CHAPTER VIII
A New Schoolmistress
“But, Ranald,” my father continued, “what are we to do about the reading? I fear I have let you go too long. I didn’t want to make learning a burden to you, and I don’t approve of children learning to read too soon; but really, at your age, you know, it is time you were beginning. I have time to teach you some things, but I can’t teach you everything. I have got to read a great deal and think a great deal, and go about my parish a good deal. And your brother Tom has heavy lessons to learn at school, and I have to help him. So what’s to be done, Ranald, my boy? You can’t go to the parish school before you’ve learned your letters.”
“There’s Kirsty, papa,” I suggested.
“Yes; there’s Kirsty,” he returned with a sly smile. “Kirsty can do everything, can’t she?”
“She can speak Gaelic,” I said with a tone of triumph, bringing her rarest accomplishment to the forefront.
“I wish you could speak Gaelic,” said my father, thinking of his wife, I believe, whose mother tongue it was. “But that is not what you want most to learn. Do you think Kirsty could teach you to read English?”
“Yes, I do.”
My father again meditated.
“Let us go and ask her,” he said at length, taking my hand.
I capered with delight, nor ceased my capering till we stood on Kirsty’s earthen floor. I think I see her now, dusting one of her deal chairs, as white as soap and sand could make it, for the minister to sit on. She never called him the master, but always the minister. She was a great favourite with my father, and he always behaved as a visitor in her house.
“Well, Kirsty,” he said, after the first salutations were over, “have you any objection to turn schoolmistress?”
“I should make a poor hand at that,” she answered, with a smile to me which showed she guessed what my father wanted. “But if it were to teach Master Ranald there, I should like dearly to try what I could do.”
She never omitted the Master to our names; Mrs. Mitchell by no chance prefixed it. The natural manners of the Celt and Saxon are almost diametrically opposed in Scotland. And had Kirsty’s speech been in the coarse dialect of Mrs. Mitchell, I am confident my father would not have allowed her to teach me. But Kirsty did not speak a word of Scotch, and although her English was a little broken and odd, being formed somewhat after Gaelic idioms, her tone was pure and her phrases were refined. The matter was very speedily settled between them.
“And if you want to beat him, Kirsty, you can beat him in Gaelic, and then he won’t feel it,” said my father, trying after a joke, which was no common occurrence with him, whereupon Kirsty and I laughed in great contentment.
The fact was, Kirsty had come to the manse with my mother, and my father was attached to her for the sake of his wife as well as for her own, and Kirsty would have died for the minister or any one of his boys. All the devotion a Highland woman has for the chief of her clan, Kirsty had for my father, not to mention the reverence due to the minister.
After a little chat about the cows and the calves, my father rose, saying—
“Then I’ll just make him over to you, Kirsty. Do you think you can manage without letting it interfere with your work, though?”
“Oh yes, sir—well that! I shall soon have him reading to me while I’m busy about. If he doesn’t know the word, he can spell it, and then I shall know it—at least if it’s not longer than Hawkie’s tail.”
Hawkie was a fine milker, with a bad temper, and a comically short tail. It had got chopped off by some accident when she was a calf.
“There’s something else short about Hawkie—isn’t there, Kirsty?” said my father.
“And Mrs. Mitchell,” I suggested, thinking to help Kirsty to my father’s meaning.
“Come, come, young gentleman! We don’t want your remarks,” said my father pleasantly.
“Why, papa, you told me so yourself, just before we came up.”
“Yes, I did; but I did not mean you to repeat it. What if Kirsty were to go and tell Mrs. Mitchell?”
Kirsty made no attempt at protestation. She knew well enough that my father knew there was no danger. She only laughed, and I, seeing Kirsty satisfied, was satisfied also, and joined in the laugh.
The result was that before many weeks were over, Allister and wee Davie were Kirsty’s pupils also, Allister learning to read, and wee Davie to sit still, which was the hardest task within his capacity. They were free to come or keep away, but not to go: if they did come, Kirsty insisted on their staying out the lesson. It soon became a regular thing. Every morning in summer we might be seen perched on a form, under one of the tiny windows, in that delicious brown light which you seldom find but in an old clay-floored cottage. In a fir-wood I think you have it; and I have seen it in an old castle; but best of all in the house of mourning in an Arab cemetery. In the winter, we seated ourselves round the fire—as near it as Kirsty’s cooking operations, which were simple enough, admitted. It was delightful to us boys, and would have been amusing to anyone, to see how Kirsty behaved when Mrs. Mitchell found occasion to pay her a visit during lesson hours. She knew her step and darted to the door. Not once did she permit her to enter. She was like a hen with her chickens.
“No, you’ll not come in just now, Mrs. Mitchell,” she would say, as the housekeeper attempted to pass. “You know we’re busy.”
“I want to hear how they’re getting on.”
“You can try them at home,” Kirsty would answer.
We always laughed at the idea of our reading to her. Once I believe she heard the laugh, for she instantly walked away, and I do not remember that she ever came again.
CHAPTER IX
We Learn Other Things
We were more than ever at the farm now. During the summer, from the time we got up till the time we went to bed, we seldom approached the manse. I have heard it hinted that my father neglected us. But that can hardly be, seeing that then his word was law to us, and now I regard his memory as the symbol of the love unspeakable. My elder brother Tom always had his meals with him, and sat at his lessons in the study. But my father did not mind the younger ones running wild, so long as there was a Kirsty for them to run to; and indeed the men also were not only friendly to us, but careful over us. No doubt we were rather savage, very different in our appearance from town-bred children, who are washed and dressed every time they go out for a walk: that we should have considered not merely a hardship, but an indignity. To be free was all our notion of a perfect existence. But my father’s rebuke was awful indeed, if he found even the youngest guilty of untruth, or cruelty, or injustice. At all kinds of escapades, not involving disobedience, he smiled, except indeed there were too much danger, when he would warn and limit.
A town boy may wonder what we could find to amuse us all day long; but the fact is almost everything was an amusement, seeing that when we could not take a natural share in what was going on, we generally managed to invent some collateral employment fictitiously related to it. But he must not think of our farm as at all like some great farm he may happen to know in England; for there was nothing done by machinery on the place. There may be great pleasure in watching machine-operations, but surely none to equal the pleasure we had. If there had been a steam engine to plough my father’s fields, how could we have ridden home on its back in the evening? To ride the horses home from the plough was a triumph. Had there been a thrashing- machine, could its pleasures have been comparable to that of lying in the straw and watching the grain dance from the sheaves under the skilful flails of the two strong men who belaboured them? There was a winnowing-machine, but quite a tame one, for its wheel I could drive myself—the handle now high as my head, now low as my knee—and watch at the same time the storm of chaff driven like drifting snowflakes from its wide mouth. Meantime the oat-grain was flowing in a silent slow stream from the shelving hole in the other side, and the wind, rushing through the opposite doors, aided the winnower by catching at the expelled chaff, and carrying it yet farther apart. I think I see old Eppie now, filling her sack with what the wind blew her; not with the grain: Eppie did not covet that; she only wanted her bed filled with fresh springy chaff, on which she would sleep as sound as her rheumatism would let her, and as warm and dry and comfortable as any duchess in the land that happened to have the rheumatism too. For comfort is inside more than outside; and eider down, delicious as it is, has less to do with it than some people fancy. How I wish all the poor people in the great cities could have good chaff beds to lie upon! Let me see: what more machines are there now? More than I can tell. I saw one going in the fields the other day, at the use of which I could only guess. Strange, wild-looking, mad-like machines, as the Scotch would call them, are growling and snapping, and clinking and clattering over our fields, so that it seems to an old boy as if all the sweet poetic twilight of things were vanishing from the country; but he reminds himself that God is not going to sleep, for, as one of the greatest poets that ever lived says, he slumbereth not nor sleepeth; and the children of the earth are his, and he will see that their imaginations and feelings have food enough and to spare. It is his business this—not ours. So the work must be done as well as it can. Then, indeed, there will be no fear of the poetry.
I have just alluded to the pleasure of riding the horses, that is, the work-horses: upon them Allister and I began to ride, as far as I can remember, this same summer—not from the plough, for the ploughing was in the end of the year and the spring. First of all we were allowed to take them at watering-time, watched by one of the men, from the stable to the long trough that stood under the pump. There, going hurriedly and stopping suddenly, they would drop head and neck and shoulders like a certain toy-bird, causing the young riders a vague fear of falling over the height no longer defended by the uplifted crest; and then drink and drink till the riders’ legs felt the horses’ bodies swelling under them; then up and away with quick refreshed stride or trot towards the paradise of their stalls. But for us came first the somewhat fearful pass of the stable door, for they never stopped, like better educated horses, to let their riders dismount, but walked right in, and there was just room, by stooping low, to clear the top of the door. As we improved in equitation, we would go afield, to ride them home from the pasture, where they were fastened by chains to short stakes of iron driven into the earth. There was more of adventure here, for not only was the ride longer, but the horses were more frisky, and would sometimes set off at the gallop. Then the chief danger was again the door, lest they should dash in, and knock knees against posts and heads against lintels, for we had only halters to hold them with. But after I had once been thrown from back to neck, and from neck to ground in a clumsy but wild gallop extemporized by Dobbin, I was raised to the dignity of a bridle, which I always carried with me when we went to fetch them. It was my father’s express desire that until we could sit well on the bare back we should not be allowed a saddle. It was a whole year before I was permitted to mount his little black riding mare, called Missy. She was old, it is true—nobody quite knew how old she was—but if she felt a light weight on her back, either the spirit of youth was contagious, or she fancied herself as young as when she thought nothing of twelve stone, and would dart off like the wind. In after years I got so found of her, that I would stand by her side flacking the flies from her as she grazed; and when I tired of that, would clamber upon her back, and lie there reading my book, while she plucked on and ground and mashed away at the grass as if nobody were near her.
Then there was the choice, if nothing else were found more attractive, of going to the field where the cattle were grazing. Oh! the rich hot summer afternoons among the grass and the clover, the little lamb-daisies, and the big horse-daisies, with the cattle feeding solemnly, but one and another straying now to the corn, now to the turnips, and recalled by stern shouts, or, if that were unavailing, by vigorous pursuit and even blows! If I had been able to think of a mother at home, I should have been perfectly happy. Not that I missed her then; I had lost her too young for that. I mean that the memory of the time wants but that to render it perfect in bliss. Even in the cold days of spring, when, after being shut up all the winter, the cattle were allowed to revel again in the springing grass and the venturesome daisies, there was pleasure enough in the company and devices of the cowherd, a freckle-faced, white-haired, weak-eyed boy of ten, named—I forget his real name: we always called him Turkey, because his nose was the colour of a turkey’s egg. Who but Turkey knew mushrooms from toadstools? Who but Turkey could detect earth-nuts—and that with the certainty of a truffle-hunting dog? Who but Turkey knew the note and the form and the nest and the eggs of every bird in the country? Who but Turkey, with his little whip and its lash of brass wire, would encounter the angriest bull in Christendom, provided he carried, like the bulls of Scotland, his most sensitive part, the nose, foremost? In our eyes Turkey was a hero. Who but Turkey could discover the nests of hens whose maternal anxiety had eluded the finesse of Kirsty? and who so well as he could roast the egg with which she always rewarded such a discovery? Words are feeble before the delight we experienced on such an occasion, when Turkey, proceeding to light a fire against one of the earthen walls which divided the fields, would send us abroad to gather sticks and straws and whatever outcast combustibles we could find, of which there was a great scarcity, there being no woods or hedges within reach. Who like Turkey could rob a wild bee’s nest? And who could be more just than he in distributing the luscious prize? In fine, his accomplishments were innumerable. Short of flying, we believed him capable of everything imaginable.
What rendered him yet dearer to us, was that there was enmity between him and Mrs. Mitchell. It came about in this way. Although a good milker, and therefore of necessity a good feeder, Hawkie was yet upon temptation subject to the inroads of an unnatural appetite. When she found a piece of an old shoe in the field, she would, if not compelled to drop the delicious mouthful, go on, the whole morning or afternoon, in the impossibility of a final deglutition, chewing and chewing at the savoury morsel. Should this have happened, it was in vain for Turkey to hope escape from the discovery of his inattention, for the milk-pail would that same evening or next morning reveal the fact to Kirsty’s watchful eyes. But fortunately for us, in so far as it was well to have an ally against our only enemy, Hawkie’s morbid craving was not confined to old shoes. One day when the cattle were feeding close by the manse, she found on the holly-hedge which surrounded it, Mrs. Mitchell’s best cap, laid out to bleach in the sun. It was a tempting morsel—more susceptible of mastication than shoe-leather. Mrs. Mitchell, who had gone for another freight of the linen with which she was sprinkling the hedge, arrived only in time to see the end of one of its long strings gradually disappearing into Hawkie’s mouth on its way after the rest of the cap, which had gone the length of the string farther. With a wild cry of despair she flew at Hawkie, so intent on the stolen delicacy as to be more open to a surprise than usual, and laying hold of the string, drew from her throat the deplorable mass of pulp to which she had reduced the valued gaud. The same moment Turkey, who had come running at her cry, received full in his face the slimy and sloppy extract. Nor was this all, for Mrs. Mitchell flew at him in her fury, and with an outburst of abuse boxed his ears soundly, before he could recover his senses sufficiently to run for it. The degradation of this treatment had converted Turkey into an enemy before ever he knew that we also had good grounds for disliking her. His opinion concerning her was freely expressed to us if to no one else, generally in the same terms. He said she was as bad as she was ugly, and always spoke of her as the old witch.
But what brought Turkey and us together more than anything else, was that he was as fond of Kirsty’s stories as we were; and in the winter especially we would sit together in the evening, as I have already said, round her fire and the great pot upon it full of the most delicious potatoes, while Kirsty knitted away vigorously at her blue broad-ribbed stockings, and kept a sort of time to her story with the sound of her needles. When the story flagged, the needles went slower; in the more animated passages they would become invisible for swiftness, save for a certain shimmering flash that hovered about her fingers like a dim electric play; but as the story approached some crisis, their motion would at one time become perfectly frantic, at another cease altogether, as finding the subject beyond their power of accompanying expression. When they ceased, we knew that something awful indeed was at hand.
In my next chapter I will give a specimen of her stories, choosing one which bears a little upon an after adventure.
CHAPTER X
Sir Worm Wymble
It was a snowy evening in the depth of winter. Kirsty had promised to tell us the tale of the armed knight who lay in stone upon the tomb in the church; but the snow was so deep, that Mrs. Mitchell, always glad when nature put it in her power to exercise her authority in a way disagreeable to us, had refused to let the little ones go out all day. Therefore Turkey and I, when the darkness began to grow thick enough, went prowling and watching about the manse until we found an opportunity when she was out of the way. The moment this occurred we darted into the nursery, which was on the ground floor, and catching up my two brothers, I wee Davie, he Allister, we hoisted them on our backs and rushed from the house. It was snowing. It came down in huge flakes, but although it was only half-past four o’clock, they did not show any whiteness, for there was no light to shine upon them. You might have thought there had been mud in the cloud they came from, which had turned them all a dark grey. How the little ones did enjoy it, spurring their horses with suppressed laughter, and urging us on lest the old witch should hear and overtake us! But it was hard work for one of the horses, and that was myself. Turkey scudded away with his load, and made nothing of it; but wee Davie pulled so hard with his little arms round my neck, especially when he was bobbing up and down to urge me on, half in delight, half in terror, that he nearly choked me; while if I went one foot off the scarcely beaten path, I sunk deep in the fresh snow.
“Doe on, doe on, Yanal!” cried Davie; and Yanal did his very best, but was only halfway to the farm, when Turkey came bounding back to take Davie from him. In a few moments we had shaken the snow off our shoes and off Davie’s back, and stood around Kirsty’s “booful baze”, as Davie called the fire. Kirsty seated herself on one side with Davie on her lap, and we three got our chairs as near her as we could, with Turkey, as the valiant man of the party, farthest from the centre of safety, namely Kirsty, who was at the same time to be the source of all the delightful horror. I may as well say that I do not believe Kirsty’s tale had the remotest historical connection with Sir Worm Wymble, if that was anything like the name of the dead knight. It was an old Highland legend, which she adorned with the flowers of her own Celtic fancy, and swathed around the form so familiar to us all.
“There is a pot in the Highlands,” began Kirsty, “not far from our house, at the bottom of a little glen. It is not very big, but fearfully deep; so deep that they do say there is no bottom to it.”
“An iron pot, Kirsty?” asked Allister.
“No, goosey,” answered Kirsty. “A pot means a great hole full of water—black, black, and deep, deep.”
“Oh!” remarked Allister, and was silent.
“Well, in this pot there lived a kelpie.”
“What’s a kelpie, Kirsty?” again interposed Allister, who in general asked all the necessary questions and at least as many unnecessary.
“A kelpie is an awful creature that eats people.”
“But what is it like, Kirsty?”
“It’s something like a horse, with a head like a cow.”
“How big is it? As big as Hawkie?”
“Bigger than Hawkie; bigger than the biggest ox you ever saw.”
“Has it a great mouth?”
“Yes, a terrible mouth.”
“With teeth?”
“Not many, but dreadfully big ones.”
“Oh!”
“Well, there was a shepherd many years ago, who lived not far from the pot. He was a knowing man, and understood all about kelpies and brownies and fairies. And he put a branch of the rowan-tree (mountain-ash), with the red berries in it, over the door of his cottage, so that the kelpie could never come in.
“Now, the shepherd had a very beautiful daughter—so beautiful that the kelpie wanted very much to eat her. I suppose he had lifted up his head out of the pot some day and seen her go past, but he could not come out of the pot except after the sun was down.”
“Why?” asked Allister.
“I don’t know. It was the nature of the beast. His eyes couldn’t bear the light, I suppose; but he could see in the dark quite well.—One night the girl woke suddenly, and saw his great head looking in at her window.”
“But how could she see him when it was dark?” said Allister.
“His eyes were flashing so that they lighted up all his head,” answered Kirsty.
“But he couldn’t get in!”
“No; he couldn’t get in. He was only looking in, and thinking how he should like to eat her. So in the morning she told her father. And her father was very frightened, and told her she must never be out one moment after the sun was down. And for a long time the girl was very careful. And she had need to be; for the creature never made any noise, but came up as quiet as a shadow. One afternoon, however, she had gone to meet her lover a little way down the glen; and they stopped talking so long, about one thing and another, that the sun was almost set before she bethought herself. She said good-night at once, and ran for home. Now she could not reach home without passing the pot, and just as she passed the pot, she saw the last sparkle of the sun as he went down.”
“I should think she ran!” remarked our mouthpiece, Allister.
“She did run,” said Kirsty, “and had just got past the awful black pot, which was terrible enough day or night without such a beast in it, when—”
“But there was the beast in it,” said Allister.
“When,” Kirsty went on without heeding him, “she heard a great whish of water behind her. That was the water tumbling off the beast’s back as he came up from the bottom. If she ran before, she flew now. And the worst of it was that she couldn’t hear him behind her, so as to tell whereabouts he was. He might be just opening his mouth to take her every moment. At last she reached the door, which her father, who had gone out to look for her, had set wide open that she might run in at once; but all the breath was out of her body, and she fell down flat just as she got inside.”
Here Allister jumped from his seat, clapping his hands and crying—
“Then the kelpie didn’t eat her!—Kirsty! Kirsty!”
“No. But as she fell, one foot was left outside the threshold, so that the rowan branch could not take care of it. And the beast laid hold of the foot with his great mouth, to drag her out of the cottage and eat her at his leisure.”
Here Allister’s face was a picture to behold! His hair was almost standing on end, his mouth was open, and his face as white as my paper.
“Make haste, Kirsty,” said Turkey, “or Allister will go in a fit.”
“But her shoe came off in his mouth, and she drew in her foot and was safe.”
Allister’s hair subsided. He drew a deep breath, and sat down again. But Turkey must have been a very wise or a very unimaginative Turkey, for here he broke in with—
“I don’t believe a word of it, Kirsty.”
“What!” said Kirsty—“don’t believe it!”
“No. She lost her shoe in the mud. It was some wild duck she heard in the pot, and there was no beast after her. She never saw it, you know.”
“She saw it look in at her window.”
“Yes, yes. That was in the middle of the night. I’ve seen as much myself when I waked up in the middle of the night. I took a rat for a tiger once.”
Kirsty was looking angry, and her needles were going even faster than when she approached the climax of the shoe.
“Hold your tongue, Turkey,” I said, “and let us hear the rest of the story.”
But Kirsty kept her eyes on her knitting, and did not resume.
“Is that all, Kirsty?” said Allister.
Still Kirsty returned no answer. She needed all her force to overcome the anger she was busy stifling. For it would never do for one in her position to lose her temper because of the unbelieving criticism of a herd-boy. It was a curious instance of the electricity flashed out in the confluence of unlike things—the Celtic faith and the Saxon works. For anger is just the electric flash of the mind, and requires to have its conductor of common sense ready at hand. After a few moments she began again as if she had never stopped and no remarks had been made, only her voice trembled a little at first.
“Her father came home soon after, in great distress, and there he found her lying just within the door. He saw at once how it was, and his anger was kindled against her lover more than the beast. Not that he had any objection to her going to meet him; for although he was a gentleman and his daughter only a shepherd’s daughter, they were both of the blood of the MacLeods.”
This was Kirsty’s own clan. And indeed I have since discovered that the original legend on which her story was founded belongs to the island of Rasay, from which she came.
“But why was he angry with the gentleman?” asked Allister.
“Because he liked her company better than he loved herself,” said Kirsty. “At least that was what the shepherd said, and that he ought to have seen her safe home. But he didn’t know that MacLeod’s father had threatened to kill him if ever he spoke to the girl again.”
“But,” said Allister, “I thought it was about Sir Worm Wymble—not Mr. MacLeod.”
“Sure, boy, and am I not going to tell you how he got the new name of him?” returned Kirsty, with an eagerness that showed her fear lest the spirit of inquiry should spread. “He wasn’t Sir Worm Wymble then. His name was—”
Here she paused a moment, and looked full at Allister.
“His name was Allister—Allister MacLeod.”
“Allister!” exclaimed my brother, repeating the name as an incredible coincidence.
“Yes, Allister,” said Kirsty. “There’s been many an Allister, and not all of them MacLeods, that did what they ought to do, and didn’t know what fear was. And you’ll be another, my bonnie Allister, I hope,” she added, stroking the boy’s hair.
Allister’s face flushed with pleasure. It was long before he asked another question.
“Well, as I say,” resumed Kirsty, “the father of her was very angry, and said she should never go and meet Allister again. But the girl said she ought to go once and let him know why she could not come any more; for she had no complaint to make of Allister; and she had agreed to meet him on a certain day the week after; and there was no post-office in those parts. And so she did meet him, and told him all about it. And Allister said nothing much then. But next day he came striding up to the cottage, at dinner-time, with his claymore (gladius major) at one side, his dirk at the other, and his little skene dubh (black knife) in his stocking. And he was grand to see—such a big strong gentleman I And he came striding up to the cottage where the shepherd was sitting at his dinner.
“‘Angus MacQueen,’ says he, ‘I understand the kelpie in the pot has been rude to your Nellie. I am going to kill him.’ ‘How will you do that, sir?’ said Angus, quite short, for he was the girl’s father. ‘Here’s a claymore I could put in a peck,’ said Allister, meaning it was such good steel that he could bend it round till the hilt met the point without breaking; ‘and here’s a shield made out of the hide of old Rasay’s black bull; and here’s a dirk made of a foot and a half of an old Andrew Ferrara; and here’s a skene dubh that I’ll drive through your door, Mr. Angus. And so we’re fitted, I hope.’ ‘Not at all,’ said Angus, who as I told you was a wise man and a knowing; ‘not one bit,’ said Angus. ‘The kelpie’s hide is thicker than three bull-hides, and none of your weapons would do more than mark it.’ ‘What am I to do then, Angus, for kill him I will somehow?’ ‘I’ll tell you what to do; but it needs a brave man to do that.’ ‘And do you think I’m not brave enough for that, Angus?’ ‘I know one thing you are not brave enough for.’ ‘And what’s that?’ said Allister, and his face grew red, only he did not want to anger Nelly’s father. ‘You’re not brave enough to marry my girl in the face of the clan,’ said Angus. ‘But you shan’t go on this way. If my Nelly’s good enough to talk to in the glen, she’s good enough to lead into the hall before the ladies and gentlemen.’
“Then Allister’s face grew redder still, but not with anger, and he held down his head before the old man, but only for a few moments. When he lifted it again, it was pale, not with fear but with resolution, for he had made up his mind like a gentleman. ‘Mr. Angus MacQueen,’ he said, ‘will you give me your daughter to be my wife?’ ‘If you kill the kelpie, I will,’ answered Angus; for he knew that the man who could do that would be worthy of his Nelly.”