Donald Ross of Heimra (Volume 1 of 3). William Black

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СКАЧАТЬ bulk of Ben More, Assynt, its higher shoulders a solid mass of white. The sunlight around them was cheerful, no doubt; and yet there was a strange sense of solitariness, of voicelessness; and Mary, who was less concerned about the beauty of the landscape than about certain problems haunting her mind, called out to Mr. Purdie, who was again up beside the driver —

      "Mr. Purdie, why are there no people living in this country?"

      "Because there's nothing for them to live on," was the laconic answer. "It's fit for nothing but grazing sheep – and for grouse."

      "Yes – the hills, perhaps," said she. "But look along the valley – by the side of the river."

      "Ay, it's fine land, that," said he, grimly, – "for a wheen pesewepes!" And indeed the plovers were the only visible living things, jerking about in the air, dipping suddenly to the ground and swiftly rising again, with their curious squeaking call, and the soft velvet fluffing of their wings.

      However, all that was nothing. By and by they had left the Oykel strath, and had entered upon a far higher and bleaker region, the desolation of which appalled her. There was not even the solitary shepherd's cottage they had seen down in the other valley; here was nothing but a wilderness of brown and ragged moorland, with deep black clefts of peat, and an occasional small tarn, without a bush along its shores, its waters driven a deep blue by the wind. Away in the west they could make out the spectral shapes of the Assynt mountains – Coul Beg, Coul More, and Suilven – remote and visionary through the universal haze of the heather-burning; but here, all around them, were these endless and featureless and melancholy undulations; and the silence was now unbroken even by the curious bleating of the plovers: once, and once only, they heard the hoarse and distant croak of a raven.

      "Käthchen," said Mary, in a sort of piteous dismay, as she looked abroad over those sombre solitudes, "you have been all along the Ross and Cromarty coast; is it like that?"

      "Plenty of it is worse," was the reply.

      "And – and – my place: is it like that?"

      "I have never been in to Lochgarra."

      "But – but if it is like that – what am I to do for my people?"

      "The best you can," said Käthchen, cheerfully.

      It seemed an interminable drive. And then, in the afternoon, a premature darkness came slowly over; the mountains in the north gradually receded out of sight; and heavy, steady rain began to fall. The two girls sat huddled underneath one umbrella, listening to the pattering footfalls of the horses and the grinding of the wheels on the road; and when they ventured to peep forth from their shelter they beheld but the same monotonous features in the landscape: masses of wet rock and dark russet heather, black swamps, low and bare hills, and now and again the grey glimmer of a stream or tarn. It was a cheerless outlook; continually changing, and yet ever the same; and hour after hour the rain came down wearily. There was hardly a word said between those two: whither had fled Mary Stanley's dreams of a shining blue sea, a sunny coastline, and a happy peasantry busy in their fields and gardens, their white cottages radiant in the morning light? Käthchen, on the other hand, was inclined to laugh ruefully.

      "Isn't it a good thing, Mary, that duty brought us here? If it had been pleasure, we should be calling ourselves awful fools."

      But quite of a sudden this hopeless resignation vanished, and a wild excitement took its place.

      "Miss Stanley," Mr. Purdie called to her, "we've come to the march."

      "The what?"

      "The march – the boundary of your estate."

      Instantly she had the carriage stopped, and nothing would do but that she must get out and set foot on her own land: moreover, when Käthchen took down the umbrella, they found that the rain had ceased, and that the western skies were lightening somewhat.

      "That is the march," said Mr. Purdie, pointing to a low, irregular, moss-grown wall – obviously a very ancient landmark; "and it goes right over the hill and down again to the Garra."

      Leaving the highway, she stepped across the ditch, and stood on the moist, soft peat land.

      "And this is mine!" she said to Käthchen, with an odd expression of face. "This is absolutely mine. Nobody can dispute my possession of it. This piece of the solid world actually belongs to me."

      "And I suppose your rights extend as deep as ever you like," said Käthchen. "You might go all the way through, and have a walk in the streets of Melbourne, and get dry, and come back."

      But Mary's quick eye had caught sight of what was to her the most important feature of the surrounding landscape. It was a cottage perched on a knoll above a burn – or, rather, it was the ruins of a cottage, the gables standing roofless, the thatch long ago blown away by the winds, the beams and fallen stones lying among the withered nettles, altogether a melancholy sight.

      "Now, isn't it shameful!" she exclaimed, in hot indignation. "Look at that! The very first thing I meet with! Do you wonder that people should talk about the Highland landlords? Some poor wretch has been driven away – perhaps at this very moment, in Canada or in Australia, he is thinking of the old home, and forgetting all the rain and discomfort there used to be, Mr. Purdie!"

      "Yes, ma'am?" said he, coming a bit nearer; and Käthchen looked on, wondering if his doom was about to be pronounced.

      "Who lived in that house?" Miss Stanley demanded.

      "The schoolmaster," was the reply.

      "The schoolmaster? And where is he now?"

      "He's in his own house," the factor said. "We built him a new one and a better one, to be nearer the school and the village; and when he moved it was hardly worth while keeping the old one in repair."

      "Oh," said she, a little disconcerted. "Oh, really. Then no one was sent away – from that cottage?"

      "No, no – not at all – not at all," said he; and he followed her to the waggonette and politely shut the door after her – while Käthchen's face maintained an admirable gravity.

      As the drove on again, the afternoon seemed inclined to clear; the skies were banking up; and there were faint streaks of lemon-yellow among the heavy purple clouds in the west. And very soon the road made a sweep to the left, bringing them in sight of the Connan, a small but turbulent tributary of the Garra. Here, also, they encountered the first signs of the habitations of men – little clumps of buildings clustered together just over a stretch of flat land that had clearly been recovered from the river-bed. Crofts, no doubt: each slated cottage surrounded by its huddled dependency of thatched barns and byres.

      As the waggonette drew near to the first of these rude little settlements, the women disappeared into the outhouses, and the children hid behind the peat-stack; but there remained standing at the door of the cottage an elderly man, who regarded the strangers with a grave and perhaps rather sullen curiosity.

      "Mr. Purdie," said Mary, in an undertone, "is that one of my tenants?"

      "Yes, certainly – that is James Macdonald."

      "I wish to make his acquaintance," said she; and she stopped the carriage, and got out.

      There was no sort of fear, or unnecessary bashfulness, about this young woman. She walked right up the bank to the door of the cottage. The short thick-set man standing there had something of a Russian cast of countenance, with a heavy grey beard, shaggy eyebrows, and small, suspicious eyes. СКАЧАТЬ