John Burnet of Barns. Buchan John

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СКАЧАТЬ I found my cousin returned and sitting with my father in the dining-hall.

      He glanced sharply at me when I entered, and I saw by his looks that he was in no good temper. His heavy face was flushed and his shaggy eyebrows were lowered more than their wont.

      "Where have you been, Gilbert?" I asked. "I found you gone when I came back in the morning."

      "I took my horse down to Peebles to the farrier. Its knees were sorely hurt last night on your infernal hills."

      Now I knew that this was a lie, for I had looked at his horse before I went out in the morning, and its wounds were so slight that it would have been mere folly to take him to a farrier; and Gilbert, I well knew, was not the man to be in error where horses were concerned. So I judged that he had ridden in the contrary direction, and gone to Dawyck, and, as I inferred from his sour looks, met with no good reception there. I could afford to be generous; I felt a sort of half-pity for his discomfiture, and forbore to ask him any further questions.

      We sat down to supper, he and I and my father, in a sober frame of mind. I was full of my own thoughts, which were of the pleasantest; my cousin was plainly angry with something or other; and my father, in his weakness dimly perceiving that all was not right, set himself to mend matters by engaging him in talk.

      "You're a good shot with the musket, they tell me, Gibbie," he said, using the old name which he had called him by when he first came to Barns as a boy, "and I was thinking that it would be a rare ploy for you and John to go down the water to Traquair, where Captain Keith's horse are lying. He is an old friend of mine, and would be blithe to see any of my kin. They tell me he has great trials of skill in all exercises, and that he has gathered half the gentry in the place about him."

      "John," said my cousin in a scornful voice, "John is too busily employed at Dawyck to care much for anything else. A flighty maid is a sore burden on any man."

      "I would have you learn, Master Gilbert," I said angrily, "to speak in a better way of myself and my friends. You may be a very great gentleman elsewhere, but you seem to leave your gentility behind when you come here."

      Now my cousin and I were of such opposite natures that I took most things seriously, while he found matter for a jest in all—yet not in full good-nature, but with a touch of acrid satire.

      "Even a barn-door cock will defend his own roost. How one sees the truth of proverbs!"

      And then he added that which I will not set down, but which brought my father and myself to our feet with flashing eyes and quivering lips. I would have spoken, but my father motioned me to be silent.

      "Gilbert," he said, his voice shaking with age and anger, "you will leave this house the morn. I will have no scoundrelly fellow of your kidney here. You are no true nephew of mine, and God pity the father that begat you."

      My cousin smiled disdainfully and rose from his chair. "Surely I will go and at once when my hospitable uncle bids me. The entertainment in this damned hole is not so good as to keep me long. As for you, Cousin John," and he eyed me malignantly, "you and I will meet some day, where there are no dotards and wenches to come between us. Then I promise you some sport. Till then, farewell. I will down to Peebles to-night and trouble you no more." With a wave of his hand he was gone, and five minutes later we heard his horse's hooves clatter over the stones of the yard.

      When he was gone his conduct came back to my father with a rush, and he fell to upbraiding himself for his breach of hospitality and family honour. He would have me call Gilbert back, and when I showed him how futile it was, fell into low spirits and repented in great bitterness.

      Now the worst of this day's business remains to be told. For when I looked at my father some time after I found him sunk in his chair with his face as pale as death. With the help of Jean Morran and Tam Todd I got him to bed, from which he never rose, but passed peacefully away in the fear of God two days later. The heat into which he had been thrown was the direct cause, and though I could not very well lay the thing to my cousin's charge when the man was already so far down the vale of years, yet in my heart I set it against him. Indeed from this day I date my antagonism to the man, which before had been a mere boyish rivalry.

      I stayed with my father to the end. Just before he died he bade me come near and gave me his blessing, bidding me be a better gentleman than he had been. We did not bury him in the Kirk of Lyne, for he had always said he never could abide to lie within walls. but on a green flat above Tweed, where the echo of the river and the crying of moorbirds are never absent from his grave.

      CHAPTER VII

      THE PEGASUS INN AT PEEBLES AND HOW A STRANGER RETURNED FROM THE WARS

      Of my doings for some months after my father's death I must tell hastily. I fell heir to the lands of Barns, and being of age entered at once into my possession. The place remained the same as in my father's time, the same servants and the same ways about the house. I lived simply as I had always lived, spending my days in seeing to the land, in field sports, and some little study, for I had not altogether forsaken the Muses. But all the time I felt as one who is kept at home against his will, being conscious of a restlessness and an inclination to travel which was new to me, but which I doubt not is common to all young men at this time of life. I talked much with Tam Todd of the lands which he had visited, and heard of the Dutch towns with their strange shipping, their canals and orderly houses, and of the rough Norlanders, clad in the skins of wild animals, who came down to the Swedish markets to trade; of the soldiery of Germany and France and the Scots who had gone over there to push their fortunes with their swords; and what I loved best, of the salt sea with its boundless waste of waters and wild tales of shipwreck. Formerly I had been wont often to bid Tam sharply to hold his peace when he entered on one of his interminable narrations; but now I sat and drank in every word like a thirsty man. It was the winter-time, when the roads were often snowed up and all the folk of the place gathered in the great kitchen at nights round the fire; so it was the time for stories and we had our fill of them.

      One blustering day, the first Monday, I think, after the New Year, when the ice was beginning to melt from the burns and a wet, cold wind from the north-west was blowing, I rode down to Peebles to settle some matters about money with Saunders Blackett, who had managed my father's affairs and was now intrusted with mine. All things were done to my satisfaction; so bethinking myself that the way to Barns was cold and long and that it was yet early in the afternoon, being scarce four o'clock, I found myself thinking pleasantly of the warm inn-parlour of the Pegasus, so thither I went.

      The Pegasus or "Peg" Inn stands at the corner of the Northgate and the High Street, a black-gabled building, once the town-house of the Govans of Cardrona, and still retaining marks of its gentility in the arms carved above the door. A great sign flapped in the wind, bearing on a white ground a gorgeous representation of a winged horse soaring through clouds. The landlord at this time was one Horsbrock, a portly, well-looking man, who claimed to be kin to the Horsbrocks of that ilk and held his chin two inches higher in consequence. The place was famed in all the country round for good wine and comfort.

      I stabled my horse and, bidding the host bring me a bottle of Rhenish (so fine a thing it is to have succeeded to lands and money), I went into the low-ceilinged room where the company sat. It was panelled in a darkish wood, and hung round with old weapons, halberds and falchions and what not, which glimmered brightly in the firelight. A narrow window gave it light, but now it sufficed only to show the grey winter dusk coming swiftly on. Around the fire sat some few of the men of Peebles, warming themselves and discussing the landlord's ale and the characters of their neighbours.

      They rose to give me welcome when I entered, for my name and family were well known in the countryside.

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