Warlock o' Glenwarlock: A Homely Romance
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"What for mak ye nae answer whan a body speirs ye a queston? That wasna mainners whan I was a bairn. Lord! ye micht as weel be ceevil! Isna it easy eneuch to lee?"
"I would answer no man who was not prepared to believe me," said Cosmo quietly.
The dignity of his English had far more effect on the man than the friendliness of their mother-tongue.
"Maybe ye wadna objec' to mak mention by name o' the toon nearest to ye whan ye was at hame?" said the old man, and from his altered manner and tone Cosmo felt he might reply.
"It was ca'd Muir o' Warlock," he answered.
"Lord, man! come into the hoose. Ye maun be sair in need o' something to put intil ye! A' the gait frae Muir o' Warlock! A toonsman o' my ain! Scot—lan' 's a muckle place—but Muir o' Warlock! Guid guide's! Come in, man; come in!"
So saying he took the spade from Cosmo's hands, threw it down with a contemptuous cast, and led the way towards the house.
The old man had a heart after all! Strange the power of that comparatively poor thing, local association, to bring to light the eternal love at the root of the being! Wonderful sign also of the presence of God wherever a child may open eyes! This man's heart was not yet big enough to love a Scotsman, but it was big enough to love a Muir-o'-Warlock-man; and was not that a precious beginning? —a beginning as good as any? It matters nothing where or how one begins, if only one does begin! There are many, doubtless, who have not yet got farther in love than their own family; but there are others who have learned that for the true heart there is neither Frenchman nor Englishman, neither Jew nor Greek, neither white nor black—only the sons and daughters of God, only the brothers and sisters of the one elder brother. There may be some who have learned to love all the people of their own planet, but have not yet learned to look with patience upon those of Saturn or Mercury; while others there must be, who, wherever there is a creature of God's making, love each in its capacity for love—from the arch-angel before God's throne, to the creeping thing he may be compelled to destroy—from the man of this earth to the man of some system of worlds which no human telescope has yet brought within the ken of heaven-poring sage. And to that it must come with every one of us, for not until then are we true men, true women—the children, that is, of him in whose image we are made.
Cosmo followed very willingly, longing for water and a clothes-brush rather than for food. The cold and damp, fatigue and exposure of the night were telling upon him more than he knew, and all the time he was at work, he had been cramped by hitherto unknown pains in his limbs.
The gardener brought him to the half-ruinous wing already mentioned, to a small kitchen, opening under a great sloping buttress, and presented him to his wife, an English woman, some ten years younger than himself. She received him with a dignified retraction of the feelers, but the moment she understood his needs, ministered to them, and had some breakfast ready for him by the time he had made his toilet. He sat down by her little fire, and drank some tea, but felt shivery, and could not eat. In dread lest, if he yielded a moment to the invading sickness, it should at once overpower him, he made haste to get out again into the sun, and rejoined the old man, who had gone back to his cabbage-ground. There he pulled off his coat, and once more seized the spade, for work seemed the only way of meeting his enemy hand to hand. But the moment he began, he was too hot, and the moment he took breath he was ready to shiver. As long as he could stand, however, he would not give in.
"How many years have you been gardener here?" he asked, forcing himself to talk.
"Five an' forty year, an' I'm nearhan' tired o' 't."
"The present lord is a young man, is he not?"
"Ay; he canna be muckle ayont five an' thirty."
"What sort of a man is he?"
"Weel, it's hard to say. He's ane o' them 'at naebody says weel o', an' naebody's begud to say ill o'—yet."
"There can't be much amiss with him then, surely!"'
"Weel, I wadna gang freely sae far as say that, You 'at's a man o' sense, maun weel un'erstan', gien it was only frae yer carritchis (catechism), 'at there's baith sins o' o-mission, an' sins o' co-mission. Noo, what sins o' co-mission may lie at my lord's door, I dinna ken, an' feow can ken, an' we're no to jeedge; but for the o-mission, ye hae but to see hoo he neglects that bonny sister o' his, to be far eneuch frae thinkin' a sant o' 'im."
Silence followed. Cosmo would go no farther in that direction: it would be fair neither to Lady Joan nor the gardener, who spoke as to one who knew nothing of the family.
"Noo the father," resumed his new friend, "—puir man, he's deid an' damned this mony a day!—an' eh, but he was an ill ane!—but as to Leddy Joan, he wad hardly bide her oot o' his sicht. He cudna be jist that agreeable company to the likes o' her, puir leddy! for he was a rouch-spoken, sweirin' auld sinner as ever lived, but sic as he had he gae her, an' was said to hae been a fine gentleman in's yoong days. Some wad hae 't he cheenged a' thegither o' a suddent. An' they wad hae 't it cam o' bluid-guiltiness—for they said he had liftit the reid han' agen his neebor. An' they warnt me, lang as it was sin' I left it, no to lat 'im ken I cam frae yon pairt o' the country, or he wad be rid o' me in a jiffey, ae w'y or anither. —Ay, it was a gran' name that o' Warlock i' thae pairts! though they tell me it gangs na for sae muckle noo. I hae h'ard said,'at ever sin' the auld lord here made awa' wi' the laird o' Glen—warlock, the faimily there never had ony luck. I wad like to ken what you, as a man o' sense, think o' that same. It appears to me a' some queer kin' o' justice! No' 'at I'm daurin' or wad daur to say a word agen the w'y 'at the warl's goverrnt, but there's some things 'at naebody can un'erstan'—I defy them!—an' yon's ane o' them—what for, cause oor graceless auld lord—he was yoong than—tuik the life o' the laird o' Glenwarlock, the faimily o' Warlock sud never thrive frae that day to this!—Read me that riddle, yoong man, gien ye can."
"Maybe it was to haud them 'at cam efter frae ony mair keepin' o' sic ill company," Cosmo ventured to suggest; for, knowing what his father was, and something also of what most of those who preceded him were, he could see no such inscrutable dispensation in the fact mentioned.
"That wad be hard lines, though," insisted the gardener, unwilling to yield the unintelligibility of the ways of providence.
"But," said Cosmo, "they say doon there, it was a brither o' the laird, no the laird himsel','at the English lord killt."
"Na, na; they're a' wrang there, whaever says that. For auld Jean, wham I min' a weel faured wuman, though doobtless no sae bonny as whan he broucht her wi' 'im a yoong lass—maybe to gar her haud her tongue—auld Jean said as I say. But that was lang efter the thing was ower auld to be ta'en ony notice o' mair. Forby, you 'at's a man o' sense, gien it wasna the laird himsel' 'at he killt, hoo wad there, i' that case, be onything worthy o' remark i' their no thrivin' efter't? I' that case, the no thrivin' cud hae had naething ava to du wi' the killin'. Na, na, it was the laird himsel' 'at the maisier killt—the father o' the present laird, I'm thinkin'. What aged-man micht he be—did ye ever hear tell?"
"He's a man well on to seventy," answered Cosmo, with a pang at the thought.
"Ay; that'll be aboot it! There can be no doobt it was his father oor lord killt—an' as little 'at efter he did it he gaed doon the braid ro'd to the deevil as fest's ever he cud rin. It was jist like as wi' Judas—he maun gang till's ain. Some said he had sellt himsel' to the deevil, but I'm thinkin' that wasna necessar'. He was to get him ony gait! An' wad ye believe't, it's baith said and believt—'at he cam by's deith i' some exterordnar w'y, no accoontable for, but plainly no canny. Ae thing's sure as deith itsel', he was ta'en suddent, an' i' the verra hoose whaur, mony a lang year afore, he commitit the deed o' darkness!"
A pause followed, and then the narrator, or rather commentator, resumed.
"I'm thinkin' whan he begud to ken himsel' growin' auld, his deed cam back upon 'im fresh-like, an' that wad be hoo he cudna bide to hae my lady oot o' the sicht o' his een, or at least ayont the cry o' his tongue. Troth! he wad whiles come aboot the place efter her, whaur I wad be at my wark, as it micht be the day, cursin' an' sweirin' as gien he had sellt his sowl to a' the deevils thegither, an' sae micht tak his wull o' onything he cud get his tongue roon'! But I never heedit him that muckle, for ye see it wasna him 'at peyt me—the mair by token 'at gien it had been him 'at had the peyin' o' me, it's never a baubee wad I hae seen o' my ain siller; but the trustees peyt me, ilka plack, an' sae I was indepen'ent like, an' luit him say his say. But it was aye an oonsaitisfactory kin' o' a thing, for the trustees they caredna a bodle aboot keepin' the place dacent, an' tuik sae sma' delicht in ony pleesurin' o' the auld lord,'at they jist allooed him me, an' no a man mair nor less—to the gairden, that is. That's hoo the place comes to be in sic a disgracefu' condeetion. Gien it hadna been for rizzons o' my ain, I wad hae gane, mony's the time, for the sicht o' the ruin o' things was beyon' beirin'. But I bude to beir't; sae I bore't an' bore't till I cam by beirin' o' 't to tak it verra quaiet, an' luik upo' the thing as the wull o' a Providence 'at sudna be meddlet wi'. I broucht mysel' in fac' to that degree o' submission,'at I gae mysel' no trouble more, but jist confint my ainergies to the raisin' o' the kail an' cabbage, the ingons an' pitawtas wantit aboot the place."
"And are things no better," asked Cosmo, "since the present lord succeeded?"
"No a hair—'cep' it be 'at there's no sae mony ill words fleein' aboot the place. My lord never sets his nose intil the gairden, or speirs—no ance in a twal—month, hoo's things gangin' on. He does naething but rowt aboot in 's boaratory as he ca's 't—bore-a-whig, or bore-a-tory, it's little to me—makin' stinks there fit to scomfish a whaul, an' gar 'im stick his nose aneth the watter for a glamp o' fresh air. He's that hard-hertit 'at he never sae muckle as aits his denner alongside o' his ain sister,'cep' it be whan he has company, an' wad luik like ither fowk. Gien it gaedna ower weel wi' her i' the auld man's time, it gangs waur wi' her noo; for sae lang as he was abune the yird there was aye somebody to ken whether she was livin' or deid. To see a bonnie lass like her strayin' aboot the place nae better companied nor wi' an auld buik—it's jist eneuch to brak a man's hert, but that age kills rage."
"Do the neighbours take no notice of her?"
"Nane o' her ain dignity, like. Ye see she's naething but bonny. She HAS naething. An' though she's as guid a cratur as ever lived, the cauld grun' o' her poverty gaithers the fog o' an ill report. Troth, for her faimily, the ill's there, report or no report; but, a' the same, gien she had been rich, an' her father—I'll no say the hangman, but him 'at he last hangt, there wad be fowth (PLENTY) o' coonty-fowk wad hae her til her denner wi' them. An' I'm thinkin' maybe she's the prooder for her poverty, an' winna gang til her inferriors sae lang as her aiquals dinna invete her. She gangs whiles to the doctor's—but he's a kin' o' a freen' o' the yerl's,'cause he likes stinks—but that's the yoong doctor."
"Does her brother never go out to dinner anywhere, and take her with him?"
"Naebody cares a bodle aboot his lordship i' the haill country-side, sae far as I can learn. There's ane or twa—great men, I daursay—whiles comes doon frea Lon'on, to smell hoo he's gettin' on wi' 's stinks, but deil a neebor comes nigh the hoose. Ow, he's a great man, I mak nae doobt, awa' frae hame! He's aye writin' letters to the newspapers, an' they prent them—aboot this an' aboot that—aboot beasties i' the watter, an' lectreesity, an' I kenna what a'; an' some says 'at hoo he'll be a rich man some day, the moment he's dune fin'in' oot something or ither he's beenwarslin' at for the feck o' a ten year or sae; but the gentry never thinks naething o' a man sae lang as he's only duin' his best—or his warst, as the case may be—to lay his han' upo' the siller 'at's fleein' aboot him like a snaw-drift. Bide ye a bit, though! WHAN he's gotten't, it's doon they're a' upo' their k-nees til 'im thegither. But gien they be prood, he's prooder, an' lat him ance get his heid up, an' rid o' the trustees, an' fowk upo' their marrow—banes til 'im, haith, he'll lat them sit there, or I'm mistaen in 'im."
"Then has my lady no companions at all?"
"She gangs whiles to see the doctor's lass, an' whiles she comes here an' has her denner wi' her, themsel's twa: never anither comes near the place."
All this time, Cosmo had been turning over the cabbage-ground, working the harder that he still hoped to work off the sickness that yet kept growing upon him. The sun was hot, and his head, which had been aching more or less all day, now began to throb violently.
The spade dropt from his hands, and he fell on his face in the soft mould.
"What's this o' 't?" cried the old man, going up to him in a fright.
He caught hold of him by an arm, and turned him on his back. His face was colourless, and the life seemed to have gone out of him.
CHAPTER XXVI.
LOST AND FOUND
When Cosmo came to himself, he had not a notion where he was, hardly indeed knew what he was. His chief consciousness was of an emptiness and a weight combined, that seemed to paralyze him. He would have turned on his side, but felt as if a ponderous heap of bed-clothes prevented him from even raising an arm—and yet he was cold. He tried to think back, to find what he knew of himself last, but could for a long time recall only a confused dream of multitudinous discomfort and painful effort. At last, however, came the garden, the spade-work, and the old man's talk; and then it seemed as if the cracked complaining voice had never left his ears.
"I've been ill!" he said to himself. "Perhaps I dropped down. I hope they haven't buried me!"
With a straining agony of will he got in motion an arm, which was lying like that of another man outside the coverlid, and felt feebly about him. His hand struck against something solid, and what seemed a handful of earth fell with a hollow rumble. Alas, this seemed ominous! Where could he be but in his coffin? The thought was not a pleasant one, certainly, but he was too weak, and had been wandering too long in the miserable limbo of vain fancies, to be much dismayed. He said to himself he would not have to suffer long—he must soon go to sleep, and so die.
Fatigued with that one movement, he lay for some time motionless. His eyes were open, though he did not know it, and by and by he became aware of light. Thin, dim, darkly gray, a particle at a time, it grew about him. For some minutes his eyes seemed of themselves, without any commission from him, to make inquiry of his surroundings. They discovered that, if he was in a coffin, or even in a sepulchre without a coffin, it was a large one: there was a wall—miles away! The light grew, and with it the conviction that he was in no sepulchre. But there the consolation ceased, for the still growing light revealed no sign of ministration or comfort. Above him was a bare, dirty, stained ceiling, with a hole in it, through which stuck skeleton ribs of lath; around him were bare, dirty-white walls, that seemed to grow out of the gray light of a wet morning as the natural deposit from such a solution. Two slender poles, meant to support curtains, but without a rag of drapery upon them, rose at his feet, like the masts of a Charon's boat. Was he indeed in the workhouse he had pre—ferred to Cairncarque? It could hardly be, for there was the plaster fallen in great patches from the walls as well as the ceiling, and surely no workhouse would be allowed to get into such a disrepair! He tried again, and this time succeeded in turning on his side, discovering in the process how hard the bed was, and how sharp his bones. A wooden chair stood a little beyond his reach, and upon it a bottle and teacup. Not another article could he discover. Right under the hole in the ceiling a board was partly rotted away in the floor, and a cold, damp air, smelling of earth, and decaying wood, seemed to come steaming up through it. A few minutes more, he said to himself, and he would get up, and out of the hideous place, but he must lie a little longer first, just to come to himself!—Now he would try!—What had become of his strength? Was it gone utterly? Could one night's illness have reduced him thus?
He seemed to himself unable to think, yet the profoundest thought went on as if thinking itself in him. Where had his strength lain before he lost it? Could that ever have been HIS which he could not keep? If a thing were ours, nothing could ever take it from us! Was his strength ever his then? Yes, for God had given it him. Then he could not have lost it! He had it still! The branches of it were gone, but the root remained, hid in God. All was well. If God chose that his child should lie there, for this day, and to-morrow, or till the next year, or if it pleased him that he should never rise again with the same body, was that a thing to trouble him? He turned his back on the ugly room, and was presently fast asleep again.
Not a few read the poems of a certain king brought up a shepherd lad. From Sunday to Sunday they read them. Amongst them, in their turn, they read these: "I will both lay me down in peace and sleep, for thou, Lord, only makest me to dwell in safety." Yet not only do these readers never have such a feeling in their own hearts in consequence, but they never even imagine that David really had it in his. Deeper and grander things still, uttered by this same shepherd-warrior, do they read, and yet in their wisdom will declare it preposterous that any Scotch lad should have such a feeling towards God as I have represented! "Doth God care for oxen?" says St. Paul. Doth God care for kings? I ask, or for Jew-shepherds? Or does he not care all over for all of us—oxen and kings and sparrows and Scotch lairds? According to such blind seers, less is to be expected of humanity since the son of David came, than it was capable of in his father David. Such men build stone houses, but never a spiritual nest. They cannot believe the thing possible which yet another man DOES. Nor ever may they believe it before they begin to do it. I wonder little at so many rejecting Christianity, while so many would-be champions of it hold theirs at arm's length—in their bibles, in their theories, in their church, in their clergyman, in their prayer-books, in the last devotional page they have read—a separable thing—not in their hearts on their beds in the stillness; not their comfort in the night-watches; not the strength of their days, the hope and joy of their conscious being! God is nearer to me than the air I breathe, nearer to me than the heart of wife or child, nearer to me than my own consciousness of myself, nearer to me than the words in which I speak to him, nearer than the thought roused in me by the story of his perfect son—or he is no God at all. The unbelievers might well rejoice in the loss of such a God as many Chris—tians would make of him. But if he be indeed the Father of our Lord Christ, of that Jew who lived and died doing the will of his Father, and nothing but that will, then, to all eternity, "Amen, thy will be done, O God! and nothing but thy will, in or through me!"
Cosmo had been ill a whole week—in fever and pain, and was now helpless almost as an infant. The old man had gone for his wife, and between them they had persuaded him, though all but unconscious, to exert himself sufficiently to reach the house. This effort he could recall, in the shape of an intermina—ble season during which he supported the world for Atlas, that he might get a little sleep; but it was only the aching weight of his own microcosm that he urged Atlanlean force to carry. They took him direct to the room where he now lay, for they had them—selves but one chamber, and if they took him there, what would become of the old bones to which the gardener was so fond of referring in his colloquies with himself? Also, it might be some fever he had taken, and their own lives were so much the more precious that so much of them was gone! Like most of us, they were ready to do THEIR NEXT BEST for him. They spared some of their own poor comforts to furnish the skeleton bed for him; and there he lay, like one adrift in a rotten boat on the ebbing ocean of life, while the old woman trudged away to the village to tell the doctor that there was a young Scotch gardener taken suddenly ill at their quarters in the castle.
The doctor sent his son, a man about thirty, who after travelling some years as medical attendant to a nobleman, had settled in his native village as his father's partner. He prescribed for Cosmo, and gave hope that there was nothing infectious about the case. Every day during the week he had come to see him, and the night before had been with him from dark to dawn.
The gardener's wife had informed Lady Joan that a young Scotchman who had come to her husband seeking employment, had been taken suddenly ill, and was lying in a room in the old wing; and Lady Joan had said she would speak to the housekeeper to let her have whatever she wanted for him. The doctor saw Lady Joan most every time he came to see Cosmo, and she would enquire how his patient was going on; she would also hear the housekeeper's complaints of the difficulty she had in getting wine from the butler—of which there was no lack, only he grudged it, for he was doing his best to drink up the stock the old lord had left behind him, intending to take his departure with the last bottle—but she took no farther interest in the affair. The castle was like a small deserted village, and there was no necessity for a person in one part of it knowing what was taking place in another.
But that same morning she had a letter from the laird, saying he was uneasy about his boy. He had been so inconsiderate, he informed her, as to set out to visit her without asking her leave, or even warning her of his intent; and since the letter announcing his immediate departure, received a fortnight before, he had not heard of or from him. This set Joan thinking. And the immediate result was, that she went to the gardener's wife, and questioned her concerning the appearance of her patient. In the old woman's answers she certainly could recognize no likeness to Cosmo; but he must have altered much in seven years, and she could not be satisfied without seeing the young man.
Cosmo lay fast asleep, and dreaming—but pleasant dreams now, for the fever gone, life was free to build its own castles. He thought he was dead, and floating through the air at his will, volition all that was necessary to propel him like a dragon-fly, in any direction he desired to take. He was about to go to his father, to receive his congratulations on his death, and to say to him that now the sooner he too died the better, that the creditors might have the property, everybody be paid, and they two and his mother be together for always. But first, before he set out, he must have one sight of Lady Joan, and in that hope was now hovering about the towers of the castle. He was slowly circling the two great ones of the gateway, crossing a figure of eight over the gallery where stood the machinery of the portcullis, when down he dropped, and lay bruised and heavy, unable by fiercest effort of the will to move an inch from the spot. He was making the reflection how foolish it was to begin to fly before assuring himself that he was dead, and was resolving to be quite prudent another time, when he felt as if a warm sunny cloud came over him, which made him open his eyes. They gradually cleared, and above him he saw the face of his many dreams—a little sadder than it was in them, but more beautiful.
Cosmo had so much of the childlike in him that illness made him almost a very child again, and when he saw Joan's face bending over him like a living sky, just as any child might have done, he put his arms round her neck, and drew her face down to his. Hearts get uppermost in illness, and people then behave as they would not in health. More is in it than is easily found. There is such a dumb prayer in the spirit to be taken!
Till he opened his eyes Lady Joan had been unable to satisfy herself whether the pale, worn, yet grand-looking youth could indeed be the lad Cosmo, and was not at all prepared for such precipitate familiarity: the moment she was released, she drew back with some feeling, if not of offence, yet of annoyance. But such a smile flooded Cosmo's face, mingled with such a pleading look of apology and excuse, which seemed to say, "How could I help it?" that she was ashamed of herself. It was the same true face as the boy's, with its old look of devotion and gentle worship! To make all right she stooped of her own accord, and kissed his forehead.