Chapter Eight
Kenneth and Jessie
“Will cannot hinder nor keenness foresee
What Destiny holds in the darkness for me.”
Tupper.
Scene: Dugald’s garden on the cliff top. You have to climb up to it from the road that goes winding through a wooded ravine, up a few steep gravel steps. It is spring-time, and the soft west wind goes sighing through the trees.
It is gloomy enough in the ravine below, but here the sun is brightly shining, and primroses are blooming on the borders, and the blue myosotis that rivals the noonday sky in the brightness of its colour.
On a wooden dais, near the keeper’s door, Kenneth is lying rolled in his plaid and propped up with pillows. On the arm of the dais old Nancy’s cat is seated, blinking in the sunshine and singing. On the pathway is Kooran, and book in hand – ’tis Burns’s poems – Archie is seated on a stone.
Kenneth’s mother comes out and stands beside her boy, smiling and talking for a little, then goes in again. Dugald himself comes up the path, gun on shoulder, singing low, but he finishes the line in a louder voice when he sees Kenneth.
“Ah, lad! out once more,” he cries joyfully. “Och, man! it’s myself that is glad to see you.”
The moisture had gathered in the honest fellow’s eye. Kenneth smiled faintly.
“You’ll soon see me on foot again, the doctor says.”
“But, man, if I live to be as auld as Methuselah, I’ll never forget that dreary nicht your Kooran came howling to the door. He would hardly give me time to put my plaid on, and then he led me away and away to Brownie’s Howe, and I found your body – there seemed no life in it – and carried you hame here on my shoulder.
“Ay, and Kooran has never left ye one hour since then, nor Nancy’s cat either. She came here the very day after Nancy’s funeral. Poor auld Nancy! How quietly she wore away. And how sensible she was to the last. And she told me a story about the laird, our dear laird McGregor, that you maunna hear noo, Kenneth. Good-bye. I’m off to the hills. Mind to keep the wind from him, Archie.”
“How I should like to go too, Archie,” said Kenneth.
“Oh!” said the boy, “that will soon be now. And oh! how bonnie the woods are, and the birds have all begun to build.”
“Are the woods very bonnie, Archie?”
“Oh! delightful,” cried the boy. “The moss is so soft and green under the trees. The wild flowers are creeping out and blowing on the banks. The pine trees are all stuck over with long white-green fingers.”
“I know,” said Kenneth.
“The birch tree stems are whiter than ever I saw them, just like silver, Kennie.”
“Yes.”
“And their branches are trailing down with the weight of their bonnie wee glittering leaves.”
“Yes, yes.”
“Then the needles on the larch trees were never so soft and green before, I’m sure, and they are just covered with red tassels.”
“Yes.”
“And the rowan trees (Rowan tree – the mountain ash) are covered with white flowers. What lots of scarlet roddans they’ll have in autumn! And the birds are all building, as I said. I have a hoody-craw’s nest in a Scotch fir in Alva, and a kestrel’s in a terribly tall tree at Aultmore. That magpie is building a brand-new nest; I knew she’d have to.”
“Well?”
“Well, there are five eggs in a laverock’s among the corn, and I know where there is a ptarmigan’s and a whaup’s, far away up among the mountains.”
“Oh! I do so long to be well, Archie.”
“And the sheep, Archie?” continued poor Kenneth. “I’ve dreamed about them so often since I’ve been sick. I always see them lookin’ up, Archie, with their bonnie brown een” (eyes), “and wonderin’ what has come of me. And I’m sure Kooran wants to see them.”
“Kooran could see them any day, and they’re doin’ finely, but Kooran won’t leave you.”
“Dear me, what shall I do?” cried Archie’s mother, running distractedly up the garden with a bucketful of greens in her hand. To have seen her half-scared looks, one would have imagined something terrible was about to happen. “Gentry coming, and I’m no’ dressed.”
The gently arrived about five minutes afterwards, little Jessie, Miss Gale, and Miss Grant.
As soon as she found herself on the garden path Jessie, who had a bunch of primroses in her hand, and some long drooping crimson-tipped twigs from the larch, started to run. But she paused half-way, and an expression of sadness stole over her face, as she noticed how wan and white Kenneth was looking.
She advanced more slowly and tendered the flowers.
“Poor boy!” she said; “are you very, very ill?”
Kenneth took the flowers, and a flush of joy lit his pale cheeks as he replied, —
“Not now, Miss Jessie. The doctor says I have nothing to do but get well.”
“Oh, I’m so glad,” cried Jessie.
Her governess now came up, and Miss Grant. The latter had been often before to see the invalid, but Jessie and Miss Gale had only recently arrived from Inverness-shire, and were loud in their praises of its magnificent scenery. Archie went and brought a chair for Jessie, so that she could sit while she talked to the invalid boy. Archie was improving. He even spoke to Jessie to-day, and promised to bring her something very nice if she would accept it. The something very nice ultimately proved to be a young hedgehog, so young that its spines had only just turned hard.
Presently the ladies went into the keeper’s cottage. Archie lay down on the gravel-path with his head on Kooran’s neck, and Jessie sat and talked to Kenneth.
What was she telling him? He looked intensely interested. His eyes were dilated, his hands clasped, his face flushed. It was but a simple story she was telling him, told in simple child’s language. The story of her own London life, her life in society. But it was all, all so new to Kenneth.
Ah! little did innocent Jessie know that her prattle had lighted the fires of ambition in that boy’s soul. But so it was. She had inaugurated a new phase in his existence. She had inadvertently led him to see that there were other – can I say better worlds than his?
So Jessie went away, with many a promise to come again when he was stronger, and could play soft melodies on the flute, – melodies, she said, that made her feel she wanted to cry, but that she loved all the same.
Jessie went away. She had found the boy on this bright lovely spring morning but a boy; she left him a man at heart.
Archie came and sat by him, and recommenced his tales of mountain and moorland and forest. He told him of the fairy knoll and the smugglers’ cave, about the heather, now so green and promising, about early lambs, and all the little incidents of life in the hills. Kenneth listened, but his thoughts were far away.
These glens and wilds, dearly though he loved them, were not all the world. The poets and writers that had so charmed him hitherto, and served to throw a glamour of romance over the beautiful land in which he lived – Burns, Ossian, Tannahill, Campbell, Scott, and the Ettrick Shepherd, – they had made him love it, oh! so dearly love it, with that burning, passionate patriotism which only the heart can feel.
“That beats beneath a Scottish plaid.”
But – had he not been living too much in the past? was there not a power setting in that was threatening to tear Scotland from the hands of the Scotch? Ought he to stay among these mountains and dream dreams, instead of going out into the world beyond to work or fight for the dear land that gave him birth? Ought he not to try even to gather wealth for the sake of those he would leave behind?
Clouds were gathering over the glen. A foreigner was soon to take possession of it, with no more love for the soil than if the heather that grew on every acre of it had not been dyed a hundred times over with the blood of the hero and the patriot. Could he stay at home and see his father’s grave, poor old Nancy’s too, levelled?
His thin hands covered his face, the boy sobbed quietly, and the tears trickled through his fingers.
Chapter Nine
The Storm Cloud Bursts over the Glen
“When simmer comes smilin’ o’er mountain and lea,
The green haughs and glens are pleasant to see,
And pleasant the hum o’ the merry wild bee,
When the rose, when the rose and lily are blawin’.
An’ blithely the mavis salutes the gay morn
As sweetly he sings on the snawy white thorn,
While the laverock soars high o’er the lang yellow corn,
And the moorcocks, the moorcocks are cheerily crawin’.”
Old Song.
Scene: Summer once more on hill and glen. On the mountain brow, the heather is bursting into bloom and bee-haunted. Down in the lower lands the corn is growing long and green, mingled with orange of marigold and crimson blush of wild poppy, and the meadows snowed over with gowan and scented clover. Fish leap gladly in stream and tarn, the lofty pines wave their dark plumes in the sunny air, and every wood and copse is filled with melody.
A right merry party are returning from the rocks by the seashore, where they have spent hours in wandering and wondering, for they found something new to admire at every turn.
Jessie is here with her governess and Miss Grant, and Kenneth strong and well again, to say nothing of Kooran and Shot, and last – probably least – Archie McCrane.
They have gained the brow of a hill overlooking the wide Atlantic. Far beneath them the sea-birds are wheeling and shrieking among the rocks, while out on the sea’s blue breast is many a little white sail, some so far, far away that though they have three masts, and must therefore be mighty ships, they seem from here not a bit bigger than a sixpenny piece.
Little Jessie is looking radiant and lovely, Kenneth gallant and gay, and everybody else, always including the dogs, as healthy and happy as the summer’s day is long.
Well, no wonder. They have spent such a gloriously pleasant day.
They took lunch with them to eat at sea. Yes, at sea, for old Duncan Reed took them out to the island and far beyond it, and Kenneth was proud on the whole to exhibit his skill as an oarsman. And Duncan had not hesitated to tell the ladies that he – Duncan Reed – had taught the boy all he knew about boating and fishing too.
The ladies were delighted with Duncan, especially Miss Gale, to whom he was something quite new. She must even sketch the little old man leaning there on his oar in his shirt-sleeves and night-cap, and Duncan was so delighted when he saw it, that his old eyes sparkled like the inside of an oyster-shell.
He shared the luncheon, and when they landed they went to his strange house, with the boat for a roof, and there he made them tea, although there were not cups for all, and Duncan himself had to drink his out of a mug.
But there really was more in this little old fisherman than might at first appear. Anyhow he astonished Miss Gale by his recitations of Ossian’s poems, both in the ancient Gaelic, and in English. Even Jessie, child though she was, experienced a thrill of indefinable pleasure as she listened to the rise and fall of the measured words, the magic of the wondrous verse, rolling out from the lips of this little old man, who looked so wild and weird, and mingling with the dull roar of the breaking waves.
The child never forgot it.
And now the little party stood on the hill overlooking the sea, and a walk of two miles took them, after a rest, to the fairy glen. But Archie, while they rested, had run on before, for everybody was coming to the cave, and Archie must see that it was neat and tidy.
There were freshly pulled ferns or brackens laid down as a carpet for the cave, and seats constructed out of the blooming heather. While making these Kenneth was thinking all the time about Jessie, and about how her eyes would sparkle when she saw these.
As they walked on over the hills, Kenneth by golden-haired Jessie’s side, the sky above them blue and clear, the clouds on the horizon looking like snow-white feathers, and the bees making drowsy music among the pinky heath, Kenneth got his child-companion to talk and tell him more about the great world, that mighty ocean of life that lay in the far beyond, the ceaseless throb of whose billows was hardly ever heard among those peaceful hills.
The boy stopped and looked backwards and away out towards the sea. Probably he never looked half so handsome as he did now, with his heart filled with manly resolves, with the light of a half-kindled ambition making his face to shine.
“I’m very, very happy here, Miss Jessie,” he said. “I may never, never be so happy as I am now, as I have been to-day. But before long I mean to leave this country, leave Scotland, and go away into the world, Miss Jessie.”
The child looked at him half afraid.
“Yes, I’m foolish, I suppose, but I cannot help it; go I must. I daresay I have read too many books, but – I long to go.
“I’m going to take Nancy’s Bible with me,” he said, smiling and looking half ashamed. “I’ll never part with that.”
“Let me see it,” said Jessie.
He took from his bosom a little old-fashioned Bible, with the Psalms of David – those heavenly gems of poetry and song – in metre at the end of the book, and placed it in the child’s hand.
“You are a very good boy,” she said, for the child felt she must say something.
“But oh!” she added, “here is a pressed primrose in the book.”
“It is one of those you gathered for me; don’t you remember?”
“Oh! yes,” she replied, smiling, “but it looks so lonely; here, place this little tiny bit of heather beside it.”
It was an innocent child-like action to place the bit of heather bloom there with the primrose, but one that Kenneth never forgot.
Archie was indeed a proud boy when Jessie and Miss Gale fell into raptures over the cave. Everything was admired, the heather seats, the rustic sofa, the rude bookcase containing the authors the boys read almost every day, and even the carpet of brackens.
“Did you get them?” said Kenneth in a stage whisper to Archie.
“Yes,” replied Archie, with eyes as big as two-shilling pieces, “and such a fine lot they are. And the cream. Yes, and plates and spoons and all.”
To the astonishment of his guests, Kenneth now placed a table in the centre of the cave, and bade them all sit down. Then from a dark recess he excavated a huge dish of mountain strawberries (Rubus chamaemorus), a jar of cream, and plates and spoons. Neither Jessie nor Miss Gale had ever eaten anything so delicious before.
“But what are they, Kenneth?” she said.
“They are called cloud-berries,” replied Kenneth; “they only grow far up in the mountain tops, and some call them fairy food. People about here say that these berries creep in under their leaves, and hide when any one with a baneful eye looks at them, and that only good people can gather them.”
“And who gathered these?” said Miss Gale.
“Archie.”
“Oh! Archie, you are good.”
Archie felt prouder even than before.
But after the cloud-berries were discussed, wee Jessie, sitting there on her heather couch, said, with a half-arch smile, —
“There is something else. Look at your tablets, Miss Gale.”
“Oh yes,” said Miss Gale. “Here it is – Flute.”
Kenneth had the flute in his pocket. He was a marvellous player for a boy. His whole soul seemed to breathe through the instrument.
To-day he played a battle-piece of his own putting together – not composing.
First came the gathering of the clans, bold, energetic, soul-touching, then the plaintive farewell to native glens, as the Highlanders marched away, —
“Maybe to return to Lochaber no more.”
Next came the spirited march, then the wilder pibroch as the foe was sighted, then wilder rushing music still; the fight was going on now, you could feel that. You could hear the shrill slogan of the Highlander mingling with shout of victor and shriek of wounded. Then a pause, and anon the coronach or wail for the dead.
And so the music died away.
Down the glen now the party went, for the sun was sinking low in the west, and the fairy glen was miles from the clachan.
But Jessie must see the sheep. Dugald was acting as shepherd to-day, and doffed his Highland bonnet as the ladies approached him.
There was not a sheep there that Kenneth did not know. They bleated a kindly welcome as he approached. They even played with Kooran, making great pretence to knock him down or to hit him with their hard feet, all of which Kooran took in good part, and kindly pretended to run from them, then turning and barking in a funny remonstrative voice, as if he really were laughing at heart, and enjoyed the fun immensely, and I have no doubt he did.
Dugald took Kenneth aside.
“There is bad news come,” he said; “all is lost. The glen is to be evicted.”
Kenneth’s heart sank within him.
The cloud then that had been gathering so long was about to burst.
It was well-nigh a year since the tenantry had been asked to leave. They heeded not the summons. They could not believe that their own auld laird McGregor would send his people away. Little they knew. McGregor would never appear among them again. The edict sent through him was sent by or at the instigation of the new American laird. The glens were no good to him with people in them – so he said – he must have deer; he was buying the land for the “sport” it would afford him, his family and friends. Yet he doubted his own power, being a foreigner, to evict.
But that very day the last summons was given previous to forcible expulsion.
And the young men of the clachan and glens were wild. They would stand by their homesteads, they would grasp dirk and claymore, they would fight, they would die where they stood.
But at the great meeting that took place the wisdom of the grey-haired prevailed. And with sorrow, ay, and tears, they all came at last to the conclusion that resistance would be worse than useless.
They would not go till they were forced, they would stay and see the last of the dear old spot, but they would bend their necks to the yoke, they would maintain a passive attitude.
In this they showed their wisdom. The auld laird McGregor sent them a most affecting letter. “Their sorrows,” it ended, “and his own misfortune had broken his heart, and though he could see them no more in life, his thoughts and mind were with them.”
True, for the auld laird lived scarcely a year after the eviction of Glen Alva.
But with a portion of the remains of his fortune he paid the passage money to America of as many of his tenants as were willing to accept his offer.
I would not harrow the feelings of my readers by describing the last sad scene in Glen Alva, when in the darkness of night the people were turned out; when more than seventy houses – well, call them huts, they were homesteads, at all events – were given to the flames; when the aged and the sick were laid on the bare hillside to shiver and to die; and when neither the wail of the widow nor plaintive cry of the suffering infant could move to pity or mercy the minions of the Yankee laird, who preferred deer to human beings.
Selah!
Chapter Ten
The Last Link is Broken
“Farewell, farewell, my native land,
Thy lonely glens and heath-clad mountains.”
Scene: The fairy glen once more, and in the background the fairy knoll. Kenneth and Archie, both looking very sad, are in the foreground by a new-made grave. Kenneth has been planting a little tree there, only a young Scotch pine, dug from the moor, a treelet that had grown from a cone which the rooks had fetched from Alva’s gloomy forest. Kenneth has planted the tree, and the spade has dropped from his fingers and fallen among the heather.
Archie’s dog Shot is standing near. He has been watching all the proceedings. Watching, and probably wondering. For dogs do think.
But where is Kooran? Kooran is under the sod. His bonnie brown eyes have closed for ever; his faithful heart will never feel love or friendship more – it has ceased to beat. Nor cry of wild bird on the mountain, nor plaintive bleat of lamb, no, nor his master’s voice, will ever move him again.
“I canna but believe,” says Hogg, the Ettrick Shepherd, “that dogs hae sowls.”
There are many more believe with you, dear Hogg.
But about honest Kooran. When dogs get old, you know – and Kooran had got old before he died – a slight stiffness may be noticed in their gait. I am positive that they begin to wonder what ails them. Wonder why they cannot run so fast as they used to, in the good days of yore. Wonder why they get tired and out of breath so soon. Wonder, too, why master speaks so low, or why the sheep do not bleat so loudly or the birds sing so much as they used to. They do not know that this is only failure in their own powers of hearing. And they wonder also why the trees and grass and hedgerows have ceased to be so bright and green, even in spring-time, as once they were; why master’s face seems dimmer. They cannot now stand the cold so well; they seem to want a thicker coat, but alas! the coat grows thinner. They would fain seek the shelter of indoors, even curl up on the hearthrug. How seldom do they get the chance! How often they receive the brutal kick when they most need comfort!
Then comes the day when they feel the cold no longer.
It had never occurred to Kenneth that some time or other Kooran and he must part – that Kooran must die. He was ever kind and attentive to this faithful friend of his; he never forgot him. He might have been excused if he had, for the scenes at the eviction and the burning of the glen were awful enough, in all conscience, to have driven everything else out of the boy’s head.
Of all the houses in the glen, that alone of Kenneth’s mother had been spared. Not that she meant to accept the favour thus offered her and stay on. Both she and Kenneth were far too proud for that. But at the cottage they lived for a time. And at the cottage Kooran died.
He came wet and weary one evening and threw himself down at his master’s feet.
When Kenneth spoke to him he looked pleadingly up into his face and shivered. Kenneth had never seen him shiver before. The dog went and lay before the fire, and his master covered him up with his plaid. Kooran licked his hands.
Something, he knew not what, awoke the boy long before dawn next day, and his first thought was of his old favourite.
He peeped out at the little gable window in the garret where he lay. A pale scimitar moon was declining behind the trees. These looked black and spectre-like.
Kenneth went gently down the ladder, and lit the oil lamp. The fire was very low, and he replenished it. Then he gently lifted a corner of the plaid. The action aroused the dog, and he crawled forth. He seemed to feel for Kenneth’s knee, and on this he laid his head.
Kenneth knew this was death. He put his hand tenderly on the poor dog’s muzzle, for he could not hear him breathe.
The tongue came out to lick the hand. It was a farewell.
And the boys had rolled the body of poor Kooran in a piece of old tartan plaid, and, followed by Shot, carried him up to the fairy glen, and buried him near the fairy knoll. Remember they were only boys.
Then Kenneth sat down and cried. Archie had never before seen such an exhibition of weakness on the part of his friend, so what could he do but sit down and keep him company? They were only boys.
Shot looked very sad. He did not know what to make of it all. He whined impatiently. Then he licked Archie’s wet face and touched Kenneth under the arm with his nose, as some dogs have a way of doing.
“Poor Shot!” said Kenneth. “You too have lost a faithful friend.”
Together, after this, they took their way down the hill.
A short, crisp, and gentlemanly letter came to Kenneth two days after this. It was from Jessie’s father.
“My daughter has spoken much about you,” said this epistle, “and quite induced me to take an interest in your welfare. The situation of under-ghillie at my Highland shooting-box is vacant. I have much pleasure in placing it at your disposal. You will be good enough therefore to enter on your duties on Monday next, etc, etc.”
Kenneth’s cheek burned like a glowing peat. He tore the letter in fragments, and threw them in the fire.
“Mother,” he cried, “dear mother, it needed but this! I shall leave the glen. I go to seek our fortune – your fortune, mother, and my own. I shall return in a few years as wealthy mayhap as the proud Saxon who now offers me the position of under-ghillie. Mother, it is best I should go.”
I pass over the parting between the mother and her boy.
With his flute in his pocket, with no other wealth except a few shillings and his Bible, Kenneth McAlpine turned his back on the glen, and went away out into the wide, wide world to seek his fortune.
For years, if not for ever, he bade farewell to his Highland home and all he held so dear.
End of Book First.