Kenneth McAlpine: A Tale of Mountain, Moorland and Sea
There was a feeble answer from the bed in the corner.
He advanced towards it. There were two shining lights there, the cat’s eyes. Poor pussy was on the bed watching by her dying mistress.
He felt on the coverlet and found Nancy’s hand there. It was cold, almost hard. “Nancy,” he said, “it is Kennie, your own boy Kennie; don’t be afraid.”
It did not take long for Kenneth to light a roaring fire on the hearth. As soon as it burned up he held the iron lamp over it to melt the frozen oil; then he hung it up. The water in a bucket was frozen, and even some milk that stood on a little table near Nancy’s bed was solid.
The inside of that cot was dreary in the extreme, but Kenneth soon made it more cheerful.
Poor old Nancy smiled her thanks and held out her hand to her boy, as she always called Kennie. He chafed it while he entreated her to tell him how she felt.
“Happy! happy! happy!” she replied, “but, poor boy, you are shaking.”
Kenneth was, and he felt his heart so full that tears would have been a relief, but he wisely restrained himself.
He melted and warmed the milk, and made her drink some. Then, at her own request, he raised her up in the bed.
“Dinna be sorry,” she said, “when poor auld Nancy’s in the mools. It is the gate we have a’ to gang. But oh! dear boy, it’s the gate to glory for poor Nancy. And so it will be for you, laddie, if you never forget to pray. Prayer has been the mainstay and comfort o’ my life; God has always been near me, and He’s near me now, and will see me safe through the dark waters o’ death. Here’s a little Bible,” she said. “It was Nancy’s when young. Keep it for her sake, and oh! never forget to read it.
“Now, laddie, can you find your way to Dugald’s? Send him here. There is an aulder head on his shoulders than on yours, and I have that to say a man should hear and remember.”
“I’ll go at once,” said Kenneth, “and come back soon, and bring the doctor too, Nancy. I won’t say good-night, I’ll be back so soon.”
Kenneth gulped down his tears, patted her hand, and rushed away.
“Come on, Kooran,” he cried. “Oh! Kooran, let us run; my heart feels breaking.”
He took his way across the moor in a different direction from that in which he had come. The storm had abated somewhat. The wind had gone down, and the moon shone out now and then from a rift in the clouds.
He determined to take the shortest cut to Dugald’s house, though there would be the stream to ford, and it must be big and swollen. Never mind; he would try it.
He soon reached a scattered kind of wood of stunted trees; there was no pathway through it, but he guided himself by the moon and kept going downhill. He would thus strike the river, and keeping on by its banks, ford wherever he could.
Nothing could be easier. So he said to himself, and on he went. It was very cold; and though the wind was not so fierce, it moaned and sighed most mournfully through the trees in this wood. Even Kooran started sometimes, as a spruce or Scottish fir tree would suddenly free itself from its burden of snow as if it were a living thing, free itself with a rushing, crackling sort of sound, and stand forth among its fellows dark and spectre-like.
Kenneth had gone quite a long way, but still no stream came in sight. He listened for the sound of running water over and over again, and just as often he seemed to hear it, and went in that direction, but found it must be only wind after all.
He grew tired all at once, tired, weak, and faint, and sat down on a tree stump, and Kooran came and licked his cheek with his soft warm tongue. He placed one hand in the dog’s mane, as if to steady himself, for his head began to swim.
“I must go on, though,” he muttered to himself. “Poor old Nancy. The doctor. I’ll soon be back – I – ”
He said no more for a time. He had fainted. When he recovered, he started at once to his feet.
“I’ve been asleep,” he cried. “How could I!” He ate some snow; then he began to move on automatically, as it were, the dog running in front and barking. The dog would have led him home. “No, no, Kooran,” he said; “the river, doggie, the river.”
Kenneth tried to run now. His teeth were chattering with the cold, but his face was hot and flushed.
His nerves had become strangely affected. He started fifty times at imaginary spectres. Some one was walking on in front of him – some shadowy being. He ran a little; it eluded him. Then he stopped; he was sure he saw a head peering at him over a piece of rock. He called aloud, “Archie! Archie!”
His voice sounds strange to his own ears. He runs towards the rock. There is no one behind it. No one. Nothing.
He feels fear creeping over his heart. He never felt fear before.
But still he wanders on, muttering to himself, “I’ll soon be back. Poor old Nancy! Poor old Nancy!”
All at once – so it seems – he finds himself at the banks of a stream. He is bewildered now, completely. He presses his cold hand against that burning brow of his.
What is this river or stream? Where is he going? Did he cross this stream before? He must cross it now, but where is the ford? How deep and dark and sullen it looks.
He seats himself on the icy bank to think or try to think.
He is burning, yet he shivers.
Stories of water-kelpies keep crowding through his mind, and the words and weird music of a song he has heard, —
“Kelpie dwells in a wondrous hall Beneath the shimmering stream;His song is the song of the waterfall, And his light its rainbow gleam. The rowans stoop, And the long ferns droop Their feathery heads in the spray.”And now he jumps to his feet. He has recollected himself, he was going for the doctor for poor Nancy, and this is the stream he was looking for. He must seek the ford. He cannot have far to go now. Once over the river, and a run will take him to Dugald’s cottage.
But stay; what cares he for the ford? He will plunge into the deepest pool, and swim across. He is hot; he is burning; it will cool him.
He walks on a little way, and still the kelpie song runs in his brain. The trees seem singing it; the wind keeps singing it; the driving clouds nod to its music.
“Where the foam flakes are falling,Falling, falling, falling,Falling for ever and ay – ”Ha! here is a deep dark pool at last. Why, yonder is the kelpie himself beckoning to him, and the maiden.
“When forest depths were dim,For love of her long golden hair – ”The poor dog divines his intention. He rushes betwixt him and the cold black water, uttering a cry that is almost human in its plaintive pathos.
Too late. He laughs wildly, and plunges in. Then there is a strange sense of fulness in his head. Sparks crackle across his eyes.
“Falling, falling, falling,Foam flakes are – ”He remembers no more.
But the brave dog has pulled him to the brink, and sits by his side, lifting his chin up towards the sky, and howling most pitifully.
Ah! if we only knew how much our faithful dogs love us, and how much they know in times of trouble and anguish, we would be kinder to them even than we are, even now, while sorrow smees far away from us.
Presently it appeared to strike even Kooran that giving vent to his grief would result in nothing very practical, so he suddenly ceased to whine. He bent down and licked his master’s cold inanimate face.
He howled once again after this, as if his very heart were breaking.
Then he looked all round him.
No help, I suppose, he thought, could come from these cold woods, and no danger.
So he emitted one little impatient bark, as if his mind were quite made up as to what he should do, turned tail, and trotted off.
Chapter Eight
Kenneth and Jessie
“Will cannot hinder nor keenness foreseeWhat 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 mornAs 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.
