Chapter Twenty Three
The Wanderer’s Return
“Dear land of my birth, far from thee have I been,
By streamlets so flowery and valleys so green,
In vain seeking fortune; but still as of yore
The home of my heart is the Vale of Strathmore.”
Old Scottish Song.
Scene: Sunset on the sea. So close to the ocean is the old castle built that, looking from the window which almost overhangs it, nothing else can be seen but the golden-tipped waves, golden-tipped even to the far-off horizon, and breaking with pleasing murmur on the beach beneath. The mountains that rise inland from the castle are either wholly green, or patched with purple heather. In a room overlooking the sea, in high-backed cushioned chair, sits a lady, – but little past the prime of life, perhaps, though her hair is like the snow. Her face is very pleasant to behold, so calm and resigned is it. Near her on a stool a maid is reading to her.
“I think now, Mary,” said the lady at last, “it is time to order tea.”
Mary, a modest, wee Highland maiden, rose, and quietly retired.
As she opened the door a great black-as-jet Newfoundland came bounding in, all white teeth and eager eyes. He went straight away, and placed his head on his mistress’s lap, and was gently caressed.
“Where have you been, Bran?” she said. “Not in the sea at this time of night? But you do go in sometimes later, you know, and then hie away to the kitchen, sly dog, to get your coat dried before you come to see me.”
Mary tapped at the door and entered. Her face was bright with pleasure.
“Oh! Mrs McGregor,” she said, “Mr Smith has come by steamer from Oban!”
Mrs McGregor’s face assumed an expression of great seriousness.
“Oh!” she cried, “I trust it is no bad news he brings about my brother.”
“No, no,” the girl hastened to say; “he bade me tell you it was all a visit of pleasure. I showed him to the old room, and he will be here in a few minutes.”
Mr Smith, I may tell the reader, was family solicitor to Mrs McGregor’s brother, in whose house she had resided since her husband’s death. The solicitor lived in London, but not unfrequently ran down to enjoy the sea or the land sport, so easily obtained in this lone but lovely isle of the Hebrides.
“Surprised to see me, Mrs McGregor?” said the gentleman, as he shook hands and sat down. “Hope I didn’t frighten you much? Just ran down from town to get a mouthful of sea-air. Been rather overworked of late. Tea, did you say? Yes, with pleasure, but Mary must really bring me something substantial to go along with it. My journey has made me hungry.”
“And you have seen my brother?”
“Only two days ago, and he is looking hale and hearty, and hopes to return in a week.”
“Well, Mr Smith, you must stay here till he returns.”
“It is doubtful if I can; business, you know, business. What a lovely sunset, to be sure! Bodes a fine day to-morrow I should think.”
“You seem happy, Mr Smith?”
“I feel as fresh as a daisy.”
“And yet, but a minute ago, you hinted at being fagged by over-work.”
“Oh!” replied the solicitor, shaking his head, “that was before I left town. Bless you, madam, two gulps of Highland air set me on my legs again at any time.”
The two chatted very pleasantly together over the evening meal; but towards the end of it Mr Smith managed adroitly to turn the conversation to bygone times.
“I seem to sadden you though,” he said.
“Oh! no: I’m resigned to everything now. My time will not be very long, and I know the good God in whom I trust has done all for the best. But the loss of my son was a great blow; then my husband’s death.”
“Why, Mrs McGregor, do you make that distinction? You talk of your husband’s death, but always speak of poor Harvey’s loss.”
“Because, Mr Smith, I saw my husband die; my son went away, and ah! foolish though it may be, I cherish half a hope he may yet return to close his mother’s eyes.”
“Well, well, I daresay stranger things may have happened,” said the solicitor, thoughtfully looking and pretending to read a fortune in the grounds of his tea-cup.
Now, the fact is, that no sooner had Harvey McGregor left Mr Steve’s than he had hurried up to town, and called on Mr Smith, the only man-at-law he knew. He speedily convinced that gentleman of his identity, and got his mother’s address. Heedless Harvey would have hurried away home – as he called it – at once, but wise Mr Smith would not hear of it.
“Come a day after me,” he had advised. “I’ll go down and break the news, for, don’t you know, my boy, that joy can kill?”
Hence Mr Smith’s present visit to the old castle.
“Whose fortune are you trying to read in that tea-cup?” said Mrs McGregor, with a strange ring in her voice, a strange sparkle in her eye. “Give me the cup,” she added.
She turned it round and round.
“I see,” she said; “my boy’s barques sailing everywhere over the world. Sometimes they are wrecked, but he is never drowned. I see the prows of these ships pointing everywhere, but never homeward. My boy is proud. Ah I at last here comes one, and my boy, my boy is in it!”
She almost dashed down the cup as she spoke, and sprang to her feet. “Smith,” she cried, “you cannot deceive me; there is something in my breast, born of a mother’s love, that tells me Harvey has come.”
Mr Smith hummed and haa’ed, as the saying is, and muttered something about a letter.
“No, no, no,” she cried; “you only thought you ought to break the news gently to me, but I saw strange joy in your eye as soon as you entered. Now, dear Mr Smith, I appreciate all your kindness, but you see I can bear joy as well as grief. Tell me all about it.”
And the solicitor did so. At the conclusion she took out her handkerchief, and sobbed just a little.
Then she abruptly rose and left the room.
Mr Smith said never a word. He knew she had gone to pray.
Next evening they were seated together – mother and son – mother and “prodigal son,” as Harvey would persist in calling himself.
Mr Smith respected their feelings. He went away to fish, and did not return till dinner-time.
But that evening the trio had much to talk about, many business matters to discuss.
“Alva shall return to its rightful owner,” exclaimed Mr Smith. “I’m determined on that, if Steve were nineteen times an American millionaire. It was sold for half, nay, but fourth its value. It was sold to pay London debts of honour forsooth. Turf and otherwise. Bah! The money shall be raised to repay Mr Steve, and out he shall go, as sure as I belong to the great family of Smith. I’ll employ London counsel that will astonish him. You’ll see I’ll do it. Can and shall. And I won’t let the grass grow under my feet either.”
Nor did the worthy solicitor.
He started for London the very next day, leaving Harvey and his mother alone.
Harvey felt, and almost looked, a boy again. He had so much to speak about, so much to tell of his hard adventurous life in search of fortune; and it is so pleasant to be listened to by one who loves you! No wonder Harvey McGregor felt happy. All the past blotted out and forgiven, all the future as hopeful as the past had been dark and oftentimes dismal.
With many, if not most, of his adventures, the reader is already familiar, but of his voyage home from New York I have said nothing.
Harvey then was possessed of some little money, and this he determined to convey home on his person. He might have had bills of exchange, but he was but little conversant with such aids to the transaction of business. Would he take it in gold and wear it in a waist-belt round his body? He was too old a sailor to do any such thing. For in event of being cast into the water he knew well that nothing sinks a man sooner than gold. It is the greed of gold, by the way, that sinks men on shore.
But Harvey knew the sight and feel of a crisp Bank of England note. He got these and sewed them into a waterproof bag, and this he put into a waist-belt, which he wore by night and by day.
He worked his passage home. He was no idler, and preferred work to play.
The vessel was a sailing ship, not a steamer, and bound for Glasgow. With fair winds she would fly across the wide Atlantic. And oh! how wide the Atlantic does seem to those who are homeward bound, I for one can tell from experience!
The winds were fair for a time; then they became baffling.
Often the Marianne, as she was called, had to lie to for days in a gale of wind; then fair weather would come again and all would be life and joy, fore and aft. Then round the wind would chop once more, and the sea wax fretful, angry, vicious, hitting the poor ship such vengeful blows, that she bent her head, and reeled and creaked in every timber.
Well, such is a seaman’s life in a sailing ship at almost any time, and Harvey would not have minded it a bit, only he was going home, and every day was precious.
Near the coast at long last. They would (d.v.) round the Mull of Cantyre in another day, then hurrah! and hurrah! for the beautiful Clyde.
But all at once the weather waxed dark and stormy, and the wind headed round. The glass came tumbling down, and at sunset things looked black and serious.
How the waves did dash and beat to be sure, and how the wind did rave and roar through the rigging and shrouds!
There was just a morsel of a moon, but it was seldom seen for the black drifting clouds. It must be nigh midnight, thought those storm-tossed sailors. All hands were on deck. No bells were struck, nor could a watch be looked at. Suddenly, during a temporary gleam of moonlight, a blacker cloud than any yet seen appeared on the horizon. Every old sailor knew what that cloud was – a wall of beetling cliffs.
“Ready about?”
Yes, but it was too late. Next moment she had struck with fearful violence, and reeling back tottered and began to sink.
Boat after boat was lowered, only to be smashed to pieces.
One was safely got away from the sinking ship, and steered for lights they could see to the left. A signal was fired. A blue light burned. Lights were seen waving on shore as if to encourage them.
They are close in shore, among the awful surf. Can they do it? The night got clearer far now. There was a good show of moonlight on the water and the light from the foam itself. When it seemed as almost impossible the boat could reach the shore, a dozen hardy fishermen rushed into the sea, the painter was thrown to them and grasped, and next moment they were safe, though wholly exhausted.
Morning broke immediately after, showing how much they had been mistaken in thinking it but midnight when the vessel struck. But time flies quickly, even in danger, when one is busy.
The shipwrecked men – the few saved – were kindly cared for. Harvey found himself inside a curious and humble dwelling, tended by the funniest little old man he had ever seen. The house was made out of a boat. The funny little old man was our old friend Duncan Reed.
Duncan, next day, told him a wondrous deal about the glen and about Kenneth’s old friends, all of which were duly chronicled in Harvey’s mind, and in due time found their way in writing to his comrades beyond the sea.
They say that possession is nine points of the law; this does not hold good, however, in the case, say, of a thief being caught with a dozen silver spoons in his pocket.
“Might is right” is another common saying, but neither the might of wealth nor the fact of his being in possession of the Alva estate prevented Mr Steve, the millionaire, having finally to leave it.
When the news of McGregor’s success came, the rejoicing in the clachan and the glens was such as had never been remembered before. Bonfires blazed on every hill. Lads and lasses danced, old men wrung each other by the hands, and old wives wept for joy.
Old Duncan is even reported to have danced a hornpipe.
Poor Duncan! he was offered a kindly home at the mansion of Alva.
“It is mindful of you, sir,” old Duncan replied, “but out o’ sight of the sea, out o’ hearin’ o’ the waves, Duncan wouldna live a week. I’ll lay my bones beside her soon.”
Chapter Twenty Four
In the “Fa’ o’ the Year.”
“’Mid pleasures and palaces where’er we may roam,
Be it ever so humble, there’s no place like home.”
Old Song.
“Fareweel, fareweel, my native hame,
Thy lonely glens and heath-clad mountains;
Fareweel thy fields o’ storied fame,
Thy leafy shaws and sparklin’ fountains.”
A. Hume.
Scene: Glen Alva. Down in the clachan and lowlands, and around the mansion house, the autumnal tints are on the trees; the chestnuts, the lime and the maples have turned a rich yellow, and soon the leaves will fall; but the elm and oak retain their sturdy green. So do the waving pines. High on the hillsides the heather still blooms. There is silence almost everywhere to-day. Silence on mountain and silence in forest. Only the sweet plaintive twitter of the robin is heard in garden and copse. He sings the dirge of the departed summer. It is indeed the “fa’ o’ the year.”
Time: Five years have elapsed since the date of the events described in last chapter.
In my humble opinion – and I daresay many coincide with me – the great poet never spoke truer words than these: —
“There’s a Divinity that shapes our lives, Rough-hew them as we will.”
Who could have thought that Harvey McGregor, with his fearless nature, his tameless spirit, and roaming disposition, would ever have settled down in quiet Glen Alva, or that Kenneth McAlpine would have developed into a farmer in the Far West.
But so, indeed, it was.
Ambition – well guided – is a noble thing. All my three heroes were ambitious. Harvey’s ambition, perhaps, was tinctured with some degree of pride. He fought long and manfully for fortune, and when he fell, he had the grace to own it. Kenneth’s and Archie’s ambition was more to be admired, and I love the man or boy who has a feeling of independence in his breast, and who, if he should fail in one line of life, turns cheerfully to another, with a determination to do his duty, and never give up. Dost remember the lines of the good poet Tupper? They are better than many a hymn, and may help to cheer you in hours when life seems dark and hopeless.
“Never give up! It is wiser and better
Always to hope, than once to despair;
Fling off the load of Doubt’s heavy fetter,
And break the dark spell of tyrannical Care.
Never give up! or the burden may sink you,
Providence kindly has mingled the cup;
And in all trials and troubles, bethink you,
The watchword of life must be, Never give up!
Never give up, there are chances and changes,
Helping the hopeful, a hundred to one,
And through the chaos High Wisdom arranges
Ever success, – if you’ll only hope on.
Never give up! for the wisest is boldest,
Knowing that Providence mingles the cup,
And of all maxims the best, as the oldest,
Is the true watchword of Never give up.”
Yes, ambition is a noble thing; yet it should not be a selfish ambition. Blessed is he who works and toils and struggles for the happiness of the masses, as well as for his own. Has not He Who spoke as never man spake left us a glorious example to follow – follow, if only afar off?
But now let us take a peep into the tartan parlour of Alva House, a peep at the fireside life of young Laird McGregor, on this quiet autumnal afternoon.
When we were introduced into this same parlour, we found it the scene of a revel, over which it is as well to draw the curtain of oblivion.
But now, here are seated Harvey McGregor and his young wife. Yes, he is married, and a babe has come to bless him, too.
Near the fire, in a high-backed chair, is Harvey’s mother. She looks very contented, and there are smiles chasing each other all round her lips and eyes.
But where, think you, is baby? On his mother’s lap, you say? Nay, but positively on his father’s knee – his father, the quondam rover of the sea and the prairies.
It is somewhat absurd, I grant you, but there is no getting over facts. Sometimes brave soldiers or sailors make the best of fireside folks, when they do settle down.
And Harvey McGregor is not only nursing his young heir, but he is actually nodding at him and talking sweet nonsense to him, while baby crows, and Harvey’s wife looks on delightedly.
So busily are all engaged that they do not hear the hall door bell ring, nor know anything at all about its being rung either, until suddenly a Highland servant enters with two cards on a tray.
Harvey hands baby to his mother in some confusion – I’m not at all sure he did not blush a little; but no sooner has he taken the cards and read them, than he jumps up from his chair as if a hornet had stung him.
“Hurrah!” he cries.
“Dear me, Harvey! what is it?” his wife exclaims.
“Nothing, my dear,” says Harvey; “that is – it is everything, I mean. It is joy in the house of McGregor. Hurrah!”
And away he rushes, leaving his wife and mother to wonder.
They were in the library, the pair of them. They had not even sat down, because they knew Harvey would soon come.
And they were not mistaken.
“Why, Kenneth! Archie!” he cried, extending a hand to each, “my dear old shipmates, ‘pals,’ and partners, how are you?”
“Took you by surprise, eh?” replied Kenneth, laughing.
“Why, the biggest and the best surprise I’ve had for many a day. But how are you? and where have you come from last? and how goes the farm out in the West?”
Harvey put a dozen other questions, but he gave his friends no time to answer one.
I leave my readers to guess whether or not they spent a pleasant, happy evening together. Ay, and not one, but many. For Harvey was not going to let them go for a long time, you may be sure. So they stayed on and on for weeks. There was plenty of sport and fun to be got all day, but, nevertheless, the evenings were always most pleasant. There was so much to talk about, and so much to tell each other, that time fled on swallows’ wings, and it was always pretty near the —
“Wee short ’oor ayout the twal,”
before they parted for the night.
Need I say that one of the first places visited by Kenneth and Archie – and they stole away all alone – was Kooran’s grave, and the fairy knoll? They were delighted to find the former carefully kept, and quite surprised to find the latter completely furnished. The inside was a cave no longer, except in shape. It was a library, a boudoir, call it what you may.
“How mindful of dear Harvey!” said Kenneth.
“Yes, indeed,” replied Archie; “and think, too, of his goodness to my dear father, of the comfortable house he dwells in, and the smiling little croft around it.”
“Harvey,” said Kenneth with enthusiasm, “is one of Nature’s noblemen.
“‘Away with false fashion, so calm and so chill,
Where pleasure itself cannot please;
Away with cold breeding, that faithlessly still
Affects to be quite at its ease.
For the deepest in feeling is highest in rank,
The freest is first of the band:
And Nature’s own nobleman, friendly and frank,
Is the man with his heart in his hand.’”
“Come, I say, Kennie, my learned old man, when you are talking poetry, and such ringing verses, too, as these, I dare say you imagine I must sing small; but bide a wee, lad, there is two of us can play at the same game. What say you if I match Burns against your Tupper? Hear then.”
And, with figure and head erect, with arms extended and open palm, Archie spoke, —
“Is there for honest poverty,
That hangs his head and a’ that?
The coward-slave, we pass him by,
And dare be poor for a’ that.
What though on homely fare we dine,
Wear hodden-grey (coarse, woollen, undyed cloth) and a’ that,
Give fools their silks, and knaves their wine,
A man’s a man for a’ that.
“A prince can make a belted knight,
A marquis, duke and a’ that;
But an honest man’s above his might,
Guid faith he mauna fa’ that. (Try.)
Then let us pray that come it may,
As come it will for a’ that,
That sense and worth o’er a’ the earth,
May bear the gree for a’ that.”
(Bear the gree, i. e., be triumphant.)
“Bravo! Archie, lad. Glad to see that you haven’t forgotten your Scotch, though we’ve talked little but English for many a long day.
“Ah! well,” he continued, after a pause, “I was just thinking, Archie, how kind Providence has been to us.”
“But mind you, Kenneth, we’ve worked hard.”
“I’m not saying we haven’t, Archie, I’m not saying we haven’t. We have worked; and I say shame on the sheep who huddles down in a corner and nurses himself, and thinks that Heaven will give him every blessing for the asking. We must work as well as pray.”
“Do you know, Archie, that one terrible night at sea, while we were rounding the Horn with a whole gale of wind blowing and a smothering sea on, when it was so dark you couldn’t have seen a sheet of white paper held at arm’s length, and when we all of a sudden knew from the frightful cold we were surrounded by ice, when at last the ship was struck and began to leak, and no one had a hope of seeing the morn break – that down below I stole just one half minute to open my Book? And my eyes fell upon the ninety-first Psalm, and I took comfort and heart at once; I knew we would be saved, and next day the captain complimented me on having been so daring, so fearless, and cheerful. Ah! lad, little did he know that the bravery in my breast was no bravery of mine; it had been put there by Him. Call this faith of mine folly if you like, I don’t care; it suits me, and it has saved me more than once, and comforted me a thousand times.
“Do you mind the time,” Kenneth went on, changing the subject, “when you and I used to herd the sheep here with dear old Kooran and Shot?”
“Can I e’er forget it, Kenneth?”
Sitting on the top of the fairy knoll there, the two young men had quite a long talk about bygone times. I have said “young men;” and they were so, though they might not have appeared to be in the eyes of boys and girls, but as they talked they seemed to grow younger still. Kenneth could almost imagine he saw the smoke curling up from his mother’s cot in the glen, and Kooran feathering away through the heather to fetch his dinner. (See Book One, chapter one.)
A day or two after this the three friends went together over the hills to pay a visit to the fisherman’s cot by the beach.
Duncan Reed was so glad to see them. He was not so very much altered in appearance. They found him seated in the sunlight, with a very large Bible on his lap, and an immense pair of hornrimmed spectacles on his nose.
Duncan drops out of the story here. He is gone years ago. Suffice it to say he had his wish – he sleeps beside the sea.
On their return journey they visited the ruins of old Nancy Dobbell’s cottage. Harvey McGregor made one remark which explains much.
“That old woman,” he said, “alone knew my secret.”
Passing onwards towards the forest, Kenneth ventured to ask for the first time about Jessie Grant.
“Heigho!” replied Harvey; “I cared not to mention it in my letter, but that family were in reduced circumstances even before the father and mother died; now poor Jessie lives at Helensburgh in a humble cottage with her aunt.”
“And she is not – ”
“No, not married.”
A thrill of joy went through Kenneth’s heart. It was not unaccompanied by a kind of satisfied feeling of pride. He could not quite forget the time when proud Mr Redmond offered him the position of ghillie on his premises.
Need I say that Kenneth soon found Jessie out? She was more beautiful than ever in his eyes.
Archie and Kenneth took rooms at Helensburgh – for sake of the fishing. At least Kenneth said it was for sake of the fishing; but he did not look Archie quite straight in the face when he made the remark.
When, after a few weeks, Kenneth proposed marriage to Jessie, his offer was – refused.
Why? Truth to tell, Jessie loved him, but she said to herself, “Now he is rich and I am poor, it cannot be.”
I do not know whether this was a pardonable pride in Jessie or not. Perhaps it was.
Then came an evening when Kenneth, Archie, and Jessie were strolling together on the banks of the loch. It was to be the last night in Scotland of the two American farmers, as they called themselves, and she could not refuse to go with them to see the sun set behind the mountains.
Kenneth felt very sad, and spoke but little, Jessie hardly at all; in fact, she felt that it would not take much to make her cry.
Archie was still a student of natural history, and a new species of fern caught his eye. He must climb the fence, must commit a trespass even to find it, and his companions strolled on.
It was hardly an evening calculated to inspire hope or joy. A breeze roughened the lake, and went moaning through the almost leafless trees; the fields were bare or ploughed, the hedgerows looked sickly, and the brackens – so lovely in summer – were brown or broken down or bent. Still, the robin sang in the woods. That was something.
Kenneth and Jessie leant against a stile to wait for Archie; but that fern required a deal of examination.
“Archie seems in no hurry,” said Jessie, looking back.
“He has found a flower of some kind, I suppose,” replied Kenneth.
“There are few flowers in November,” she said, quickly.
“Here are two. Do you remember them, Miss Redmond?” As he spoke he produced old Nancy’s Bible, and opened it.
The flowers were there, but sadly withered.
This is precisely the remark that Jessie made.
“I do,” she said, with a blush and a sigh; “but they are sadly withered.”
“Like my hopes,” replied Kenneth. “I leave my country a broken-hearted man – ”
How handy for an author is a line of those little stars called “asterisks!” How neatly I dropped the curtain by means of it on that conversation between Kenneth and Jessie!
But did Kenneth leave his country a broken-hearted man? No; how could he with Jessie by his side?
They were married at Alva House by old Mr Grant. It was a quiet wedding indoors, but out of doors – well, Harvey McGregor determined his tenantry should all go mad together if they chose. There were balls and bonfires, breakfasts, dinners, and suppers galore, and such rejoicing and such general jollity as will never be forgotten while the heather blooms on Alva hills, and the dark pines wave in its valleys.
The honeymoon was spent in the New Forest; and Kenneth did not forget to visit his old friend Major Walton, whom he found happy and hearty.
Beautiful are the farms that Kenneth and Archie occupy in far-off British Columbia. There is a thriving village near them now, and churches and schools; but their farms lie well in the outskirts. What though in winter wild winds wail around the dwellings, and shake the pine trees on the mountain sides? there are warmth and light and brightness indoors; and some laughing and fun, too, for there are children, one, two, three; and Uncle Archie, as the latter call him, drops in nearly every evening to spend an hour or two, so no one thinks the time long.
Then in summer, oh! to roam in those beautiful woods, and cull the fruit and the wild flowers. And at this sweet time of the year, the gardens and lawns and terraces, and the verandahs of Kenneth’s many-gabled dwelling, are bathed in floral beauty. It is quite a sight to see, and to dream about ever afterwards.
And no one, I think, would begrudge Kenneth his happiness. He worked for it.
Good-bye, reader.
The End.