CHAPTER V
WINTER ON THE MOORS
1. _At Hermiston_
The road to Hermiston runs for a great part of the way up the valley ofa stream, a favourite with anglers and with midges, full of falls andpools, and shaded by willows and natural woods of birch. Here and there,but at great distances, a byway branches off, and a gaunt farmhouse maybe descried above in a fold of the hill; but the more part of the time,the road would be quite empty of passage and the hills of habitation.Hermiston parish is one of the least populous in Scotland; and, by thetime you came that length, you would scarce be surprised at theinimitable smallness of the kirk, a dwarfish, ancient place seated forfifty, and standing in a green by the burn-side among two-scoregravestones. The manse close by, although no more than a cottage, issurrounded by the brightness of a flower-garden and the straw roofs ofbees; and the whole colony, kirk and manse, garden and graveyard, findsharbourage in a grove of rowans, and is all the year round in a greatsilence broken only by the drone of the bees, the tinkle of the burn,and the bell on Sundays. A mile beyond the kirk the road leaves thevalley by a precipitous ascent, and brings you a little after to theplace of Hermiston, where it comes to an end in the back-yard before thecoach-house. All beyond and about is the great field of the hills; theplover, the curlew, and the lark cry there; the wind blows as it blowsin a ship's rigging, hard and cold and pure; and the hill-tops huddleone behind another, like a herd of cattle, into the sunset.
The house was sixty years old, unsightly, comfortable; a farmyard and akitchen-garden on the left, with a fruit wall where little hard greenpears came to their maturity about the end of October.
The policy (as who should say the park) was of some extent, but very illreclaimed; heather and moor-fowl had crossed the boundary wall andspread and roosted within; and it would have tasked a landscape gardenerto say where policy ended and unpolicied nature began. My lord had beenled by the influence of Mr. Sheriff Scott into a considerable design ofplanting; many acres were accordingly set out with fir, and the littlefeathery besoms gave a false scale and lent a strange air of a toy-shopto the moors. A great, rooty sweetness of bogs was in the air, and atall seasons an infinite melancholy piping of hill birds. Standing sohigh and with so little shelter, it was a cold, exposed house, splashedby showers, drenched by continuous rains that made the gutters to spout,beaten upon and buffeted by all the winds of heaven; and the prospectwould be often black with tempest, and often white with the snows ofwinter. But the house was wind and weather proof, the hearths were keptbright, and the rooms pleasant with live fires of peat; and Archie mightsit of an evening and hear the squalls bugle on the moorland, and watchthe fire prosper in the earthy fuel, and the smoke winding up thechimney, and drink deep of the pleasures of shelter.
Solitary as the place was, Archie did not want neighbours. Every night,if he chose, he might go down to the manse and share a "brewst" of toddywith the minister--a hare-brained ancient gentleman, long and light andstill active, though his knees were loosened with age, and his voicebroke continually in childish trebles--and his lady wife, a heavy,comely dame, without a word to say for herself beyond good-even andgood-day. Harum-scarum, clodpole young lairds of the neighbourhood paidhim the compliment of a visit. Young Hay of Romanes rode down to call,on his crop-eared pony; young Pringle of Drumanno came up on his bonygrey. Hay remained on the hospitable field, and must be carried to bed;Pringle got somehow to his saddle about 3 A.M., and (as Archie stoodwith the lamp on the upper doorstep) lurched, uttered a senselessview-holloa, and vanished out of the small circle of illumination like awraith. Yet a minute or two longer the clatter of his break-neck flightwas audible, then it was cut off by the intervening steepness of thehill; and again, a great while after, the renewed beating of phantomhorsehoofs, far in the valley of the Hermiston, showed that the horse atleast, if not his rider, was still on the homeward way.
There was a Tuesday club at the "Crosskeys" in Crossmichael, where theyoung bloods of the countryside congregated and drank deep on apercentage of the expense, so that he was left gainer who should havedrunk the most. Archie had no great mind to this diversion, but he tookit like a duty laid upon him, went with a decent regularity, did hismanfullest with the liquor, held up his head in the local jests, and gothome again and was able to put up his horse, to the admiration ofKirstie and the lass that helped her. He dined at Driffel, supped atWindielaws. He went to the new year's ball at Huntsfield and was madewelcome, and thereafter rode to hounds with my Lord Muirfell, upon whosename, as that of a legitimate Lord of Parliament, in a work so full ofLords of Session, my pen should pause reverently. Yet the same fateattended him here as in Edinburgh. The habit of solitude tends toperpetuate itself, and an austerity of which he was quite unconscious,and a pride which seemed arrogance, and perhaps was chiefly shyness,discouraged and offended his new companions. Hay did not return morethan twice, Pringle never at all, and there came a time when Archie evendesisted from the Tuesday Club, and became in all things--what he hadhad the name of almost from the first--the Recluse of Hermiston.High-nosed Miss Pringle of Drumanno and high-stepping Miss Marshall ofthe Mains were understood to have had a difference of opinion about himthe day after the ball--he was none the wiser, he could not supposehimself to be remarked by these entrancing ladies. At the ball itself myLord Muirfell's daughter, the Lady Flora, spoke to him twice, and thesecond time with a touch of appeal, so that her colour rose and hervoice trembled a little in his ear, like a passing grace in music. Hestepped back with a heart on fire, coldly and not ungracefully excusedhimself, and a little after watched her dancing with young Drumanno ofthe empty laugh, and was harrowed at the sight, and raged to himselfthat this was a world in which it was given to Drumanno to please, andto himself only to stand aside and envy. He seemed excluded, as ofright, from the favour of such society--seemed to extinguish mirthwherever he came, and was quick to feel the wound, and desist, andretire into solitude. If he had but understood the figure he presented,and the impression he made on these bright eyes and tender hearts; if hehad but guessed that the Recluse of Hermiston, young, graceful, wellspoken, but always cold, stirred the maidens of the county with thecharm of Byronism when Byronism was new, it may be questioned whetherhis destiny might not even yet have been modified. It may be questioned,and I think it should be doubted. It was in his horoscope to beparsimonious of pain to himself, or of the chance of pain, even to theavoidance of any opportunity of pleasure; to have a Roman sense of duty,an instinctive aristocracy of manners and taste; to be the son of AdamWeir and Jean Rutherford.
2. _Kirstie_
Kirstie was now over fifty, and might have sat to a sculptor. Long oflimb, and still light of foot, deep-breasted, robust-loined, her goldenhair not yet mingled with any trace of silver, the years had butcaressed and embellished her. By the lines of a rich and vigorousmaternity, she seemed destined to be the bride of heroes and the motherof their children; and behold, by the iniquity of fate, she had passedthrough her youth alone, and drew near to the confines of age, achildless woman. The tender ambitions that she had received at birth hadbeen, by time and disappointment, diverted into a certain barren zeal ofindustry and fury of interference. She carried her thwarted ardours intohousework, she washed floors with her empty heart. If she could not winthe love of one with love, she must dominate all by her temper. Hasty,wordy, and wrathful, she had a drawn quarrel with most of herneighbours, and with the others not much more than armed neutrality. Thegrieve's wife had been "sneisty"; the sister of the gardener who kepthouse for him had shown herself "upsitten"; and she wrote to LordHermiston about once a year demanding the discharge of the offenders,and justifying the demand by much wealth of detail. For it must not besupposed that the quarrel rested with the wife and did not take in thehusband also--or with the gardener's sister, and did not speedilyinclude the gardener himself. As the upshot of all this pettyquarrelling and intemperate speech, she was practically excluded (like alightkeeper on his tower) from the comforts of human association; exceptw
ith her own indoor drudge, who, being but a lassie and entirely at hermercy, must submit to the shifty weather of "the mistress's" moodswithout complaint, and be willing to take buffets or caresses accordingto the temper of the hour. To Kirstie, thus situate and in the Indiansummer of her heart, which was slow to submit to age, the gods sent thisequivocal good thing of Archie's presence. She had known him in thecradle and paddled him when he misbehaved; and yet, as she had not somuch as set eyes on him since he was eleven and had his last seriousillness, the tall, slender, refined, and rather melancholy younggentleman of twenty came upon her with the shock of a new acquaintance.He was "Young Hermiston," "the laird himsel'": he had an air ofdistinctive superiority, a cold straight glance of his black eyes, thatabashed the woman's tantrums in the beginning, and therefore thepossibility of any quarrel was excluded. He was new, and thereforeimmediately aroused her curiosity; he was reticent, and kept it awake.And lastly he was dark and she fair, and he was male and she female, theeverlasting fountains of interest.
Her feeling partook of the loyalty of a clanswoman, the hero-worship ofa maiden aunt, and the idolatry due to a god. No matter what he hadasked of her, ridiculous or tragic, she would have done it and joyed todo it. Her passion, for it was nothing less, entirely filled her. It wasa rich physical pleasure to make his bed or light his lamp for him whenhe was absent, to pull off his wet boots or wait on him at dinner whenhe returned. A young man who should have so doted on the idea, moral andphysical, of any woman, might be properly described as being in love,head and heels, and would have behaved himself accordingly. ButKirstie--though her heart leaped at his coming footsteps--though, whenhe patted her shoulder, her face brightened for the day--had not a hopeor thought beyond the present moment and its perpetuation to the end oftime. Till the end of time she would have had nothing altered, but stillcontinue delightedly to serve her idol, and be repaid (say twice in themonth) with a clap on the shoulder.
I have said her heart leaped--it is the accepted phrase. But rather,when she was alone in any chamber of the house, and heard his footpassing on the corridors, something in her bosom rose slowly until herbreath was suspended, and as slowly fell again with a deep sigh, whenthe steps had passed and she was disappointed of her eyes' desire. Thisperpetual hunger and thirst of his presence kept her all day on thealert. When he went forth at morning, she would stand and follow himwith admiring looks. As it grew late and drew to the time of his return,she would steal forth to a corner of the policy wall and be seenstanding there sometimes by the hour together, gazing with shaded eyes,waiting the exquisite and barren pleasure of his view a mile off on themountains. When at night she had trimmed and gathered the fire, turneddown his bed, and laid out his night-gear--when there was no more to bedone for the king's pleasure, but to remember him fervently in herusually very tepid prayers, and go to bed brooding upon his perfections,his future career, and what she should give him the next day fordinner--there still remained before her one more opportunity; she wasstill to take in the tray and say good-night. Sometimes Archie wouldglance up from his book with a preoccupied nod and a perfunctorysalutation which was in truth a dismissal; sometimes--and by degreesmore often--the volume would be laid aside, he would meet her comingwith a look of relief; and the conversation would be engaged, last outthe supper, and be prolonged till the small hours by the waning fire. Itwas no wonder that Archie was fond of company after his solitary days;and Kirstie, upon her side, exerted all the arts of her vigorous natureto ensnare his attention. She would keep back some piece of news duringdinner to be fired off with the entrance of the supper tray, and form asit were the _lever de rideau_ of the evening's entertainment. Once hehad heard her tongue wag, she made sure of the result. From one subjectto another she moved by insidious transitions, fearing the leastsilence, fearing almost to give him time for an answer lest it shouldslip into a hint of separation. Like so many people of her class, shewas a brave narrator; her place was on the hearthrug and she made it arostrum, miming her stories as she told them, fitting them with vitaldetail, spinning them out with endless "quo' he's" and "quo' she's," hervoice sinking into a whisper over the supernatural or the horrific;until she would suddenly spring up in affected surprise, and pointing tothe clock, "Mercy, Mr. Archie!" she would say, "whatten a time o' nightis this of it! God forgive me for a daft wife!" So it befell, by goodmanagement, that she was not only the first to begin these nocturnalconversations, but invariably the first to break them off; so shemanaged to retire and not to be dismissed.
3. _A Border Family_
Such an unequal intimacy has never been uncommon in Scotland, where theclan spirit survives; where the servant tends to spend her life in thesame service, a help-meet at first, then a tyrant, and at last apensioner; where, besides, she is not necessarily destitute of the prideof birth, but is, perhaps, like Kirstie, a connection of her master's,and at least knows the legend of her own family, and may count kinshipwith some illustrious dead. For that is the mark of the Scot of allclasses: that he stands in an attitude towards the past unthinkable toEnglishmen, and remembers and cherishes the memory of his forebears,good or bad; and there burns alive in him a sense of identity with thedead even to the twentieth generation. No more characteristic instancecould be found than in the family of Kirstie Elliott. They were all, andKirstie the first of all, ready and eager to pour forth the particularsof their genealogy, embellished with every detail that memory had handeddown or fancy fabricated; and, behold! from every ramification of thattree there dangled a halter. The Elliotts themselves have had achequered history; but these Elliotts deduced, besides, from three ofthe most unfortunate of the border clans--the Nicksons, the Ellwalds,and the Crozers. One ancestor after another might be seen appearing amoment out of the rain and the hill mist upon his furtive business,speeding home, perhaps, with a paltry booty of lame horses and leankine, or squealing and dealing death in some moorland feud of theferrets and the wild cats. One after another closed his obscureadventures in mid-air, triced up to the arm of the royal gibbet or theBaron's dule-tree. For the rusty blunderbuss of Scots criminal justice,which usually hurt nobody but jurymen, became a weapon of precision forthe Nicksons, the Ellwalds, and the Crozers. The exhilaration of theirexploits seemed to haunt the memories of their descendants alone, andthe shame to be forgotten. Pride glowed in their bosoms to publish theirrelationship to "Andrew Ellwald of the Laverockstanes, called 'UnchancyDand,' who was justifeed wi' seeven mair of the same name at Jeddart inthe days of King James the Sax." In all this tissue of crime andmisfortune, the Elliotts of Cauldstaneslap had one boast which mustappear legitimate: the males were gallows-birds, born outlaws, pettythieves, and deadly brawlers; but, according to the same tradition, thefemales were all chaste and faithful. The power of ancestry on thecharacter is not limited to the inheritance of cells. If I buy ancestorsby the gross from the benevolence of Lyon King of Arms, my grandson (ifhe is Scottish) will feel a quickening emulation of their deeds. The menof the Elliotts were proud, lawless, violent as of right, cherishing andprolonging a tradition. In like manner with the women. And the woman,essentially passionate and reckless, who crouched on the rug, in theshine of the peat fire, telling these tales, had cherished through lifea wild integrity of virtue.
Her father Gilbert had been deeply pious, a savage disciplinarian in theantique style, and withal a notorious smuggler. "I mind when I was abairn getting mony a skelp and being shoo'd to bed like pou'try," shewould say. "That would be when the lads and their bit kegs were on theroad. We've had the riffraff of two-three counties in our kitchen,mony's the time, betwix' the twelve and the three; and their lanternswould be standing in the forecourt, ay, a score o' them at once. Butthere was nae ungodly talk permitted at Cauldstaneslap; my faither was aconsistent man in walk and conversation; just let slip an aith, andthere was the door to ye! He had that zeal for the Lord, it was a fairwonder to hear him pray, but the faim'ly has aye had a gift that way."This father was twice married, once to a dark woman of the old Ellwaldstock, by whom he had Gilbert, p
resently of Cauldstaneslap; and,secondly, to the mother of Kirstie. "He was an auld man when he marriedher, a fell auld man wi' a muckle voice--you could hear him rowting fromthe top o' the Kye-skairs," she said; "but for her, it appears she was aperfit wonder. It was gentle blood she had, Mr. Archie, for it was yourain. The country-side gaed gyte about her and her gowden hair. Mines isno to be mentioned wi' it, and there's few weemen has mair hair thanwhat I have, or yet a bonnier colour. Often would I tell my dear MissJeannie--that was your mother, dear, she was cruel ta'en up about herhair, it was unco tender, ye see--'Hoots, Miss Jeannie,' I would say,'just fling your washes and your French dentifrishes in the back o' thefire, for that's the place for them; and awa' down to a burn side, andwash yersel' in cauld hill water, and dry your bonny hair in the callerwind o' the muirs, the way that my mother aye washed hers, and that Ihave aye made it a practice to have wishen mines--just you do what Itell ye, my dear, and ye'll give me news of it! Ye'll have hair, androuth of hair, a pigtail as thick's my arm,' I said, 'and the bonniestcolour like the clear gowden guineas, so as the lads in kirk'll no cankeep their eyes off it!' Weel, it lasted out her time, puir thing! Icuttit a lock of it upon her corp that was lying there sae cauld. I'llshow it ye some of thir days if ye're good. But, as I was sayin', mymither----"
On the death of the father there remained golden-haired Kirstie, whotook service with her distant kinsfolk, the Rutherfords, andblack-a-vised Gilbert, twenty years older, who farmed theCauldstaneslap, married, and begot four sons between 1773 and 1784, anda daughter, like a postscript, in '97, the year of Camperdown and CapeSt. Vincent. It seemed it was a tradition in the family to wind up witha belated girl. In 1804, at the age of sixty, Gilbert met an end thatmight be called heroic. He was due home from market any time from eightat night till five in the morning, and in any condition from thequarrelsome to the speechless, for he maintained to that age the goodlycustoms of the Scots farmer. It was known on this occasion that he had agood bit of money to bring home; the word had gone round loosely. Thelaird had shown his guineas, and if anybody had but noticed it, therewas an ill-looking, vagabond crew, the scum of Edinburgh, that drew outof the market long ere it was dusk and took the hill-road by Hermiston,where it was not to be believed that they had lawful business. One ofthe country-side, one Dickieson, they took with them to be their guide,and dear he paid for it! Of a sudden, in the ford of the Broken Dykes,this vermin clan fell on the laird, six to one, and him three partsasleep, having drunk hard. But it is ill to catch an Elliott. For awhile, in the night and the black water that was deep as to hissaddle-girths, he wrought with his staff like a smith at his stithy, andgreat was the sound of oaths and blows. With that the ambuscade wasburst, and he rode for home with a pistol-ball in him, three knifewounds, the loss of his front teeth, a broken rib and bridle, and adying horse. That was a race with death that the laird rode. In the mirknight, with his broken bridle and his head swimming, he dug his spurs tothe rowels in the horse's side, and the horse, that was even worse offthan himself, the poor creature! screamed out like a person as he went,so that the hills echoed with it, and the folks at Cauldstaneslap got totheir feet about the table and looked at each other with white faces.The horse fell dead at the yard gate, the laird won the length of thehouse and fell there on the threshold. To the son that raised him hegave the bag of money. "Hae," said he. All the way up the thieves hadseemed to him to be at his heels, but now the hallucination left him--hesaw them again in the place of the ambuscade--and the thirst ofvengeance seized on his dying mind. Raising himself and pointing with animperious finger into the black night from which he had come, he utteredthe single command, "Brocken Dykes," and fainted. He had never beenloved, but he had been feared in honour. At that sight, at that word,gasped out at them from a toothless and bleeding mouth, the old Elliottspirit awoke with a shout in the four sons. "Wanting the hat," continuesmy author, Kirstie, whom I but haltingly follow, for she told this talelike one inspired, "wanting guns, for there wasna twa grains o' pouderin the house, wi' nae mair weepons than their sticks into their hands,the fower o' them took the road. Only Hob, and that was the eldest,hunkered at the door-sill where the blood had rin, fyled his hand wi'it, and haddit it up to Heeven in the way o' the auld Border aith. 'Hellshall have her ain again this nicht!' he raired, and rode forth upon hisearrand." It was three miles to Broken Dykes, down hill, and a soreroad. Kirstie had seen men from Edinburgh dismounting there in plain dayto lead their horses. But the four brothers rode it as if Auld Horniewere behind and Heaven in front. Come to the ford, and there wasDickieson. By all tales, he was not dead, but breathed and reared uponhis elbow, and cried out to them for help. It was at a graceless facethat he asked mercy. As soon as Hob saw, by the glint of the lantern,the eyes shining and the whiteness of the teeth in the man's face, "Damnyou!" says he; "ye hae your teeth, hae ye?" and rode his horse to andfro upon that human remnant. Beyond that, Dandie must dismount with thelantern to be their guide; he was the youngest son, scarce twenty at thetime. "A' nicht long they gaed in the wet heath and jennipers, and whaurthey gaed they neither knew nor cared, but just followed thebluid-stains and the footprints o' their faither's murderers. And a'nicht Dandie had his nose to the grund like a tyke, and the ithersfollowed and spak' naething, neither black nor white. There was naenoise to be heard, but just the sough of the swalled burns, and Hob, thedour yin, risping his teeth as he gaed." With the first glint of themorning they saw they were on the drove-road, and at that the fourstopped and had a dram to their breakfasts, for they knew that Dand musthave guided them right, and the rogues could be but little ahead, hotfoot for Edinburgh by the way of the Pentland Hills. By eight o'clockthey had word of them--a shepherd had seen four men "uncoly mishandled"go by in the last hour. "That's yin a piece," says Clem, and swung hiscudgel. "Five o' them!" says Hob. "God's death, but the faither was aman! And him drunk!" And then there befell them what my author termed "asair misbegowk," for they were overtaken by a posse of mountedneighbours come to aid in the pursuit. Four sour faces looked on thereinforcement. "The Deil's broughten you!" said Clem, and they rodethenceforward in the rear of the party with hanging heads. Before tenthey had found and secured the rogues, and by three of the afternoon, asthey rode up the Vennel with their prisoners, they were aware of aconcourse of people bearing in their midst something that dripped. "Forthe boady of the saxt," pursued Kirstie, "wi' his head smashed like ahazel-nit, had been a' that nicht in the chairge o' Hermiston Water, andit dunting in on the stanes, and grunding it on the shallows, andflinging the deid thing heels-ower-hurdie at the Fa's o' Spango; and inthe first o' the day, Tweed had got a hold o' him and carried him offlike a wind, for it was uncoly swalled, and raced wi' him, bobbing underbraesides, and was long playing with the creature in the drumlie lynnsunder the castle, and at the hinder end of all cuist him up on thesterling of Crossmichael brig. Sae there they were a'thegither at last(for Dickieson had been brought in on a cart long syne), and folk couldsee what mainner o' man my brither had been that had held his head againsax and saved the siller, and him drunk!" Thus died of honourableinjuries and in the savour of fame Gilbert Elliott of theCauldstaneslap; but his sons had scarce less glory out of the business.Their savage haste, the skill with which Dand had found and followed thetrail, the barbarity to the wounded Dickieson (which was like an opensecret in the county), and the doom which it was currently supposed theyhad intended for the others, struck and stirred popular imagination.Some century earlier the last of the minstrels might have fashioned thelast of the ballads out of that Homeric fight and chase; but the spiritwas dead, or had been reincarnated already in Mr. Sheriff Scott, and thedegenerate moorsmen must be content to tell the tale in prose, and tomake of the "Four Black Brothers" a unit after the fashion of the"Twelve Apostles" or the "Three Musketeers."
Robert, Gilbert, Clement, and Andrew--in the proper Border diminutives,Hob, Gib, Clem, and Dand Elliott--these ballad heroes, had much incommon; in particular, their high sense of the family and the familyhonour; but they went diverse
ways, and prospered and failed indifferent businesses. According to Kirstie, "they had a' bees in theirbonnets but Hob." Hob the laird was, indeed, essentially a decent man.An elder of the Kirk, nobody had heard an oath upon his lips, save,perhaps, thrice or so at the sheep-washing, since the chase of hisfather's murderers. The figure he had shown on that eventful nightdisappeared as if swallowed by a trap. He who had ecstatically dippedhis hand in the red blood, he who had ridden down Dickieson, became,from that moment on, a stiff and rather graceless model of the rusticproprieties; cannily profiting by the high war prices, and yearlystowing away a little nest-egg in the bank against calamity; approved ofand sometimes consulted by the greater lairds for the massive and placidsense of what he said, when he could be induced to say anything; andparticularly valued by the minister, Mr. Torrance, as a right-hand manin the parish, and a model to parents. The transfiguration had been forthe moment only; some Barbarossa, some old Adam of our ancestors, sleepsin all of us till the fit circumstance shall call it into action; and,for as sober as he now seemed, Hob had given once for all the measure ofthe devil that haunted him. He was married, and, by reason of theeffulgence of that legendary night, was adored by his wife. He had a mobof little lusty, barefoot children who marched in a caravan the longmiles to school, the stages of whose pilgrimage were marked by acts ofspoliation and mischief, and who were qualified in the country-side as"fair pests." But in the house, if "faither was in," they were quiet asmice. In short, Hob moved through life in a great peace--the reward ofany one who shall have killed his man, with any formidable andfigurative circumstance, in the midst of a country gagged and swaddledwith civilisation.
It was a current remark that the Elliotts were "guid and bad, likesanguishes"; and certainly there was a curious distinction, the men ofbusiness coming alternately with the dreamers. The second brother, Gib,was a weaver by trade, had gone out early into the world to Edinburgh,and come home again with his wings singed. There was an exaltation inhis nature which had led him to embrace with enthusiasm the principlesof the French Revolution, and had ended by bringing him under the hawseof my Lord Hermiston in that furious onslaught of his upon the Liberals,which sent Muir and Palmer into exile and dashed the party into chaff.It was whispered that my lord, in his great scorn for the movement, andprevailed upon a little by a sense of neighbourliness, had given Gib ahint. Meeting him one day in the Potterrow, my lord had stopped in frontof him: "Gib, ye eediot," he had said, "what's this I hear of you?Poalitics, poalitics, poalitics, weaver's poalitics, is the way of it, Ihear. If ye arena a'thegither dozened with eediocy, ye'll gang your waysback to Cauldstaneslap, and ca' your loom, and ca' your loom, man!" AndGilbert had taken him at the word and returned, with an expeditionalmost to be called flight, to the house of his father. The clearest ofhis inheritance was that family gift of prayer of which Kirstie hadboasted; and the baffled politician now turned his attention toreligious matters--or, as others said, to heresy and schism. EverySunday morning he was in Crossmichael, where he had gathered together,one by one, a sect of about a dozen persons, who called themselves"God's Remnant of the True Faithful," or, for short, "God's Remnant." Tothe profane they were known as "Gib's Deils." Bailie Sweedie, a notedhumorist in the town, vowed that the proceedings always opened to thetune of "The Deil Fly Away with the Exciseman," and that the sacramentwas dispensed in the form of hot whisky-toddy; both wicked hits at theevangelist, who had been suspected of smuggling in his youth, and hadbeen overtaken (as the phrase went) on the streets of Crossmichael oneFair day. It was known that every Sunday they prayed for a blessing onthe arms of Buonaparte. For this, "God's Remnant," as they were"skailing" from the cottage that did duty for a temple, had beenrepeatedly stoned by the bairns, and Gib himself hooted by a squadron ofBorder volunteers in which his own brother, Dand, rode in a uniform andwith a drawn sword. The "Remnant" were believed, besides, to be"antinomian in principle," which might otherwise have been a seriouscharge, but the way public opinion then blew it was quite swallowed upand forgotten in the scandal about Buonaparte. For the rest, Gilbert hadset up his loom in an outhouse at Cauldstaneslap, where he labouredassiduously six days of the week. His brothers, appalled by hispolitical opinions, and willing to avoid dissension in the household,spoke but little to him; he less to them, remaining absorbed in thestudy of the Bible and almost constant prayer. The gaunt weaver wasdry-nurse at Cauldstaneslap, and the bairns loved him dearly. Exceptwhen he was carrying an infant in his arms, he was rarely seen tosmile--as, indeed, there were few smilers in that family. When hissister-in-law rallied him, and proposed that he should get a wife andbairns of his own, since he was so fond of them, "I have no clearness ofmind upon that point," he would reply. If nobody called him in todinner, he stayed out. Mrs. Hob, a hard, unsympathetic woman, once triedthe experiment. He went without food all day, but at dusk, as the lightbegan to fail him, he came into the house of his own accord, lookingpuzzled. "I've had a great gale of prayer upon my speerit," said he. "Icanna mind sae muckle's what I had for denner." The creed of God'sRemnant was justified in the life of its founder. "And yet I dinnaken," said Kirstie. "He's maybe no more stock-fish than his neeghbours!He rode wi' the rest o' them, and had a good stamach to the work, by a'that I hear! God's Remnant! The deil's clavers! There wasna muckleChristianity in the way Hob guided Johnny Dickieson, at the least of it;but Guid kens! Is he a Christian even? He might be a Mahommedan or aDeevil or a Fireworshipper, for what I ken."
The third brother had his name on a door-plate, no less, in the city ofGlasgow, "Mr. Clement Elliott," as long as your arm. In this case, thatspirit of innovation which had shown itself timidly in the case of Hobby the admission of new manures, and which had run to waste with Gilbertin subversive politics and heretical religions, bore useful fruit inmany ingenious mechanical improvements. In boyhood, from his addictionto strange devices of sticks and string, he had been counted the mosteccentric of the family. But that was all by now; and he was a partnerof his firm, and looked to die a bailie. He too had married, and wasrearing a plentiful family in the smoke and din of Glasgow; he waswealthy, and could have bought out his brother, the cock-laird, sixtimes over, it was whispered; and when he slipped away to Cauldstaneslapfor a well-earned holiday, which he did as often as he was able, heastonished the neighbours with his broadcloth, his beaver hat, and theample plies of his neckcloth. Though an eminently solid man at bottom,after the pattern of Hob, he had contracted a certain Glasgow brisknessand _aplomb_ which set him off. All the other Elliotts were as lean as arake, but Clement was laying on fat, and he panted sorely when he mustget into his boots. Dand said, chuckling: "Ay, Clem has the elements ofa corporation." "A provost and corporation," returned Clem. And hisreadiness was much admired.
The fourth brother, Dand, was a shepherd to his trade, and by starts,when he could bring his mind to it, excelled in the business. Nobodycould train a dog like Dandie; nobody, through the peril of great stormsin the winter time, could do more gallantly. But if his dexterity wereexquisite, his diligence was but fitful; and he served his brother forbed and board, and a trifle of pocket-money when he asked for it. Heloved money well enough, knew very well how to spend it, and could makea shrewd bargain when he liked. But he preferred a vague knowledge thathe was well to windward to any counted coins in the pocket; he felthimself richer so. Hob would expostulate: "I'm an amature herd." Dandwould reply, "I'll keep your sheep to you when I'm so minded, but I'llkeep my liberty too. Thir's no man can coandescend on what I'm worth."Clem would expound to him the miraculous results of compound interest,and recommend investments. "Ay, man?" Dand would say; "and do you think,if I took Hob's siller, that I wouldna drink it or wear it on thelassies? And, anyway, my kingdom is no of this world. Either I'm a poetor else I'm nothing." Clem would remind him of old age. "I'll die young,like Robbie Burns," he would say stoutly. No question but he had acertain accomplishment in minor verse. His "Hermiston Burn," with itspretty refrain--
"I love to gang thinking whaur ye gang linking, Hermiston burn, in the h
owe";
his "Auld, auld Elliotts, clay-cauld Elliotts, dour, bauld Elliotts ofauld," and his really fascinating piece about the Praying Weaver'sStone, had gained him in the neighbourhood the reputation, stillpossible in Scotland, of a local bard; and, though not printed himself,he was recognised by others who were and who had become famous. WalterScott owed to Dandie the text of the "Raid of Wearie" in the"Minstrelsy"; and made him welcome at his house, and appreciated histalents, such as they were, with all his usual generosity. The EttrickShepherd was his sworn crony; they would meet, drink to excess, roar outtheir lyrics in each other's faces, and quarrel and make it up againtill bedtime. And besides these recognitions, almost to be calledofficial, Dandie was made welcome for the sake of his gift through thefarmhouses of several contiguous dales, and was thus exposed to manifoldtemptations which he rather sought than fled. He had figured on thestool of repentance, for once fulfilling to the letter the tradition ofhis hero and model. His humorous verses to Mr. Torrance on thatoccasion--"Kenspeckle here my lane I stand"--unfortunately tooindelicate for further citation, ran through the country like a fierycross; they were recited, quoted, paraphrased, and laughed over as faraway as Dumfries on the one hand and Dunbar on the other.
These four brothers were united by a close bond, the bond of that mutualadmiration--or rather mutual hero-worship--which is so strong among themembers of secluded families who have much ability and little culture.Even the extremes admired each other. Hob, who had as much poetry as thetongs, professed to find pleasure in Dand's verses; Clem, who had nomore religion than Claverhouse, nourished a heartfelt, at least anopen-mouthed, admiration of Gib's prayers; and Dandie followed withrelish the rise of Clem's fortunes. Indulgence followed hard on theheels of admiration. The laird, Clem, and Dand, who were Tories andpatriots of the hottest quality, excused to themselves, with a certainbashfulness, the radical and revolutionary heresies of Gib. By anotherdivision of the family, the laird, Clem, and Gib, who were men exactlyvirtuous, swallowed the dose of Dand's irregularities as a kind of clogor drawback in the mysterious providence of God affixed to bards, anddistinctly probative of poetical genius. To appreciate the simplicity oftheir mutual admiration it was necessary to hear Clem, arrived upon oneof his visits, and dealing in a spirit of continuous irony with theaffairs and personalities of that great city of Glasgow where he livedand transacted business. The various personages, ministers of thechurch, municipal officers, mercantile big-wigs, whom he had occasionto introduce, were all alike denigrated, all served but as reflectors tocast back a flattering side-light on the house of Cauldstaneslap. TheProvost, for whom Clem by exception entertained a measure of respect, hewould liken to Hob. "He minds me o' the laird there," he would say. "Hehas some of Hob's grand, whunstane sense, and the same way with him ofsteiking his mouth when he's no very pleased." And Hob, all unconscious,would draw down his upper lip and produce, as if for comparison, theformidable grimace referred to. The unsatisfactory incumbent of St.Enoch's Kirk was thus briefly dismissed: "If he had but twa fingers o'Gib's, he would waken them up." And Gib, honest man! would look down andsecretly smile. Clem was a spy whom they had sent out into the world ofmen. He had come back with the good news that there was nobody tocompare with the Four Black Brothers, no position that they would notadorn, no official that it would not be well they should replace, nointerest of mankind, secular or spiritual, which would not immediatelybloom under their supervision. The excuse of their folly is in twowords: scarce the breadth of a hair divided them from the peasantry. Themeasure of their sense is this: that these symposia of rustic vanitywere kept entirely within the family, like some secret ancestralpractice. To the world their serious faces were never deformed by thesuspicion of any simper of self-contentment. Yet it was known. "They haea guid pride o' themsel's!" was the word in the country-side.
Lastly, in a Border story, there should be added their "two-names." Hobwas The Laird. "Roy ne puis, prince ne daigne"; he was the laird ofCauldstaneslap--say fifty acres--_ipsissimus_. Clement was Mr. Elliott,as upon his door-plate, the earlier Dafty having been discarded as nolonger applicable, and indeed only a reminder of misjudgment and theimbecility of the public; and the youngest, in honour of his perpetualwanderings, was known by the sobriquet of Randy Dand.
It will be understood that not all this information was communicated bythe aunt, who had too much of the family failing herself to appreciateit thoroughly in others. But as time went on, Archie began to observe anomission in the family chronicle.
"Is there not a girl too?" he asked.
"Ay: Kirstie. She was named for me, or my grandmother at least--it's thesame thing," returned the aunt, and went on again about Dand, whom shesecretly preferred by reason of his gallantries.
"But what is your niece like?" said Archie at the next opportunity.
"Her? As black's your hat! But I dinna suppose she would maybe be whatyou would ca' _ill-looked_ a'thegither. Na, she's a kind of a handsomejaud--a kind o' gipsy," said the aunt, who had two sets of scales formen and women--or perhaps it would be more fair to say that she hadthree, and the third and the most loaded was for girls.
"How comes it that I never see her in church?" said Archie.
"'Deed, and I believe she's in Glesgie with Clem and his wife. A heapgood she's like to get of it! I dinna say for men folk, but where weemenfolk are born, there let them bide. Glory to God, I was never far'erfrom here than Crossmichael."
In the meanwhile it began to strike Archie as strange, that while shethus sang the praises of her kinsfolk, and manifestly relished theirvirtues and (I may say) their vices like a thing creditable to herself,there should appear not the least sign of cordiality between the houseof Hermiston and that of Cauldstaneslap. Going to church of a Sunday, asthe lady housekeeper stepped with her skirts kilted, three tucks of herwhite petticoat showing below, and her best India shawl upon her back(if the day were fine) in a pattern of radiant dyes, she would sometimesovertake her relatives preceding her more leisurely in the samedirection. Gib of course was absent: by skreigh of day he had been goneto Crossmichael and his fellow-heretics; but the rest of the familywould be seen marching in open order: Hob and Dand, stiff-necked,straight-backed six-footers, with severe dark faces, and their plaidsabout their shoulders; the convoy of children scattering (in a state ofhigh polish) on the wayside, and every now and again collected by theshrill summons of the mother; and the mother herself, by a suggestivecircumstance which might have afforded matter of thought to a moreexperienced observer than Archie, wrapped in a shawl nearly identicalwith Kirstie's, but a thought more gaudy and conspicuously newer. At thesight, Kirstie grew more tall--Kirstie showed her classical profile,nose in air and nostril spread, the pure blood came in her cheek evenlyin a delicate living pink.
"A braw day to ye, Mistress Elliott," said she, and hostility andgentility were nicely mingled in her tones. "A fine day, mem," thelaird's wife would reply with a miraculous curtsey, spreading the whileher plumage--setting off, in other words, and with arts unknown to themere man, the pattern of her India shawl. Behind her, the wholeCauldstaneslap contingent marched in closer order, and with anindescribable air of being in the presence of the foe; and while Dandiesaluted his aunt with a certain familiarity as of one who was well incourt, Hob marched on in awful immobility. There appeared upon the faceof this attitude in the family the consequences of some dreadful feud.Presumably the two women had been principals in the original encounter,and the laird had probably been drawn into the quarrel by the ears, toolate to be included in the present skin-deep reconciliation.
"Kirstie," said Archie one day, "what is this you have against yourfamily?"
"I dinna complean," said Kirstie, with a flush. "I say naething."
"I see you do not--not even good-day to your own nephew," said he.
"I hae naething to be ashamed of," said she. "I can say the Lord'sPrayer with a good grace. If Hob was ill, or in preeson or poverty, Iwould see to him blithely. But for curtchying and complimenting andcolloguing, thank ye kindl
y!"
Archie had a bit of a smile: he leaned back in his chair. "I think youand Mrs. Robert are not very good friends," says he slily, "when youhave your India shawls on?"
She looked upon him in silence, with a sparkling eye but anindecipherable expression; and that was all that Archie was everdestined to learn of the battle of the India shawls.
"Do none of them ever come here to see you?" he inquired.
"Mr. Archie," said she, "I hope that I ken my place better. It would bea queer thing, I think, if I was to clamjamfry up your faither'shouse--that I should say it!--wi' a dirty, black-a-vised clan, no ane o'them it was worth while to mar soap upon but just mysel'! Na, they'reall damnifeed wi' the black Ellwalds. I have nae patience wi' blackfolk." Then, with a sudden consciousness of the case of Archie, "No thatit maitters for men sae muckle," she made haste to add, "but there'snaebody can deny that it's unwomanly. Long hair is the ornament o' womanony way; we've good warrandise for that--it's in the Bible--and wha candoubt that the Apostle had some gowden-haired lassie in hismind--Apostle and all, for what was he but just a man like yersel'?"
The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition, Vol. 19 Page 21