White Heather: A Novel (Volume 1 of 3). William Black

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СКАЧАТЬ indeed, indeed,' said she, 'that will be a change now. And who will look after the cottage for you, Ronald?'

      She addressed him thus quite naturally, and without shyness; for no one ever dreamed of calling him anything else.

      'Well, I suppose Mrs. MacGregor will give the place a redd1 up from time to time. But a keeper has but half learned his business that canna shift for himself; there's some of the up-country lodges with ne'er a woman-body within a dozen miles o' them.'

      'It is your brother the minister that Maggie will be going to?' she said.

      'Oh yes; he is married, and has a family of his own; she will be comfortable there.'

      'Well, it is strange,' said she, 'that you should have a brother in Glasgow, and I a sister, and that your mother should be Highland and mine too.'

      But this was putting himself and her on much too common a footing; and he was always on his guard against that, however far her gentleness and good-nature might lead her.

      'When is your father coming back, Miss Douglas?' said he.

      'Well, I really do not know,' she said. 'I do not think he has ever had so wide a district to attend to, and we are never sure of his being at home.'

      'It must be very lonely for a young lady brought up like you,' he ventured to say, 'that ye should have no companions. And for your mother, too; I wonder she can stand it.'

      'Oh no,' she said, 'for the people are so friendly with us. And I do not know of any place that I like better.'

      By this time they were come to the little wooden gate of the garden, and he opened that for her. Before them was the cottage, with its windows, despite the moonlight on the panes, showing the neat red blinds within. She gave him her hand for a second.

      'Good night, Ronald,' said she pleasantly.

      'Good night, Miss Douglas,' said he; 'Maggie must not keep you up so late again.'

      And therewith he walked away back again along the white road, and only now perceived that by some accident his faithful companion Harry had been shut in when they left. He also discovered, when he got home, that his sister Maggie had been so intent puzzling over some arithmetical mysteries which Meenie had been explaining to her, that she had still further delayed her going to bed.

      'What, what?' said he, good-humouredly. 'Not in bed yet, lass?'

      The little red-headed, freckled-faced lassie obediently gathered up her belongings, but at the door she lingered for a moment.

      'Ronald,' said she, timidly, 'why do ye call Meenie "Miss Douglas?" It's not friendly.'

      'When ye're a bit older, lass, ye'll understand,' he said, with a laugh.

      Little Maggie was distressed in a vague way, for she had formed a warm affection for Meenie Douglas, and it seemed hard and strange that her own brother should show himself so distant in manner.

      'Do you think she's proud? for she's not that,' the little girl made bold to say.

      'Have ye never heard o' the Stuarts of Glengask?' said he; and he added grimly, 'My certes, if ye were two or three years older, I'm thinking Mrs. Douglas would have told ye ere now how Sir Alexander used to call on them in Edinburgh every time he came north. Most folk have heard that story. But however, when Meenie, as ye like to call her, goes to live in Edinburgh or Glasgow, or some o' the big towns, of course she'll be Miss Douglas to every one, as she ought to be here, only that she's taken a fancy to you, and, my lass, fairly spoils ye with her kindness. Now, off with ye, and dinna fash your head about what I or any one else calls her; if she's content to be Meenie to you, ye should be proud enough.'

      As soon as she was gone he stirred up the peats, lit his pipe, and drew in a chair to the small table near the fire. It was his first pipe that evening, and he wished to have it in comfort. And then, to pass the time, he unlocked and opened a drawer in the table, and began to rummage through the papers collected there – all kinds of shreds and fragments they were, scored over mostly in pencil, and many of them bearing marks as if the writing had been done outside in the rain.

      The fact was, that in idle times, when there was no trapping to be done, or shooting of hoodie-crows, or breaking-in of young dogs, he would while away many an hour on the hillside or along the shores of the loch by stringing verses together. They were done for amusement's sake. Sometimes he jotted them down, sometimes he did not. If occasionally, when he had to write a letter to a friend of his at Tongue, or make some request of his brother in Glasgow, he put these epistles into jingling rhyme, that was about all the publication his poetical efforts ever achieved; and he was most particular to conceal from the 'gentry' who came down to the shooting any knowledge that he scribbled at all. He knew it would be against him. He had no wish to figure as one of those local poets (and alas! they have been and are too numerous in Scotland) who, finding within them some small portion of the afflatus of a Burns, or a Motherwell, or a Tannahill, are seduced away from their lawful employment, gain a fleeting popularity in their native village, perhaps attain to the dignity of a notice in a Glasgow or Edinburgh newspaper, and subsequently and almost inevitably die of drink, in the most abject misery of disappointment. No; if he had any ambition it was not in that direction; it was rather that he should be known as the smartest deerstalker and the best trainer of dogs in Sutherlandshire. He knew where his strength lay, and where he found content. And then there was another reason why he could not court newspaper applause with these idle rhymes of his. They were nearly all about Meenie Douglas. Meenie-olatry was written all across those scribbled sheets. And of course that was a dark secret known only to himself; and indeed it amused him, as he turned over the loose leaves, to think that all the Stuarts of Glengask and Orosay (and that most severe and terrible of them all, Mrs. Douglas) could not in the least prevent his saying to Meenie just whatever he pleased – within the wooden confines of this drawer. And what had he not said? Sometimes it was but a bit of careless singing —

      Roses white, roses red,

      Roses in the lane,

      Tell me, roses red and white,

      Where is Meenie gane?

      O is she on Loch Loyal's side?

      Or up by Mudal Water?

      In vain the wild doves in the woods

      Everywhere have sought her.

      Roses white, roses red,

      Roses in the lane,

      Tell me, roses red and white,

      Where is Meenie gane?

      Well, now, supposing you are far away up on Ben Clebrig's slopes, a gun over your shoulder, and idly looking out for a white hare or a ptarmigan, if you take to humming these careless rhymes to some such tune as 'Cherry Ripe,' who is to hinder? The strongest of all the south winds cannot carry the tidings to Glengask nor yet to Orosay's shores. And so the whole country-side – every hill and stream and wood and rock – came to be associated with Meenie, and saturated with the praise and glory of her. Why, he made the very mountains fight about her!

      Ben Loyal spake to Ben Clebrig,

      And they thundered their note of war:

      'You look down on your sheep and your sheepfolds;

      I see the ocean afar.

      'You look down on the huts and the hamlets,

      And the trivial tasks of men;

      I see the great ships sailing

      Along the northern main.'

      Ben СКАЧАТЬ