Warlock o' Glenwarlock: A Homely Romance

His lordship yielded, for his poor thin legs were yet trembling with the successful effort they had made under the inspiration of fear, and now that spur was gone, the dyke seemed a rampart insurmountable, and he dared not attempt it.

"What are you keeping that cursed dog there for?" he said, catching sight, as he turned, of Cosmo, who held Covenant by the back of the neck.

"I am only waiting till your lordship's mastiff is out of the way," answered Cosmo.

"That you may set him at me again, as that old hag of yours did this morning!" As he spoke they had neared the kitchen-door, open as usual, and Grizzie heard what he said.

"That's as big a lee as ever your lordship h'ard tell i' the coort," she cried. "It's the natur o' dougs to tak scunners. They see far ben. Fess the beast in here, Cosmo; I s' be answerable for 'im. The puir animal canna bide my lord."

"Hoot, hoot, Grizzie," began the laird anew, with displeasure in his tone, but already the dog was in, and the kitchen-door closed.

"Leave her alone, Mr. Warlock, if you don't want to have the worst of it," said his lordship, trying to laugh. "But seriously, laird," he went on, "it is not neighbourly to treat me like this. Oblige me by giving orders to your people not to trespass on my property. I have paid my money for it, and must be allowed to do with it as I please."

"My lord," returned the laird, "I have not given, and will not give you the smallest annoyance in my own person.—I hope yet to possess the earth," he interjected, half unconsciously, to himself, but aloud. "But—"

"Hey! hey!" said his lordship, thinking the man was sending his reason after his property.

"But," continued the laird, "I cannot interfere with the rights of my neighbours. If Grizzie says she has a right of way—and I think very probably she knows what she is about—I have no business to interfere."

"Confound your cant!" cried his lordship. "You care no more for your neighbours than I do. You only want to make yourself unpleasant to me. Show me the way out, and be damned."

"My lord," said Cosmo, "if you weren't an old man, I would show you the quickest way out! How dare you speak so to a man like my father!"

"Hold your tongue, you young fool! YOU stand up for your father! —idling about at home and eating him up! Why don't you list? With your education you could work your way up. I warn you, if you fall into my hands, I will not spare you. The country will be better to live in when such as you are scarcer."

"Cosmo," said his father, "do not answer him. Show his lordship the way out, and let him go."

As they went through the garden, Lord Lick-my-loof sought to renew the conversation, but Cosmo maintained a stern silence, and his lordship went home incensed more than ever with the contumacious paupers.

But the path in which Grizzie gloried as the work of her own feet, hardened and broadened, and that although she herself had very little FOOT in it any more. For the following week Mistress Gracie died; and the day after she was buried, the old cotter came to the laird, and begged him to yield, if he pleased, the contested point, and part with the bit of land he occupied. For all the neighbours knew his lordship greatly coveted it, though none of them were aware what a price he had offered for it.

"Ye see, sir," he said, "noo 'at SHE'S gane, it maitters naething to Aggie or me whaur we are or what comes o' 's."

"But wadna she hae said the same, gien it had been you 'at was gane, Jeames?" asked the laird.

"'Deed wad she! She was aye a' thing for ither fowk, an' naething for hersel'! The mair cause she sud be considered the noo!"

"An' ca' ye that considerin' her—to du the minute she's gane the thing wad hae grieved her by ordinar' whan she was wi' ye?"

"Whan we war thegither," returned Jeames with solemnity, "there was a heap o' things worth a hantle; noo 'at we're pairted there's jist nearhan' as mony 'at 's no worth a strae."

"Weel du I un'erstan' ye, Jeames!" returned the laird with a sigh. "But what wad come o' yersel' an' Aggie wi'oot, a place to lay yer heid? We're no to mak oorsel's a' sae ill aff as was the Maister; we maun lea' that to his wull. Ye wadna hae HER luik doon an' see ye in less comfort nor whan she was wi' ye!"

"Thereanent, sir, I had a word o' proposal to mak," rejoined Jeames. "Ye hae nae men noo aboot the place: what for sudna Aggie an' me come and bide i' the men's quarters, and be at han' to len' a han' whan it was wantit? Aggie an' me wad help to get mair oot o' the gairden; I wad hae mair time for weyvin'; an' ye wad get a heap for the bit grun' fra Lick-my loof. It wadna be an ill muv, I do believe, laird, for aither pairt. Consider o' 't, sir."

The laird saw that they might at least be better accommodated at the castle than the cottage. He would consult his son, he said. Cosmo in his turn consulted Aggie, and was satisfied. In the winter the wind blew through the cottage bitterly, she said.

As soon as it was settled, Cosmo went to call on his lordship, and was shown into his library.

His lordship guessed his errand, for his keen eye had that same morning perceived signs of change about the cottage. He received him with politeness, and begged to know wherein he could serve him. From his changed behaviour Cosmo thought he must be sorry for the way he had spoken to the laird.

"My father sent me," he said, "to inform your lordship that he is now at length in a position to treat with your lordship concerning the proposal to purchase James Gracie's croft."

"I am greatly obliged to your father," replied Lord Lick-my-loof, softly wiping one hand with the other, "for his attention, but I have no longer any desire to secure the land. It has been so long denied me, that at length I have grown indifferent to the possession of it. That is a merciful provision of the Creator, that the human mind should have the faculty of accommodating itself to circumstances, even of positive nuisance."

Cosmo rose.

"As soon as you have made up your mind," added his lordship, rising also, "to part with what remains of the property, INCLUDING THE CASTLE, I should be glad to have the refusal of that. It would make a picturesque ruin from certain points of view on the estate."

Cosmo bowed, and left his lordship grinning with pleasure.

CHAPTER XLIV.

ANOTHER HARVEST

The harvest brought again the opportunity of earning a pound or two, and Cosmo was not the man to let it slip. But he would not go so far from home again, for, though his father never pined or complained, Cosmo could see that his days shrunk more rapidly when he was not with him: left alone, he began at once to go home the faster—as if another dragging anchor were cast loose, and he was drawn the more swiftly whither sets the tide of life. To the old and weary man the life to come showed as rest; to the young and active Cosmo it promised more work. It is all one; what we need for rest as well as for labour is LIFE; more life we want, and that is everything. That which is would be more. The eternal root causes us to long for more existence, more being, more of God's making, less of our own unmaking. Our very desire after rest comes of life, life so strong that it recoils from weariness. The imperfect needs to be more—must grow. The sense of growth, of ever enlarging existence, is essential to the created children of an infinite Father; for in the children the paternal infinite goes on working—by them recognizable, not as infinitude, but as growth.

The best thing in sight for both father and son seemed to Cosmo a place in Lord Lick-my-loof's harvest—an engagement to reap, amongst the rest, the fields that had so lately been his own. He would then be almost within sight of his father when not with him. He applied, therefore, to the grieve, the same man with whom he had all but fought that memorable Sunday of Trespass. Though of a coarse, the man was not of a spiteful nature, and that he had quarrelled with another was not to him sufficient rea—son for hating him ever after; yet, as he carried the application to his lordship, for he dared not without his master's leave engage to his service the man he counted his enemy, it gave him pleasure to see what he called poor pride brought to the shame of what he called beggary—as if the labour of a gentleman's hands were not a good deal further from beggary than the living upon money gained anyhow by his ancestors!

Lord Lick-my-loof smouldered awhile before giving an answer. The question was, which would most gratify the feelings he cherished towards the man of old blood, high station, and evil fortunes—to accept or refuse the offered toil. His deliberation ended in his giving orders to the bailiff to fee the young laird, but to mind he did not pay workmen's wages for gentleman's work—which injunction the bailiff allowed to reach Cosmo's ears.

The young laird, as they all called him, was a favourite with his enemy's men—partly, that they did not love their master, and were the more ready to side with the man he oppressed; partly, because they admired the gentleman who so cheerfully descended to their level, and, showing neither condescension nor chagrin, was in all simplicity friendly with them; and partly, because some of them had been to his evening-school the last winter, and had become attached to him. No honest heart indeed could be near Cosmo long and not love him—for the one reason that humanity was in him so largely developed. To him a man was a man whatever his position or calling; he beheld neither in the great man a divinity, nor in the small man a slave; but honoured in his heart every image of the living God it had pleased that God to make—honoured every man as, if not already such in the highest sense, yet destined to be one day a brother of Jesus Christ.

In the arrangement of the mowers, the grieve placed Cosmo last, as presumably the least capable, that he might not lower the rate of the field. But presently Cosmo contrived to make his neighbour in front a little uneasy about his legs, and when the man humourously objected to having them cut off, asked him, for the joke of the thing, to change places with him. The man at once consented; the rest behaved with equal courtesy, showing no desire to contest with him the precedence of labour; before the end of the long bout, Cosmo swung the leading scythe; and many were the compliments he received from his companions, as they stood sharpening for the next, in which they were of one mind he must take the lead, some begging him however to be considerate, as they were not all so young as he, while others warned him that, if he went on as he had begun, he could not keep it up, but the first would be the last before the day was over. Cosmo listened, and thereafter restrained himself, having no right to overwork his companions; yet notwithstanding he had cause, many a time in after life, to remember the too great exertion of that day. Even in the matter of work a man has to learn that he is not his own, but has a master, whom he must not serve as if he were a hard one. When our will goes hand in hand with God's, then are we fellow-workers with him in the affairs of the universe—not mere discoverers of his ways, watching at the outskirts of things, but labourers with him at the heart of them.

The next day Lord Lick-my-loof's shadow was upon the field, and there he spent some time watching how things went.

Now Grizzie and Aggie, irrespective of Cosmo's engagement, of which at the time they were unaware, had laid their heads together, and concluded that, although they could not both be at once away from the castle, they might between them, with the connivance of the bailiff, do a day's work and earn a day's wages; and although the grieve would certainly have listened to no such request from Grizzie in person, he was incapable of refusing it to Aggie. Hence it followed that Grizzie, in her turn that morning, was gathering to Cosmo's scythe, hanging her labour on that of the young laird with as devoted a heart as if he had been a priest at the high altar, and she his loving acolyte. I doubt if his lordship would have just then approached Cosmo, had he noted who the woman was that went stooping along behind the late heir of the land, now a labourer upon it for the bread of his household.

"Weel, Glenwarlock!" said the old man, giving a lick to the palm of his right hand as he stopped in front of the nearing mower, "ye're a famous han' at the scythe! The corn boos doon afore ye like the stooks to Joseph."

"I hae a guid arm an' a sharp scythe, my lord," answered Cosmo cheerily.

"Whisht, whisht, my lord!" said Grizzie. "Gien the corn hear ye, it'll stan' up again an' cry out. Hearken til 't."

The morning had been very still, but that moment a gust of wind came and set all the corn rustling.

"What! YOU here!—Crawford, you rascal!" cried his lordship, looking round, "turn this old cat out of the field."

But he looked in vain; the grieve was nowhere in sight.

"The deil sew up yer lordship's moo' wi' an awn o' beer!" (a beard of barley) cried Grizzie. "Haith, gien I be a cat, ye s' hear me curse!"

His lordship bethought himself that she would certainly disgrace him in the hearing of his labourers if he provoked her further, for a former encounter had revealed that she knew things not to his credit. They were all working away as if they had not an ear amongst them, but almost all of them heard every word.

"Hoots, wuman!" he said, in an altered tone, "canna ye tak a jeist?"

"Na; there's ower mony o' ye lordship's jeists hae turnt fearsome earnest to them at tuik them!"