The McBrides Part 16

All this was on my uncle's hill land, but I had my way of it, and jaloused maybe that the mistress was putting in her good word, for she had aye a soft side for young Dan. When I told him about breaking in from the moor, he hummed and hawed and gloomed at me. "This will mean the less sheep," says he.

"There's a wean coming," said I, and felt the blood rise in my face to be saying it. "Has he to be put in the heather, and die maybe in a sheuch like a braxy ewe."

"Tut," says he, his colour rising a bit; "these are no words to be in the mouth of a boy," but I kent I had him on the soft side. "A man must be dacent to his ain blood," said he, and that was the last of it.

So we had the great days at the burning of heather, and when I would be running with a kindling here and there, and watching the lowes lick into the dry scrog with a hiss before the breeze, I would be thinking much of Dan and Ronny McKinnon and me in the blazing whins, and the gangers and excis.e.m.e.n and riff-raff of that kidney hallooing round us.

Belle loved this burning and the very fierceness of the flames, with the eerie gloaming falling, and she would not be heeding the cries of Old Betty (for Betty was much with her these days for company) to be keeping indoors.

"Hamish," she would say, coming close to me in the ruddy light, and the dark cheeks of her glowing and her eyes flas.h.i.+ng--"Hamish, I have that in the heart of me." And as she stood thus pointing to the fires, all lit up and wild and beautiful, I thought there must surely have been away back in her story a priestess who tended fires in some far Eastern land.

Well, well, it's fine to be thinking back on these far-off days, and the work we made at the d.y.k.e-building round the first park, and how we gathered the lying stones and rousted out the deeper-set ones; and the d.y.k.er made all grist that came to his mill, for he would split up considerable boulders with great exactness and skill, a feat that never came easily to me. Then there were the stone drains to be making, and the great talking about the run of the water, and the lie of the land, and the niceness with which we laid those drains! They were all joys to me. I dreamed green meadows and well-kept d.y.k.es and good beasts.

And then the ploughing--a sair job ploughing heather roots--and the furrows I drew would have brought the laughing to Dan McBride; but the soil was not so black, but where the rabbits had burrowed there was good green gra.s.s among the red sc.r.a.pings. The sowing and the harrowing were the easy job after that, and I mind me how I leaned on that d.y.k.e and gazed on the first three acres won out of the hill, when the green breard was showing, as a man might gaze on his first-born son. In these night trakings in the hills I learned the shape of every stunted bush and tree, and the place of every rock on either hand, and many's the droll ploy I came into. Ye'll still see the track yet down from the peat hags like a scar on the hillside, but the stories of the road are lost in the swirling mists, and carried away in the winter gales.

There was a burn running over the road down from the little loch with the green rush islands, where the sea-birds build, and the staghorn moss is boot-deep, and in that little plouting burn there was grand water to be making the whisky. And in the gloaming have I seen a lonely man with his dog at heel, hurrying by the burn-side, through the bare birch trees, and disappearing to his night watch in some cunning place on the hillside. And once at the place where there is now a little holly-tree, gnarled and full of years, I met the limber lads with the kegs on their backs, and carrying the worm and all the gear for the whisky-making. And we buried everything in the peat hags below the three hills, for the excis.e.m.e.n were close on us, and there they lie, kegs and stoups, to this day; and would not the whisky be fine to be drinking now, but maybe a little peaty.

CHAPTER XV.

THE STRANGER ON THE MOORS.

It would be well on into May, for the men were thrang with work, and the la.s.sies at the big house haining a bit of bannock to be putting under their pillows for fear of hearing the cuckoo, when first I heard the strange whistling. It is not a very lucky thing to be hearing the cuckoo and you wanting food, and I think this is just a haver of the old folk to be making the young ones rise early on the fine clear mornings; but many's the first bite I ken was taken from below the pillows, and the cuckoo crying like all that.

There was a thick bit of a wood behind the stackyard at the big house, and as I lay listening to the sounds of the early morning there came often of late this clear melody, not loud but sweet and thrilling, as I had heard Ronny McKinnon whistle and Dan too, and the words of that tune are not to be talked about; but when I went quietly to the planting one morning there was only the little moving of birds in the greyness of the morning and the stillness of the wood.

I came back to the kitchen and rummaged the aumary for something to be eating, and made my way to the stable and put a feed before my beast, and watched him hard at it and the other beasts stamping and rattling at their chains in their impatience.

We were on the hill road before the sun, for there was the matter of a calf to be seeing to, and it was fine to be alone in the fresh day with the dew still heavy on the green gra.s.s and wetting the horse to the fetlocks; and the sun was coming up in the East, and here and there the curl of blue smoke rising up from far-out clachans. I would maybe be on the other side of the black hill and going finely, and relis.h.i.+ng the green of the new growth, when there came to me that sweet whistling again, and cooried by the roadside beside a grey stone I saw a man sitting. He was the droll figure of a man, with outlandish garb and wee gold earrings. His teeth showed white as milk against his swarthy face, and he had many colours about him, at his throat and his waist, and useless tatters and ta.s.sels, but withal he had the proud bearing of mountain folk, and level black brows.

Abreast of him we came and he bended low, but with such grace and so much dignity that it were as though he were a king receiving a va.s.sal.

"Have you the Gaelic?" said I in the old tongue.

"Cha nail, cha nail, cha nail," cried he, so quickly and with such gestures of his hands that I was startled.

"Geelp," said he--"Geelp."

"Are you McGilp's man?" said I.

"Man, ya.s.s," says he, and all his body would seem to be very glad; and then I questioned him of his whistling, and got his story from him.

By his way of it, he had been a camp-follower or servant to a horse-soldier in the Low Countries, which was maybe true, for I will not be denying these wandering folk have the way of horse, and he made a play of himself to be showing how he was beaten often with the stirrup-leather. Some time in his wanderings in the Low Countries he fell in with "les Ecossais," and he was at the play-acting again with his hands to be describing the Scotch soldiers, and then from some pouch or hidie-hole about his outlandish garb he brought Dan's letter.

At that I sat on the roadside, and the Eastern man, with the rein loose in his hand, crouched on his hunkers before me like an image.

There was much of sadness in that letter, and much of Belle the gipsy la.s.s, and of many wanderings from France to the Low Countries,

"Hamish, man, I'm minding the very stanes in the hill d.y.k.es and the track o' the sheep on the hillside." Why he had been kind to the Egyptian he told me. "Ye'll ken fine, Hamish, for what la.s.s's sake,"--and sent him into France with a Scotch soldier he kent, returning there, with directions to wait at the little town on the coast where McGilp would whiles be, and "bring you this word o' me and a wheen things for Belle." He was asking me to see McGilp too. The last of it was like Dan. "I'm thinking, Hamish, if the houris in his paradise kenned the words o' the spring I've been deaving him wi', the Egyptian would be very greatly thought of."

When I was by with the reading of Dan's news, "Ye'll have another letter," said I, making signs at the pagan.

"Ya.s.s," and at that he put it in my hands. It was for Belle.

We got on the road again, the pony trotting now and the messenger running easily, one brown hand at the stirrup-leather, and very many times he would be saying "Geelp," till it came on me that McGilp would be wis.h.i.+ng to be seeing me at once.

At Belle's cottage door I dismounted, and with the clatter of the horse there came old Betty, with that queer look on her face of disdain and mystery, and just itching to be at the talking.

"_The wean's hame_," said she, and slammed the door with a last nod of her old head and her lips pursed up; and then there came the snuffling ill-natured greeting of a wean that made me grue as I made my way to the byre, for till then my mind had clean forgot the calf I was to be seeing that day.

In the byre we sat, the heathen and me--for we were but simple men in this affair--and the byre was a dark place to be sitting, and in a while old Betty came, havering at hens and talking to herself. As she came and stood in the doorway and looked closely within, with her back bent and her hand on the lintel, her eyes fell on the messenger, and she let a great cry from her in the Gaelic. To be putting it in English is not so good, but it would be like this, "What dost thou require of me, father of devils?" and she fell on her knees. Well, well, I can laugh at that sight yet. But she "came to" in a little, and took me into the sunlight, and said the gipsy la.s.s would be seeing me for a little time; and I was taken to Belle's sleeping-place, and her arm was round her wean, and she was lying on her back, and her black hair a little damp curling on the pillow.

"You have been very good," said she. "My man, your kinsman, will be owing you thanks." And at that her eyes suffused, and two great tears gathered and glittered, and she smiled up to me, and I gave her the letter and turned away.

In a long while she cried, proud and piteous--

"Bring me the messenger; he will have his father's gift for my son."

And the lilt of joy in her voice made me think shame to be a man at all. Silently the messenger came, his eyes on the ground, and kneeled, and at that they were at it in their own Gaelic, and Belle raised the wean a little, and I saw his face wrinkled and red, and his blue staring eyes. And the man laid a long blue blade across the bed, and the little groping fingers of the child fluttered a moment, and then closed on the hilt, and when I lifted the gleaming snake-like sword, from the hilt scroll with a tinkling fell a ring, and it fell on the bosom of the mother--and she lay and smiled.

But I made a safe place for that sword and scabbard (for the messenger gave that last into my hands), and for many nights in my dreams the little dimpled hand fluttered and closed on the hilt.

CHAPTER XVI.

I HAVE SOME TALK WITH McGILP IN McKINNON'S KITCHEN.

In the gloaming I left the sheiling, and took my way through the hill, as we say, for McKinnon's house by the glen on the road to Birrican, and the first of that road is just plain guessing, but after, maybe, a mile there rises up the Mulloch Mhor, the big peak of the Island, and with that, a little to a man's left hand, the road to the sea is easy.

There is a road crossing that way that you'll still see running in through the Planting above the Letter, and through by the Little Clearing, and joining the road to the castle.

To the left of me I could hear the kye at the Bothanairidh, where there was a common grazing, for by this time it was well to have the beasts away from the steadings, because there was no great fencing in these days, and the weans would be put to the herding, out on the hillside.

You'll see yet the wee turf byres where the kye were milked, and the founds of the bochans where the old folk had their summer, with the hens and beasts about them. And many's the story I could be telling about these summer quarters when the la.s.sies and old wives would be at the spinning.

All the glen on the right of me was a McBride place, but you will not get that name there any more now, and nothing belonging to them but the trees, old and straggling, that they would be planting long ago, and the furs on the side of the hill where they had rigs about, and lazy-beds.

There were not many houses on the sh.o.r.e in these days, except maybe at a place they would be calling Clamperton, not very far from McKelvie's Inn.

Ronny was the pleased man to welcome me to his house, and Mirren, his wife, was at her best to be showing what a thrifty goodwife she was making, and she was very kind, and spoke good words to me; so, thinks I, Ronny will have been telling her about the talk we had yon day on the Isle.

"They will be saying," says Mirren, "that yon dark la.s.s has her trouble past her."

"I am hoping that," said I, and looked at Ronny's mother sitting very bright and perky by the fire, with a clean white mutch on her head and the strings not tied.

"It is goot," says she, "to have a boy whatever--a boy iss a good thing, no matter which way he will be got," and she ended her little talk with a very brisk demand. "Gif me a dram, Mirren; yes"--and that set us to the laughing, for the young wife was setting the drink before us and not making signs of giving the old one any.