiet wherever she entered; she was not
beautiful, but she was lovely; and her presence at once made a place
such as one would desire to be in.
The most pleasant of her thoughts were of necessity those with which
the two youths were associated. How dreary but for them and theirs
would the retrospect of her life have been! Several times every
winter they had met at the minister's, and every summer she had
again and again seen Gibbie with Mrs. Sclater, and once or twice had
had a walk with them, and every time Gibbie had something of Donal's
to give her. Twice Gibbie had gone to see her at the school, but
the second time she asked him not to come again, as Miss Kimble did
not like it. He gave a big stare of wonder, and thought of Angus
and the laird; but followed the stare with a swift smile, for he saw
she was troubled, and asked no question, but waited for the
understanding of all things that must come. But now, when or where
was she ever to see them more? Gibbie was no longer at the
minister's, and perhaps she would never be invited to meet them
there again. She dared not ask Donal to call: her father would be
indignant; and for her father's sake she would not ask Gibbie; it
might give him pain; while the thought that he would of a certainty
behave so differently to him now that he was well-dressed, and
mannered like a gentleman, was almost more unendurable to her than
the memory of his past treatment of him.
Mr. and Mrs. Sclater had called upon them the moment they were
settled in the cottage; but Mr. Galbraith would see nobody. When
the gate-bell rang, he always looked out, and if a visitor appeared,
withdrew to his bedroom.
One brilliant Saturday morning, the second in the session, the
ground hard with an early frost, the filmy ice making fairy caverns
and grottos in the cart-ruts, and the air so condensed with cold
that every breath, to those who ate and slept well, had the life of
two, Mrs. Sclater rang the said bell. Mr. Galbraith peeping from
the window, saw a lady's bonnet, and went. She walked in, followed
by Gibbie, and would have Ginevra go with them for a long walk.
Pleased enough with the proposal, for the outsides of life had been
dull as well as painful of late, she went and asked her father. If
she did not tell him that Sir Gilbert was with Mrs. Sclater, perhaps
she ought to have told him; but I am not sure, and therefore am not
going to blame her. When parents are not fathers and mothers, but
something that has no name in the kingdom of heaven, they place the
purest and most honest of daughters in the midst of perplexities.
"Why do you ask me?" returned her father. "My wishes are nothing to
any one now; to you they never were anything."
"I will stay at home, if you wish it, papa, -- with pleasure," she
replied, as cheerfully as she could after such a reproach.
"By no means. If you do, I shall go and dine at the Red Hart," he
answered -- not having money enough in his possession to pay for a
dinner there.
I fancy he meant to be kind, but, like not a few, alas! took no
pains to look as kind as he was. There are many, however, who seem
to delight in planting a sting where conscience or heart will not
let them deny. It made her miserable for a while of course, but she
had got so used to his way of breaking a gift as he handed it, that
she answered only with a sigh. When she was a child, his
ungraciousness had power to darken the sunlight, but by repetition
it had lost force. In haste she put on her little brown-ribboned
bonnet, took the moth-eaten muff that had been her mother's, and
rejoined Mrs. Sclater and Gibbie, beaming with troubled pleasure.
Life in her was strong, and their society soon enabled her to
forget, not her father's sadness, but his treatment of her.
At the end of the street, they found Donal waiting them -- without
greatcoat or muffler, the picture of such health as suffices to its
own warmth, not a mark of the midnight student about him, and
looking very different, in town-made clothes, from the Donal of the
mirror. He approached and saluted her with such an air of homely
grace as one might imagine that of the Red Cross Knight, when,
having just put on the armour of a Christian man, from a clownish
fellow he straightway appeared the goodliest knight in the company.
Away they walked together westward, then turned southward. Mrs.
Sclater and Gibbie led, and Ginevra followed with Donal. And they
had not walked far, before something of the delight of old times on
Glashruach began to revive in the bosom of the too sober girl. In
vain she reminded herself that her father sat miserable at home,
thinking of her probably as the most heartless of girls; the sun,
and the bright air like wine in her veins, were too much for her,
Donal had soon made her cheerful, and now and then she answered his
talk with even a little flash of merriment. They crossed the
bridge, high-hung over the Daur, by which on that black morning
Gibbie fled; and here for the first time, with his three friends
about him, he told on his fingers the dire deed of the night, and
heard from Mrs. Sclater that the murderers had been hanged. Ginevra
grew white and faint as she read his fingers and gestures, but it
was more at the thought of what the child had come through, than
from the horror of his narrative. They then turned eastward to the
sea, and came to the top of the rock-border of the coast, with its
cliffs rent into gullies, eerie places to look down into, ending in
caverns into which the waves rushed with bellow and boom. Although
so nigh the city, this was always a solitary place, yet, rounding a
rock, they came upon a young man, who hurried a book into his
pocket, and would have gone by the other side, but perceiving
himself recognized, came to meet them, and saluted Mrs. Sclater, who
presented him to Ginevra as the Rev. Mr. Duff.
"I have not had the pleasure of seeing you since you were quite a
little girl, Miss Galbraith," said Fergus.
Ginevra said coldly she did not remember him. The youths greeted
him in careless student fashion: they had met now and then for a
moment about the college; and a little meaningless talk followed.
He was to preach the next day -- and for several Sundays following -- at
a certain large church in the city, at the time without a minister;
and when they came upon him he was studying his sermon -- I do not
mean the truths he intended to press upon his audience -- those he had
mastered long ago -- but his manuscript, studying it in the sense in
which actors use the word, learning it, that is, by heart
laboriously, that the words might come from his lips as much like an
extemporaneous utterance as possible, consistently with not being
mistaken for one, which, were it true as the Bible, would have no
merit in the ears of those who counted themselves judges of the
craft. The kind of thing suited Fergus, whose highest idea of life
was seeming. Naturally capable, he had already made of himself
rather a dull fellow; for when a man spends his energy on appearing
to have, he is all the time destroying what he has, and therein the
very means of becoming what he desires to seem. If he gains his end
his success is his punishment.
Fergus never forgot that he was a clergyman, always carrying himself
according to his idea of the calling; therefore when the interchange
of commonplaces flagged, he began to look about him for some remark
sufficiently tinged with his profession to be suitable for him to
make, and for the ladies to hear as his. The wind was a thoroughly
wintry one from the north-east, and had been blowing all night, so
that the waves were shouldering the rocks with huge assault. Now
Fergus's sermon, which he meant to use as a spade for the casting of
the first turf of the first parallel in the siege of the pulpit of
the North parish, was upon the vanity of human ambition, his text
being the grand verse -- And so I saw the wicked buried, who had come
and gone from the place of the holy; there was no small amount of
fine writing in the manuscript he had thrust into his pocket; and
his sermon was in his head when he remarked, with the wafture of a
neatly-gloved hand seawards --
"I was watching these waves when you found me: they seem to me such
a picture of the vanity of human endeavour! But just as little as
those waves would mind me, if I told them they were wasting their
labour on these rocks, will men mind me, when I tell them to-morrow
of the emptiness of their ambitions."
"A present enstance o' the vainity o' human endeevour!" said Donal.
"What for sud ye, in that case, gang on preachin', sae settin' them
an ill exemple?"
Duff gave him a high-lidded glance, vouchsafing no reply.
"Just as those waves," he continued, "waste themselves in effort, as
often foiled as renewed, to tear down these rocks, so do the men of
this world go on and on, spending their strength for nought."
"Hoots, Fergus!" said Donal again, in broadest speech, as if with
its bray he would rebuke not the madness but the silliness of the
prophet, "ye dinna mean to tell me yon jaws (billows) disna ken
their business better nor imaigine they hae to caw doon the rocks?"
Duff cast a second glance of scorn at what he took for the prosaic
stupidity or poverty-stricken logomachy of Donal, while Ginevra
opened on him big brown eyes, as much as to say, "Donal, who was it
set me down for saying a man couldn't be a burn?" But Gibbie's face
was expectant: he knew Donal. Mrs. Sclater also looked interested:
she did not much like Duff, and by this time she suspected Donal of
genius. Donal turned to Ginevra with a smile, and said, in the best
English he could command --
"Bear with me a moment, Miss Galbraith. If Mr. Duff will oblige me
by answering my question, I trust I shall satisfy you I am no
turncoat."
Fergus stared. What did his father's herd-boy mean by talking such
English to the ladies, and such vulgar Scotch to him? Although now
a magistrand -- that is, one about to take his degree of Master of
Arts -- Donal was still to Fergus the cleaner-out of his father's
byres -- an upstart, whose former position was his real one -- towards
him at least, who knew him. And did the fellow challenge him to a
discussion? Or did he presume on the familiarity of their boyhood,
and wish to sport his acquaintance with the popular preacher? On
either supposition, he was impertinent.
"I spoke poetically," he said, with cold dignity.
"Ye'll excuse me, Fergus," replied Donal, " -- for the sake o' auld
langsyne, whan I was, as I ever will be, sair obligatit till ye -- but
i' that ye say noo, ye're sair wrang: ye wasna speykin' poetically,
though I ken weel ye think it, or ye wadna say 't; an' that's what
garred me tak ye up. For the verra essence o' poetry is trowth, an'
as sune's a word's no true, it's no poetry, though it may hae on the
cast claes o' 't. It's nane but them 'at kens na what poetry is,
'at blethers aboot poetic license, an' that kin' o' hen-scraich, as
gien a poet was sic a gowk 'at naebody eedit hoo he lee'd, or
whether he gaed wi' 's cwite (coat) hin' side afore or no."
"I am at a loss to understand you -- Donal? -- yes, Donal Grant. I
remember you very well; and from the trouble I used to take with you
to make you distinguish between the work of the poet and that of the
rhymester, I should have thought by this time you would have known a
little more about the nature of poetry. Personification is a figure
of speech in constant use by all poets."
"Ow ay! but there's true and there's fause personification; an' it's
no ilka poet 'at kens the differ. Ow, I ken! ye'll be doon upo' me
wi' yer Byron," -- Fergus shook his head as at a false impeachment,
but Donal went on -- "but even a poet canna mak lees poetry. An' a
man 'at in ane o' his gran'est verses cud haiver aboot the birth o'
a yoong airthquack! -- losh! to think o' 't growin' an auld
airthquack! -- haith, to me it's no up till a deuk-quack! -- sic a poet
micht weel, I grant ye, be he ever sic a guid poet whan he tuik heed
to what he said, he micht weel, I say, blether nonsense aboot the
sea warrin' again' the rocks, an' sic stuff."
"But don't you see them?" said Fergus, pointing to a great billow
that fell back at the moment, and lay churning in the gulf beneath
them. "Are they not in fact wasting the rocks away by slow degrees?"
"What comes o' yer seemile than, anent the vainity o' their
endeevour? But that's no what I'm carin' aboot. What I mainteen
is, 'at though they div weir awa' the rocks, that's nae mair their
design nor it's the design o' a yewky owse to kill the tree whan he
rubs hit's skin an' his ain aff thegither."
"Tut! nobody ever means, when he personifies the powers of nature,
that they know what they are about."
"The mair necessar' till attreebute till them naething but their
rale design."
"If they don't know what they are about, how can you be so foolish
as talk of their design?"
"Ilka thing has a design, -- an' gien it dinna ken't itsel', that's
jist whaur yer true an' lawfu' personification comes in. There's no
rizon 'at a poet sudna attreebute till a thing as a conscious design
that which lies at the verra heart o' 'ts bein', the design for
which it's there. That an' no ither sud determine the
personification ye gie a thing -- for that's the trowth o' the thing.
Eh, man, Fergus! the jaws is fechtin' wi' nae rocks. They're jist
at their pairt in a gran' cleansin' hermony. They're at their
hoosemaid's wark, day an' nicht, to haud the warl' clean, an' gran'
an' bonnie they sing at it. Gien I was you, I wadna tell fowk any
sic nonsense as yon; I wad tell them 'at ilk ane 'at disna dee his
wark i' the warl', an' dee 't the richt gait, 's no the worth o' a
minnin, no to say a whaul, for ilk ane o' thae wee craturs dis the
wull o' him 'at made 'im wi' ilka whisk o' his bit tailie, fa'in' in
wi' a' the jabble o' the jaws again' the rocks, for it's a' ae
thing -- an' a' to haud the muckle sea clean. An' sae whan I lie i'
my bed, an' a' at ance there comes a wee soughie o' win' i' my face,
an' I luik up an' see it was naething but the wings o' a flittin'
flee, I think wi' mysel' hoo a' the curses are but blessin's 'at ye
dinna see intill, an' hoo ilka midge, an' flee, an' muckle dronin'
thing 'at gangs aboot singin' bass, no to mention the doos an' the
mairtins an' the craws an' the kites an' the oolets an' the muckle
aigles an' the butterflees, is a' jist haudin' the air gauin' 'at
ilka defilin' thing may be weel turnt ower, an' brunt clean. That's
the best I got oot o' my cheemistry last session. An' fain wad I
haud air an' watter in motion aboot me, an' sae serve my
en' -- whether by waggin' wi' my wings or whiskin' wi' my tail. Eh!
it's jist won'erfu'. Its a' ae gran' consortit confusion o' hermony
an' order; an' what maks the confusion is only jist 'at a' thing's
workin' an' naething sits idle. But awa! wi' the nonsense o' ae
thing worryin' an' fechtin' at anither! -- no till ye come to beasts
an' fowk, an' syne ye hae eneuch o' 't."
All the time Fergus had been poking the point of his stick into the
ground, a smile of superiority curling his lip.
"I hope, ladies, our wits are not quite swept away in this flood of
Doric," he said.
"You have a poor opinion of the stability of our brains, Mr. Duff,"
said Mrs. Sclater.
"I was only judging by myself," he replied, a little put out. "I
can't say I understood our friend here. Did you?"
"Perfectly," answered Mrs. Sclater.
At that moment came a thunderous wave with a great bowff into the
hollow at the end of the gully on whose edge they stood.
"There's your housemaid's broom, Donal!" said Ginevra.
They all laughed.
"Everything depends on how you look at a thing," said Fergus, and
said no more -- inwardly resolving, however, to omit from his sermon a
certain sentence about the idle waves dashing themselves to ruin on
the rocks they would destroy, and to work in something instead about
the winds of the winter tossing the snow. A pause followed.
"Well, this is Saturday, and tomorrow is my work-day, you know,
ladies," he said. "If you would oblige me with your address, Miss
Galbraith, I should do myself the honour of calling on Mr.
Galbraith."
Ginevra told him where they lived, but added she was afraid he must
not expect to see her father, for he had been out of health lately,
and would see nobody.
"At all events I shall give myself the chance," he rejoined, and
bidding the ladies good-bye, and nodding to the youths, turned and
walked away.
For some time there was silence. At length Donal spoke.
"Poor Fergus!" he said with a little sigh. "He's a good-natured
creature, and was a great help to me; but when I think of him a
preacher, I seem to see an Egyptian priest standing on the threshold
of the great door at Ipsambul, blowing with all his might to keep
out the Libyan desert; and the four great stone gods, sitting behind
the altar, far back in the gloom, laughing at him."
Then Ginevra asked him something which led to a good deal of talk
about the true and false in poetry, and made Mrs. Sclater feel it
was not for nothing she had befriended the lad from the hills in the
strange garments. And she began to think whether her husband might
not be brought to take a higher view of his calling.
On Monday Fergus went to pay his visit to Mr. Galbraith. As Ginevra
had said, her father did not appear, but Fergus was far from
disappointed. He had taken it into his head that Miss Galbraith
sided with him when that ill-bred fellow made his rude, not to say
ungrateful, attack upon him, and was much pleased to have a talk
with her. Ginevra thought it would not be right to cherish against
him the memory of the one sin of his youth in her eyes, but she
could not like him. She did not know why, but the truth was, she
felt, without being able to identify, his unreality: she thought it
was because, both in manners and in dress, so far as the custom of
his calling would permit, he was that unpleasant phenomenon, a fine
gentleman. She had never heard him preach, or she would have liked
him still less; for he was an orator wilful and prepense, choice of
long words, fond of climaxes, and always aware of the points at
which he must wave his arm, throw forward his hands, wipe his eyes
with the finest of large cambric handkerchiefs. As it was, she was
heartily tired of him before he went, and when he was gone, found,
as she sat with her father, that she could not recall a word he had
said. As to what had made the fellow stay so long, she was
therefore positively unable to give her father an answer; the
consequence of which was, that, the next time he called, Mr.
Galbraith, much to her relief, stood the brunt of his approach, and
received him. The ice thus broken, his ingratiating manners, and
the full-blown respect he showed Mr. Galbraith, enabling the weak
man to feel himself, as of old, every inch a laird, so won upon him
that, when he took his leave, he gave him a cordial invitation to
repeat his visit.
He did so, in the evening this time, and remembering a predilection
of the laird's, begged for a game of backgammon. The result of his
policy was, that, of many weeks that followed, every Monday evening
at least he spent with the laird. Ginevra was so grateful to him
for his attention to her father, and his efforts to draw him out of
his gloom, that she came gradually to let a little light of favour
shine upon him. And if the heart of Fergus Duff was drawn to her,
that is not to be counted to him a fault -- neither that, his heart
thus drawn, he should wish to marry her. Had she been still heiress
of Glashruach, he dared not have dreamed of such a thing, but,
noting the humble condition to which they were reduced, the growing
familiarity of the father, and the friendliness of the daughter, he
grew very hopeful, and more anxious than ever to secure the
presentation to the North church, which was in the gift of the city.
He could easily have got a rich wife, but he was more greedy of
distinction than of money, and to marry the daughter of the man to
whom he had been accustomed in childhood to look up as the greatest
in the known world, was in his eyes like a patent of nobility, would
be a ratification of his fitness to mingle with the choice of the
land.
Prev
| Next
| Contents
|
|
|