Kenneth McAlpine: A Tale of Mountain, Moorland and Sea

Chapter Ten

The Last Link is Broken

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.

Chapter Eleven

For Auld Lang Syne

Scene: Landscape, seascape, and cloudscape.

A more lovely view than that which met the eye of a stranger, who had seated himself on Cotago Cliff this evening, it was never surely the lot of mortal man to behold. It was on the northern shores of South America, and many miles to the eastward of Venezuela Gulf.

Far down beneath him lay the white villas and flat-roofed houses of a town embosomed in foliage, which looked unnaturally green against their snowy walls. To the right, and more immediately below the spot where the stranger sat under the shade of trees, that towered far up into the sky, was a long, low, solitary-looking beach, with the waves breaking on it with a soft musical sighing sound; it was as if the great ocean were sinking to slumber, and this was the sound of his breathing.

The sun was low down in the west, in a purple haze, which his beams could hardly pierce, but all above was a glory which is indescribable, the larger clouds silver-edged, the smaller clouds encircled with radiant golden light, with higher up flakes and streaks of crimson. And all this beauty of colouring was reflected from the sea itself, and gave a tinge even to the wavelets that rippled on the silver sands.

It was very quiet and still up here where the stranger sat. The birds had already sought shelter for the night; well they knew that the sunset would be followed by speedy darkness. Sometimes there would be a rustle among the foliage, which the stranger heeded not. He knew it was but some gigantic and harmless lizard, looking for its prey.

“I must be going back to my hotel,” he said to himself at last. He talked half aloud; there was no human ear to listen.

“I must be going home, but what a pity to leave so charming a place! I do not know which to admire the most, the grand towering tree-clad hills, the sea, or the forest around me.

“Hullo!” he added, “yonder round the point comes a little skiff. How quickly and well he rows! He must be a Britisher. No arms of lazy South American ever impelled a boat as he does his. Going to the hotel, I suppose. No, he seems coming straight to the beach beneath me. Hark! a song.”

The rower had drawn in his oars, leaving the little boat to continue its course with the “way” already on her, while he gazed about him. Then, as if impelled to sing by the beauty around him, he trilled forth a verse of a grand old sea song.

Then there was silence once again. The rower rowed more slowly now, but soon he beached his boat, and drew it up, and hid it by drawing it in among the rocks.

The stranger soon afterwards rose to go.

He had not proceeded many yards along the hillside, when, on rounding a gigantic cactus bush, and close beside it, he stood face to face with the oarsman.

The former lifted his hat to bow, but instead of replacing it on his head he dashed it on the ground, and springing forward, seized the other by the hand.

“Archie! Archie McCrane!” he cried; “is it possible you do not know me, that you have forgotten Kenneth McAlpine?”

Poor Archie! for a moment or two he could not speak.

“Man!” he said at last, in deep, musical Doric; “is it possible it is you, Kennie?”

The tears were blinding him, both hearts were full, and they said no more for many seconds, merely standing there under the cactus tree holding each other’s hands.

“God has heard my prayer,” said Kenneth at last.

“And mine.

“But how you have altered, Kenneth! How you must have suffered to make you look so old!”

“You forget I am old, twenty-one next birthday; and you are only a year less. But what wind blew you here? I thought, Archie, you had settled down as an engineer on shore.”

“Your letters roused a roving spirit in me, Kenneth. I determined to see the world. I took the first appointment I could get. On a Frenchman. I haven’t had much luck. We have been wrecked at Domingo, and I came here last night in a boat. But come, tell us your own adventures. I have all your letters by heart, but I must hear more; I must hear everything from your own mouth, my dear brown old man.”

Kenneth was brown; there was no mistake about that, very brown, and very tall and manly-looking, and the moustache he wore set off his beauty very much. No, he had not cultivated his moustache. It had cultivated itself.

“Come down to the hotel,” said Archie. “I am not poor. We saved everything. It was a most unromantic shipwreck.”

“No,” replied Kenneth, “not to the hotel to-night. Come up the mountain with me to my cottage.”

“Up the mountain?”

“Yes, my lad,” said Kenneth, smiling. “Up the mountain. Haven’t forgotten how to climb a hill, have you, I say, Archie, boy? for, as brown as I look, I am an invalid.”

“What!” cried Archie, in some alarm. “Nothing serious, I sincerely hope.”

“Nothing, old man, nothing. But when they left me here six weeks ago, I thought that no power could have saved me. I had yellow-Jack. That’s all. I could not have lived in the hotel. Good as it is, it is too low. But come; old Señor Gasco waits supper for me.”

Up and up they struggled, arm in arm. Kenneth knew every foot of the pathway through the forest; it was well he did, for night had quite fallen over sea and land, and the stars were glinting above them ere they reached a kind of tableland, and presently stood in front of the rose-covered verandah of a beautiful cottage.

The French windows were open, and they entered sans cérémonie. It was a lofty, large room, furnished with almost Oriental splendour, with brackets, ottomans, and suspended lamps, that shed a soft light over everything around.

And here were books, and even musical instruments galore, among the latter a flute. It was not the flute Kenneth used to play in Glen Alva, and up among the mountains, while herding his sheep; it was a far better one, but the sight of it brought back old times to Archie’s memory.

Kenneth had left him for a few minutes.

Archie sank down upon an ottoman with the flute in his hand, and when Kenneth returned he found his friend in dreamland apparently.

But with a sigh Archie arose and followed Kenneth to an inner room.

“Señor Gasco,” said the latter, “this is Archie McCrane, the friend of my boyhood, of whom you have so often heard me speak.

“Archie, this gentleman has saved my life. He is a kind of a hermit. Aren’t you, mon ami?”

“No, no, no,” cried Señor Gasco, laughing. “Only I love pure, fresh, cool air and quiet; I cannot get these in the town beneath, so I live here among my books.”

He was a tall, gentlemanly-looking Spaniard, of some forty years or over, and spoke beautiful English, though with a slightly foreign intonation.

A supper was spread here that a king might have sat down and enjoyed.

Two tall black servants, dressed in snow-white linen, waited at the table. They were exceedingly polite, but they had rather larger mouths and considerably thicker lips than suited Archie’s notions of beauty.

Out into the verandah again after supper, seated in rocking-chairs; the cool mountain air, so delicious and refreshing, was laden with the perfume wafted from a thousand flowers. There were the stars up in heaven’s blue, and myriad stars, the fire-flies, that danced everywhere among the trees and bushes. Archie said they put him in mind of dead candles.

“And now for your story, Kenneth.”

“It is a long one, but I must make it very brief. You know most of it, dear Archie, so why should I repeat it?”

“Because,” said Archie, “I do so love to hear you speak. Your voice is not changed if your face is, and when I sit here in this semi-darkness, and listen to you, man, I think we are both bits of boys again, wandering through the bonnie blooming heather that clothes the hills above Glen Alva.”

“Now you have done it,” cried Kenneth, laughing.

“Done what?” said Archie.

“Why, you have to tell the first story. If you hadn’t mentioned home, if you hadn’t spoken about the hills and the heather, I would have told my tale first.”

“But – ” said Archie.

“Not a single excuse, my boy. I am home-sick now. Answer a few questions, and I’ll let you off.”

“Well, go on,” said Archie; “ask away.”

“My dear, dear mother! Have you seen her grave lately?”

“It was the last spot I visited when I went to the clachan,” replied Archie sadly.

“Heigho!” sighed Kenneth. “And I was all ready to go home. We were lying at the Cape, if you remember, when your letter arrived. Yes, and I left my ship, I threw up a good appointment on receipt of the sad intelligence; and Archie, dear lad, I shall go back to Scotland when I make my fortune – not before, and that may be never.”

“Do not speak like that.”

“But I must and will. How changed everything must be from the time I kept the sheep among the hills. And how do the clachan, the glen, and the hills look now?”

“The clachan is but little changed. Mr Steve did not tear down the village and church, as he first threatened. No, the clachan is the same, but poor Mr Grant has gone.”

“Dead! You did not tell me this in your letter.”

“No, no, not dead. He has got a better living in the city.”

“Yes?”

“Yes, and I went to see them. The Misses Grant keep every letter ever you wrote them, and they do long, I can tell you, for the return of the wanderer.”

“Bless their dear hearts!”

“I went over to the wee village by the sea and saw Duncan Reed.”

“Is he changed?”

“Not in the very least. Looks hardier than ever.”

“And your father and mother you have already said are well?”

“Yes, but father doesn’t like town life. How he would love the old days to come back again; how he would love to rove once again over the hills gun on shoulder and dog at his heel!”

“He is not very old; he may yet have his wish.”

“I fear not.”

“Well?”

“Well, the glens and hills all around are planted with trees. This was done as soon as Mr Steve took possession of the estate, and before poor old Chief McGregor died.”

“He is dead, then?”

“Yes. I would have told you, but I wanted to make my letters to you as bright as possible.”

“So the dear old man is dead. Heigho! And the estate planted. You did not even tell me that.”

“No, and for the same reason. But the trees are getting quite tall already. Most of the higher parts of the glens are covered with Scotch firs and spruces and larches, the lower lands with elm and plane and scrubby oaks. At the risk of being taken as a trespasser, I went all over the estate. I penetrated up to the fairy knoll and saw poor Kooran’s grave. There are young trees all round there now.”

“Archie,” said Kenneth, leaning forward and peering into his companion’s face, “I hope they didn’t interfere with poor Kooran’s grave.”

“No, nor with anything around it.”

“Go on, lad; I’m so pleased.”

“Well, I’ve little more to say. I was not taken prisoner, though I startled the wild deer in all directions.”

“But the grand old hills themselves?”

“Nay, they are not planted. Green in summer and purple and crimson in autumn, there they are the same, and ever will remain.”

There was a pause. Then Kenneth spoke once again.

“Did you ever see Miss Gale since?”

“Only once,” replied Archie, “and Miss Redmond – Jessie – she has grown tall, and oh! Kenneth, so beautiful, but still so child-like and graceful.”

“I can easily believe that, boy. And did she – ”

“Yes, dear lad,” said Archie. “She did ask all about you, so kindly. And I gave her your last letter to read. And – ”

“And she read it, Archie? Tell me, did she read it?”

“Yes, she read it over and over again.”

“Now, I’ll tell you my own adventures.”

“Begin at the beginning, won’t you? The very beginning, from the day you and I parted.”

“I will.”

But what Kenneth said deserves a chapter to its own account.

Chapter Twelve

Kenneth and Archie

Scene: Kenneth and Archie still seated in the verandah of the Spaniard’s cottage. The light from the casement window is streaming outwards through the creepers and climbing plants all around them; the beautiful bell-like flowers, down-drooping, touch their very faces. But all the colour up there in the verandah’s roof does not belong to these flowers. No, for birds are sheltering their bright wings from the night dews; that rich orange spot in the corner is a bird, so is that patch of crimson and steel, and yonder one of snow-white and blue. If you looked steadily for a moment at them, you could see round heads turned downwards and wondering beads of eyes. The birds are considering whether or not all is safe, or whether they had better fly away out into the night and the darkness.

Kenneth is waiting for the Señor to come. There is hardly a sound except a gentle sighing of wind among the trees, now and then the shriek of a night bird, the constant chirp of cicada, or rap, rap, rap, of green lizard as he beats to death some unhappy moth he has captured.

“Now, Señor, come and sit you down. Light your great pipe. That is right. Thanks, yes, both Archie and I will have a little palm-leaf cigarette. Coffee? Oh! delightful! Archie: old man, there isn’t any one in all the wide world ever made coffee half so well as the Señor Gasco. Flattery, Señor? No, not a bit of it. The truth cannot be flattery.”

“The coffee,” said Archie, “is delicious.”

“Heigho!” sighed Kenneth. “I am so happy to-night, dear Archie. I believe it will really do me good to tell you of some of the troubles I have come through; it will dilute my joy.

“I don’t know, Archie, old man, how ever I became a sailor. I’m not quite sure, mind you, that I am altogether a sailor yet at heart, though I dearly love the sea, and a roving life is the life for a man of my temperament. Señor is smiling; he will never admit I am a man. But I have come through so much, and the years I have spent since I left the dear old glen have been indeed eventful, and seem a long, long time.

“But, Archie, lad, when I began my wanderings through the world, I can tell you my ambition was very great indeed. I determined, you know, to make my fortune, and I determined to make it in a very short time. The details of the process of fortune-manufacture, however, didn’t present themselves to me, all at once anyhow. I turned my back on Glen Alva, and so full was my heart that I put at least ten miles behind me before I sat down to rest. I got inside a wood at last, and seated myself beneath a tree, and counted my money, three shillings and fivepence-halfpenny! Well, many a man has begun the world on less.

“But this money couldn’t last long. What then should I do? I’ll tell you what I did do. I fell sound asleep, and the sun was setting when I awoke, and flooding all the wood with mellow light.

“There was a blackbird came and perched half-way up a neighbouring spruce tree and began fluting.

“‘Oh!’ I said half aloud, ‘two of us can flute.’

“So the blackbird and I piped away there till it got nearly dark. But I felt hungry now, and music is not very filling, Archie. So I put up my flute and started to my feet; I felt stiff now, but it soon wore off.

“I went on and on and on, getting hungrier every minute, but there was no sign of village or house. I drank some water from a rill that came tumbling down through a bank of ferns, and felt better.

“I was beginning to wonder where I should sleep, when the sound of merry laughing voices fell upon my ear. The party, whoever it was, came rapidly on towards me from among the trees.

“‘Hullo, lad!’ said one; ‘are ye comin’ to the dance?’

“‘Dance!’ I cried; ‘why, my feet are all one bag of blisters, and I’m faint with hunger. Dance, indeed!’