Warlock o' Glenwarlock: A Homely Romance

CHAPTER XLI

GRANNIE AND THE STICK

This winter, the wind that drops the ripened fruit not plucked before, blew hard upon old Grannie, who had now passed her hundredth year. For some time Agnes had not been able to do much for her, but another great-grandchild, herself a widow and a mother, was spending the winter with her. On his way to or from school, Cosmo every day looked in to see or enquire after her; and when he heard she had had a bad night he would always think how with her would fail the earthly knowledge of not a little of the past of his family, and upon one of these occasions resolved that he would at least find out whether she remembered the bamboo he had brought from Cairncarque.

Calling when school was over, he heard she was a little better, and the next morning brought with him the cane. In the afternoon he learned that she had had a better night, and going in found her in her chair by the fireside, and took his place by her so that the light from the window at her back should fall upon the stick.

He had not sat more than a minute, when he saw her eyes fixed upon the horse.

"What's that ye hae there, Cosmo?" she said.

"This?" returned Cosmo. "It's a cane I pickit up upo' my traivels.

What think ye o' 't?"

He held it out to her, but she did not move her hand towards it.

"Whaur got ye't?" she asked, her eyes growing larger as she looked.

"What gars ye speir, grannie?" he returned, with assumed indifference.

"I dinna believe there was anither like the ane that's like," she replied.

"In which case," rejoined Cosmo, "it maun be the same. Ken ye onything aboot it?"

"Ay; an' sae du ye, or ye hae less sense nor I wad hae mintit o' a Warlock. That stick's no a stick like ither sticks, an' I wuss I was nearer hame."

"Ye dinna mean, grannie, there's onything no canny aboot the stick?" said Cosmo.

"I wadna like to think him near me 'at aucht it." she replied.

"Wha auchit it, grannie?"

"Rive't a' to bits, laddie; there's something by ordnar aboot it. The auld captain made o' 't as gien it had been his graven image. That was his stick ye hae i' yer han', whaurever ye got it; an' it was seldom oot o' his frae mornin' till nicht. Some wad hae't hetuik it til's bed wi' him. I kenna aboot that; but gien by ony accident he set it oot frae 'atween his knees, it was never oot o' the sicht o' his e'en. I hae seen him mysel', missin' 't like, luik up o' a suddent as gien his sowl hed been requiret o' 'im, an' grip at it as gien it hed been his proadigal son come hame oonexpeckit."

Cosmo told her where he had found it.

"I tellt ye sae!" she cried. "The murderin' villian cairriet it wi' him, weel kennin what was intil 't!"

Cosmo showed her the joints and their boxes, telling her he had searched them all, but had found nothing. She shook her head.

"Ower late! ower late!" she murmured. "The rievin' English lord was aforehan' wi' the heir!"

She seemed then to fall into a kind of lethargic musing, and as Cosmo had not yet made up his mind to show her the paper he had found in the top of the cane, and ask her opinion concerning it, for the present he bade her good-night—little thinking he was not to see her again in this world. For that same night she died.

And now when his opportunity was over, and he could learn no more from her, the mind of Cosmo was exercised afresh concerning the bamboo. According to Grannie, its owner habitually showed anxiety for its safety, and had it continually under his eye. It did not seem likely that the rings had been in it long when it was taken from him, neither that at any time he would have chosen to carry like valuables about with him in such a receptacle. It could hardly therefore be because of those or of similar precious things concealed in it, that he was always so watchful over it. It was possible, indeed, that from often using it for temporary concealment, he had come to regard it with constant anxiety; but the conjecture did not satisfy Cosmo. And as often as he turned the thing over in his mind, his speculation invariably settled on the unintelligible paper. It was true the said paper had seemed not so much there for its own safety, as by chance employment for the protection of the jewels round which it was, after all, rather squeezed than folded; but a man may crumple up his notes and thrust them in his pocket, yet care more for them than for anything else in the same place.

Thinking of the thing one night after he was in bed, it occurred to him suddenly to ask himself what he had done with the paper, for he could not remember when he had last seen it. He got up, took the stick, which being Joan's gift he always carried to his room, and opening the horse, which he could now do without his eyes, found it empty. This made him uneasy, and he lay down again to think what he could have done with it. It was dark night, and his anxiety was not so great but that sleep presented its claim upon him. He resisted it however, unwilling to yield until he had at least thought of some probability with regard to the paper. But, like a soundless tide, sleep kept creeping upon him, and he kept starting from it with successive spur-pricks of the will which had not yet consented to the nightly annihilation. Bethinking himself in one of these revivals that he might have put it in his pocket-book, he stretched his hand to the chair beside the bed on which lay his clothes. Then came a gap in his consciousness, and the next thing he knew was the pocket-book in his hand, with the memory or the dream, he could not afterwards tell which, of having searched it in vain.

He now felt so anxious that he could rest no longer, but must get up and look for the paper until he found it. He rose and lighted his candle, went down the stair to the kitchen, and out of the house—then began to doubt whether he was awake, but, like one compelled, went on to the great door, and up to the drawing-room, when first he became aware that the moon was shining, and all at once remembered a former dream, and knew it was coming to him again: there it was!—the old captain, seated in his chair, with the moon on his face, and a ghastly look! He felt his hair about to stand on end with terror, but resisted with all his might. The rugged, scarred countenance gazed fixedly at him, and he did his best to return the gaze. The appearance rose, and walked from the room, and Cosmo knew he had to follow it to the room above, which he had not once entered since his return. There, as before, it went to the other side of the bed, and disappeared. But this time the dream went a little farther. Despite his fear, Cosmo followed, and in the wall, by the head of the bed, saw an open door. He hurried up to it, but seemed to strike against the wall, and woke. He was in bed, but his heart was beating a terribly quick march. His pocket-book was in his hand: he struck a light, and searching in it, found the missing paper.

The next night, he told his dream to his father and Mr Simon, and they had a talk about dreams and apparitions; then all three pored over the paper, but far from arriving at any conclusion, seemed hardly to get a glimpse of anything that could be called light upon its meaning.

CHAPTER XLII.

OBSTRUCTION

All this time Cosmo had never written again to Joan; both his father and he thought it better the former only should for the present keep up the correspondence. But months had passed without their hearing from her. The laird had written the third time, and received no answer.

The day was now close upon them when the last of their land would be taken, leaving them nothing but the kitchen-garden—a piece of ground of about half an acre, the little terraced flower-garden to the south of the castle, and the croft tenanted by James Gracie. They applied to Lord Lick-my-loof to grant them a lease of the one field next the castle, which the laird with the help of the two women had cultivated the spring before, but he would not—his resentment being as strong as ever, and his design deeper than they saw.

The formal proceedings took their legal course; and upon and after a certain day Lord Lick-my-loof might have been seen from not a few of the windows of the castle, walking the fields to the north and east, and giving orders to his bailiff concerning them. Within a fortnight those to the north were no more to be entered from the precincts of the castle except by climbing over a DRY-STANE DYKE; and before many additional days were gone by, they found him more determined than they could have imagined, to give them annoyance.

He had procured a copy of an old plan of the property, and therein discovered, as he had expected and hoped, that that part of the road from the glen of the Warlock which passed the gate of the castle, had been made by the present laird only about thirty years before; whereupon—whether he was within his legal rights or not, I do not know, but everybody knew the laird could not go to law—he gave orders that it should be broken up from the old point of departure, and a dry dyke built across the gate. But the persons to whom the job was committed, either ashamed or afraid, took advantage of an evening on which Cosmo had a class for farm-labourers, to do the work after dark; whence it came that, plodding homewards without a suspicion, he found himself as he approached the gate all at once floundering among stones and broken ground, and presently brought up standing, a man built out from his own house by a mushroom wall—the entrance gone which seemed to him as old as the hills around it, for it was older than his earthly life. With a great shove he hurled half the height of it over, and walking in, appeared before his father in such a rage as bewildered and troubled him far more than any insolence of Lord Lick-my-loof could have done.

"The scoundrel!" cried Cosmo; "I should like to give him a good drubbing—only he's an old man! But I'll make him repent it—and heartily, too!"

"Cosmo, my boy," said the old man, "you are meddling with what does not belong to you."

"I know it's your business, father, not mine; but—"

"It's no more my business than yours, my son!'VENGEANCE IS MINE, SAITH THE LORD.'—An' the best o' 't is," he went on, willing, by a touch of humour in the truth he had to speak, to help turn the tide of Cosmo's wrath, "he'll tak' no more than's guid for the sinner; whereas yersel', Cosmo, i' the tune ye're in noo, wad damn puir auld Lick-my-loof for ever and ever! Man, he canna hurt me to the worth o' sic a heap o' firin'!" Then changing his tone to absolute seriousness, "Min' ye tu, Cosmo," he went on, "'at the maister never threatent but aye left the thing, whatever it was, to him 'at judges richteously. Ye want nothing but fair play, my son, an' whether ye get it frae Lick-my-loof or no, there's ane winna haud it frae ye. Ye 's get it, my son; ye 's get it! The maister 'll hae a' thing set richt at the lang last; an' gien HE binna in a hurry, we may weel bide. For mysel', the man has smitten me upo' the tae cheek, an' may hae the tither to lat drive at whan he likes. It's no worth liftin' my auld airm to haud aff the smack."

He laughed, and Cosmo laughed too—but grimly and out of tune. Then the laird told him that just that piece of the road was an improvement of his own, and had cost him a good bit of blasting: it used to cross the stream twice before it got to the yard-gate. He hardly thought, he said, that his lordship would like to have to restore it; for, besides the expense, it would cost him so much out of one of his best fields. In the meantime they must contrive how to connect themselves with that part of the road which he dared not touch. The worst of it was that there was no longer any direct communication across the fields with James Gracie's cottage. To follow the road was to make a tremendous round.

Grizzie being already in bed when Cosmo came home, learned nothing that night of the evil news.

At break of day Cosmo was up to see what could be done, and found that a few steps cut in the rocky terraces of the garden would bring one with ease to the road. He set about it immediately, and before breakfast-time had finished the job.

The rage and indignation of Grizzie when she learned what had been done, far surpassed Cosmo's, and served to secure him from any return of the attack. The flood of poetic abuse that she poured out seemed inexhaustible, sweeping along with it tale after tale to the prejudice of "that leein' Lick-my-loof." But, poetic as was her speech, not a single rime did she utter for the space of an hour during which she thus unloaded her heart.

"Ay!" she concluded, and thereafter sank into smouldering silence, "there was a futpath there afore ye was born, laird, blast or no blast; an' to that I can fess them 'at can beir testimony, ane o' them bein' nane ither nor Jeames Gracie himsel', wha's ten lang years aheid o' yer lairdship! an' lat me see man or dog 'at 'll haud me ohn taen my wull o' my richts intil't! They canna hang me, and for less I carena."

The schoolmaster was at length fit to resume his labours, and about a week after the event just recorded, Cosmo ceased to attend the school in his stead.

CHAPTER XLIII.

GRIZZIE'S RIGHTS

In those days Mistress Gracie fell sick, and though for a while neither husband nor grand-daughter thought seriously of her ailment, it proved more than her age, worn with labour, could endure, and she began to sink. Then Grizzie must go and help nurse her, for, Cosmo being at home all day long, the laird could well enough spare her.

Father and son were now seldom out of each other's sight. When Cosmo was writing, the laird would be reading in the same room; and when, after their dinner, the laird slept, Cosmo would generally read his New-testament beside him, and as often as he woke fresh from his nap, the two would talk about what the one had been reading, and Cosmo would impart what fresh light the Greek had given him. The capacity of the old man for taking in what was new, was wonderful, and yet not to be wondered at, seeing it was the natural result of the constant practice of what he learned—for all truth understood becomes duty. To him that obeys well, the truth comes easy; to him who does not obey, it comes not, or comes in forms of fear and dismay. The true, that is the obedient man, cannot help seeing the truth, for it is the very business of his being—the natural concern, the correlate of his soul. The religion of these two was obedience and prayer; their theories only the print of their spiritual feet as they walked homeward.

The road which Lord Lick-my-loof had broken up, went nearly straight from Castle Warlock to the cottage of the Gracies, where it joined the road that passed his lodge. And now came Grizzie's call to action! The moment she found her services required for Mistress Gracie, she climbed the gate of the close, from the top of it stepped upon the new wall, thence let herself down on the disfeatured road, and set out to follow its track, turn for turn, through the ploughed land. In the evening she came back the same way, scrambled over the wall and the gate, and said never a word, nor was asked a question. To visit his tenants the laird himself went a mile about, but most likely he was not prepared to strain his authority with Grizzie, and therefore was as one who knew nothing.

Before the week was out, her steps, and hers alone, had worn a visible and very practicable footpath across the enemy's field; and whether Lord Lick-my-loof was from home, or that he willed the trespass to assume its most defined form and yield personal detection ere he moved in the matter, the week went by without notice taken.

On the Sunday morning however, as Grizzie was on her way to the cottage, she suddenly spied, over the edge of a hollow through which her path ran, the head of Lord Lick-my-loof: he was following the track she had made, and would presently meet her. Wide spread her nostrils, like those of the war-horse, for she too smelt the battle from afar.

"Here's auld Belzebub at last!'gaein to an' fro i' the earth, an' walkin' up an' doon intil 't!" she said to herself. "Noo's for me to priv the trowth 'o Scriptur! Whether he'll flee or no, we'll see: I s' resist him. It's no me 'at'll rin, ony gait!"

His lordship had been standing by his lodge on the outlook, and when he saw Grizzie approaching, had started to encounter her. As she drew near he stopped, and stood in the path motionless. On she came till within a single pace of him. He did not move. She stopped.

"I doobt, my lord," she said, "I'll hae to mak the ro'd a bit wider. There's hardly room for yer lordship an' anither. But I'm gettin' on fine!"

"Is the woman an idiot!" exclaimed his lordship.

"Muckle siclike 's yersel', my lord!" answered Grizzie;—"no that muckle wit but I might hae mair, to guide my steps throuw the wilderness ye wad mak o' no an ill warl'."

"Are you aware, woman, that you have made yourself liable to a heavy fine for trespass? This field is mine!"

"An' this fitpath's mine, my lord—made wi' my ain feet, an' I coonsel ye to stan' aside, an' lat me by."

"Woman, you are insolent."

"Troth, I needna yer lordship to tell me that! Nane the less ae auld wife may say 'at she likes til anither."

"I tell you there is no thoroughfare here."

"An' I tell you there IS a thoroughfare, an' ye hae but to wull the trowth to ken 'at there is. There was a ro'd here lang or yer lordship's father was merried upo' yer lordship's mither, an' the law—what o' 't yer lordship hasna the makin' o'—is deid agen ye: that I can priv. Hae me up: I can tak my aith as weel's onybody whan I'm sure."

"I will do so; but in the meantime you must get off my property."

"Weel, stan' by, an' I s' be aff o' 't in less time nor yer lordship."

"You must go back."

"Hooly an' fairly! Bide till the gloamin', an' I s' gang back—never fear. I' the mids o' the meantime I'm gaein' aff o' yer property the nearest gait—an' that's straucht efter my nose."

She tried, for the tenth time or so, to pass, but turn as she might, he confronted her. She persevered. He raised the stick he carried, perhaps involuntarily, perhaps thinking to intimidate her. Then was the air rent with such an outcry of assault as grievously shook the nerves of his lordship.

"Hold your tongue, you howling jade!" he cried—and the epithet sufficed to destroy every possible remnant of forbearance in the mind of Grizzie.

"There's them 'at tells me, my lord," she said with sudden calm, "'at that's hoo ye misca'd Annie Fyfe, puir lass, whan she cam efter ye, fifty year ago, to yer father's hoose, an' gat na a plack to haud her an' her bairn frae the roadside! Ye needna girn like that, my lord! Spare yer auld teeth for the gnashin' they'll HAE to du. —Though ye fear na God nor regaird man, yer hoor 'll come, an' yer no like to bid it walcome."

Beside himself with rage, Lord Lick-my-loof would have laid hold of her, but she uttered a louder cry than before—so loud that James Grade's deaf colley heard her, and, having a great sense of justice, more courage than teeth, and as little regard to the law of trespass as Grizzie herself, came, not bounding, but tearing over the land to her rescue, as if a fox were at one of his sheep. He made straight for his lordship.

Now this dog was one of the chief offences of the cottage, for he had the moral instinct to know and hate a bad man, and could not abide Lord Lick-my-loof. He had never attacked him, for the colley cultivated self-restraint, but he had made his lordship aware that there was no friendship in his heart towards him.

Silent almost as swift, he was nearly on the enemy before either he or Grizzie saw him. His lordship staggered from the path, and raised his stick with trembling hand.

"Boon wi' ye! doon, Covenant! doon, ye tyke!" cried Grizzie. "Haud yer teeth gien ye wad keep the feow ye hae! Deil a bite but banes is there i' the breeks o' 'im!"

The dog had obeyed, and now stood worshipping her with his tail, while with his eyes he watched the enemy and his stick.

"Hark ye, Covenant," she went on, "whan his sowl he selled him, the deevil telled him,'at never mair sud he turn a hair at cry or moanin' in highway or loanin', for greitin' or sweirin' or grane o' despair. Haud frae him, Covenant, my fine fallow, haud frae him."

Grizzie talked to the dog nor lifted her eyes. When she looked up, Lord Lick-my-loof was beyond the hollow, hurrying as if to fetch help. In a few minutes she was safe in the cottage, out of breath, but in high spirits; and even the dying woman laughed at her tale of how she had served his lordship.

"But ye ken, Grizzie," suggested Jeames, "we're no to return evil for evil, nor flytin' for flytin'!"

"Ca' ye that flytin'?" cried Grizzie. "Ye sud hear what I didna say! That was flytin'! We'll be tried by what we can do, no by what we canna! An' for returnin' evil, did I no haud the dog frae the deithshanks o' 'im?"

The laird and Cosmo had spent as usual a quiet and happy Sunday. It was now halfway down the gloamin' towards night, and they sat together in the drawing-room, the laird on the sofa, and Cosmo at one of the windows. The sky was a cold clear calm of thin blue and translucent green, with a certain stillness which in my mind will more or less for ever be associated with a Scotch Sunday. A long low cloud of dark purple hung like a baldachin over the yet glimmering coals on the altar of sunset, and the sky above it was like a pale molten mass of jewels that had run together with heat, and was still too bright for the stars to show. They were both looking out at the sky, and a peace as of the unbeginnings of eternity was sinking into their hearts. The laird's thoughts were with his Marion in the region beyond the dream; Cosmo's with Joan in the dream that had vanished into itself. If love be religion, what matter whether its object be in heaven or on the earth! Love itself is the only true nearness. He who thinks of his Saviour as far away can have made little progress in the need of him; and he who does not need much cannot know much, any more than he who is not forgiven much can love much. They sat silent, their souls belonging rather to the heaven over their heads than the earth under their feet, when suddenly the world of stillness was invaded with hideous discord, above which almost immediately rose the well known voice of Grizzie in fierce opposition. They rushed out. Overthe gate and obstructing wall they descried, indistinct in the dull light, several heads, and hurrying thither, found Grizzie in the grasp of Lord Lick-my-loof's bailiff, and his lordship looking on with his hands in his pockets and the smile that was his own. But it was not for her own sake Grizzie cried out: there were two more in the group—two of the dog-kind, worrying each other with all the fierceness of the devotion which renders a master's quarrel more than the dog's own. They were, however, far from equally matched, and that was the cause of Grizzie's cry; for the one was the somewhat ancient colley named Covenant, whose teeth were not what they had been, and the other a mastiff belonging to Lord Lick-my-loof, young and malevolent, loosed from the chain the first time that night for a month. It looked ill for Covenant, but he was a brave dog, incapable of turning his back on death itself when duty called him, and what more is required of dog or man! Both the dogs were well bred each in its kind; Covenant was the more human, Dander the more devilish; and the battle was fierce.