Kitabı oku: «Ranald Bannerman's Boyhood», sayfa 14

CHAPTER XXXIV
An Evening Visit

I now saw much less of Elsie; but I went with Turkey, as often as I could, to visit her at her father’s cottage. The evenings we spent there are amongst the happiest hours in my memory. One evening in particular appears to stand out as a type of the whole. I remember every point in the visit. I think it must have been almost the last. We set out as the sun was going down on an evening in the end of April, when the nightly frosts had not yet vanished. The hail was dancing about us as we started; the sun was disappearing in a bank of tawny orange cloud; the night would be cold and dark and stormy; but we cared nothing for that: a conflict with the elements always added to the pleasure of any undertaking then. It was in the midst of another shower of hail, driven on the blasts of a keen wind, that we arrived at the little cottage. It had been built by Duff himself to receive his bride, and although since enlarged, was still a very little house. It had a foundation of stone, but the walls were of turf. He had lined it with boards, however, and so made it warmer and more comfortable than most of the labourers’ dwellings. When we entered, a glowing fire of peat was on the hearth, and the pot with the supper hung over it. Mrs. Duff was spinning, and Elsie, by the light of a little oil lamp suspended against the wall, was teaching her youngest brother to read. Whatever she did, she always seemed in my eyes to do it better than anyone else; and to see her under the lamp, with one arm round the little fellow who stood leaning against her, while the other hand pointed with a knitting-needle to the letters of the spelling-book which lay on her knee, was to see a lovely picture. The mother did not rise from her spinning, but spoke a kindly welcome, while Elsie got up, and without approaching us, or saying more than a word or two, set chairs for us by the fire, and took the little fellow away to put him to bed.

“It’s a cold night,” said Mrs. Duff. “The wind seems to blow through me as I sit at my wheel. I wish my husband would come home.”

“He’ll be suppering his horses,” said Turkey. “I’ll just run across and give him a hand, and that’ll bring him in the sooner.”

“Thank you, Turkey,” said Mrs. Duff as he vanished.

“He’s a fine lad,” she remarked, much in the same phrase my father used when speaking of him.

“There’s nobody like Turkey,” I said.

“Indeed, I think you’re right there, Ranald. A better-behaved lad doesn’t step. He’ll do something to distinguish himself some day. I shouldn’t wonder if he went to college, and wagged his head in a pulpit yet.”

The idea of Turkey wagging his head in a pulpit made me laugh.

“Wait till you see,” resumed Mrs. Duff, somewhat offended at my reception of her prophecy. “Folk will hear of him yet.”

“I didn’t mean he couldn’t be a minister, Mrs. Duff. But I don’t think he will take to that.”

Here Elsie came back, and lifting the lid of the pot, examined the state of its contents. I got hold of her hand, but for the first time she withdrew it. I did not feel hurt, for she did it very gently. Then she began to set the white deal table in the middle of the floor, and by the time she had put the plates and spoons upon it, the water in the pot was boiling, and she began to make the porridge, at which she was judged to be first-rate—in my mind, equal to our Kirsty. By the time it was ready, her father and Turkey came in. James Duff said grace, and we sat down to our supper. The wind was blowing hard outside, and every now and then the hail came in deafening rattles against the little windows, and, descending the wide chimney, danced on the floor about the hearth; but not a thought of the long, stormy way between us and home interfered with the enjoyment of the hour.

After supper, which was enlivened by simple chat about the crops and the doings on the farm, James turned to me, and said:

“Haven’t you got a song or a ballad to give us, Ranald? I know you’re always getting hold of such things.”

I had expected this; for, every time I went, I tried to have something to repeat to them. As I could not sing, this was the nearest way in which I might contribute to the evening’s entertainment. Elsie was very fond of ballads, and I could hardly please her better than by bringing a new one with me. But in default of that, an old one or a story would be welcomed. My reader must remember that there were very few books to be had then in that part of the country, and therefore any mode of literature was precious. The schoolmaster was the chief source from which I derived my provision of this sort. On the present occasion, I was prepared with a ballad of his. I remember every word of it now, and will give it to my readers, reminding them once more how easy it is to skip it, if they do not care for that kind of thing.

“That’s not a bad ballad,” said James Duff. “Have you a tune it would go to, Elsie?”

Elsie thought a little, and asked me to repeat the first verse. Then she sung it out clear and fair to a tune I had never heard before.

“That will do splendidly, Elsie,” I said. “I will write it out for you, and then you will be able to sing it all the next time I come.”

She made me no answer. She and Turkey were looking at each other, and did not hear me. James Duff began to talk to me. Elsie was putting away the supper-things. In a few minutes I missed her and Turkey, and they were absent for some time. They did not return together, but first Turkey, and Elsie some minutes after. As the night was now getting quite stormy, James Duff counselled our return, and we obeyed. But little either Turkey or I cared for wind or hail.

I saw Elsie at church most Sundays; but she was far too attentive and modest ever to give me even a look. Sometimes I had a word with her when we came out, but my father expected us to walk home with him; and I generally saw Turkey walk away with her.

CHAPTER XXXV
A Break in my Story

I am now rapidly approaching the moment at which I said I should bring this history to an end—the moment, namely, when I became aware that my boyhood was behind me.

I left home this summer for the first time, and followed my brother Tom to the grammar school in the county-town, in order afterwards to follow him to the University. There was so much of novelty and expectation in the change, that I did not feel the separation from my father and the rest of my family much at first. That came afterwards. For the time, the pleasure of a long ride on the top of the mail-coach, with a bright sun and a pleasant breeze, the various incidents connected with changing horses and starting afresh, and then the outlook for the first peep of the sea, occupied my attention too thoroughly.

I do not care to dwell on my experience at the grammar school. I worked fairly, and got on; but whether I should gain a scholarship remained doubtful enough. Before the time for the examination arrived, I went to spend a week at home. It was a great disappointment to me that I had to return again without seeing Elsie. But it could not be helped. The only Sunday I had there was a stormy day, late in October, and Elsie had a bad cold, as Turkey informed me, and could not be out; while my father had made so many engagements for me, that, with one thing and another, I was not able to go and see her.

Turkey was now doing a man’s work on the farm, and stood as high as ever in the estimation of my father and everyone who knew him. He was as great a favourite with Allister and Davie as with myself, and took very much the same place with the former as he had taken with me. I had lost nothing of my regard for him, and he talked to me with the same familiarity as before, urging me to diligence and thoroughness in my studies, pressing upon me that no one had ever done lasting work, “that is,” Turkey would say—“work that goes to the making of the world,” without being in earnest as to the what and conscientious as to the how.

“I don’t want you to try to be a great man,” he said once. “You might succeed, and then find out you had failed altogether.”

“How could that be, Turkey?” I objected. “A body can’t succeed and fail both at once.”

“A body might succeed,” he replied, “in doing what he wanted to do, and then find out that it was not in the least what he had thought it.”

“What rule are you to follow, then, Turkey?” I asked.

“Just the rule of duty,” he replied. “What you ought to do, that you must do. Then when a choice comes, not involving duty, you know, choose what you like best.”

This is the substance of what he said. If anyone thinks it pedantic, I can only say, he would not have thought so if he had heard it as it was uttered—in the homely forms and sounds of the Scottish tongue.

“Aren’t you fit for something better than farm-work yourself, Turkey?” I ventured to suggest, foolishly impelled, I suppose, to try whether I could not give advice too.

“It’s my work,” said Turkey, in a decisive tone, which left me no room for rejoinder.

This conversation took place in the barn, where Turkey happened to be thrashing alone that morning. In turning the sheaf, or in laying a fresh one, there was always a moment’s pause in the din, and then only we talked, so that our conversation was a good deal broken. I had buried myself in the straw, as in days of old, to keep myself warm, and there I lay and looked at Turkey while he thrashed, and thought with myself that his face had grown much more solemn than it used to be. But when he smiled, which was seldom, all the old merry sweetness dawned again. This was the last long talk I ever had with him. The next day I returned for the examination, was happy enough to gain a small scholarship, and entered on my first winter at college.

My father wrote to me once a week or so, and occasionally I had a letter with more ink than matter in it from one of my younger brothers. Tom was now in Edinburgh, in a lawyer’s office. I had no correspondence with Turkey. Mr. Wilson wrote to me sometimes, and along with good advice would occasionally send me some verses, but he told me little or nothing of what was going on.

CHAPTER XXXVI
I Learn that I am not a Man

It was a Saturday morning, very early in April, when I climbed the mail-coach to return to my home for the summer; for so the university year is divided in Scotland. The sky was bright, with great fleecy clouds sailing over it, from which now and then fell a shower in large drops. The wind was keen, and I had to wrap myself well in my cloak. But my heart was light, and full of the pleasure of ended and successful labour, of home-going, and the signs which sun and sky gave that the summer was at hand.

Five months had gone by since I last left home, and it had seemed such an age to Davie, that he burst out crying when he saw me. My father received me with a certain still tenderness, which seemed to grow upon him. Kirsty followed Davie’s example, and Allister, without saying much, haunted me like my shadow. I saw nothing of Turkey that evening.

In the morning we went to church, of course, and I sat beside the reclining stone warrior, from whose face age had nearly worn the features away. I gazed at him all the time of the singing of the first psalm, and there grew upon me a strange solemnity, a sense of the passing away of earthly things, and a stronger conviction than I had ever had of the need of something that could not pass. This feeling lasted all the time of the service, and increased while I lingered in the church almost alone until my father should come out of the vestry.

I stood in the passage, leaning against the tomb. A cloud came over the sun, and the whole church grew dark as a December day—gloomy and cheerless. I heard for some time, almost without hearing them, two old women talking together close by me. The pulpit was between them and me, but when I became thoroughly aware of their presence, I peeped round and saw them.

“And when did it happen, said you?” asked one of them, whose head moved with an incessant capricious motion from palsy.

“About two o’clock this morning,” answered the other, who leaned on a stick, almost bent double with rheumatism. “I saw their next-door neighbour this morning, and he had seen Jamie, who goes home of a Saturday night, you know; but William being a Seceder, nobody’s been to tell the minister, and I’m just waiting to let him know; for she was a great favourite of his, and he’s been to see her often. They’re much to be pitied—poor people! Nobody thought it would come so sudden like. When I saw her mother last, there was no such notion in her head.”

Before I could ask of whom they were talking, my father came up the aisle from the vestry, and stopped to speak to the old women.

“Elsie Duff’s gone, poor thing!” said the rheumatic one.

I grew stupid. What followed I have forgotten. A sound was in my ears, and my body seemed to believe it, though my soul could not comprehend it. When I came to myself I was alone in the church. They had gone away without seeing me. I was standing beside the monument, leaning on the carved Crusader. The sun was again shining, and the old church was full of light. But the sunshine had changed to me, and I felt very mournful. I should see the sweet face, hear the lovely voice, no more in this world. I endeavoured to realize the thought, but could not, and I left the church hardly conscious of anything but a dull sense of loss.

I found my father very grave. He spoke tenderly of Elsie; but he did not know how I had loved her, and I could not make much response. I think, too, that he said less than he otherwise would, from the fear of calling back to my mind too vivid a memory of how ill I had once behaved to her. It was, indeed, my first thought the moment he uttered her name, but it soon passed, for much had come between.

In the evening I went up to the farm to look for Turkey, who had not been at church morning or afternoon. He was the only one I could talk to about Elsie. I found him in one of the cow-houses, bedding the cows. His back was towards me when I entered.

“Turkey,” I said.

He looked round with a slow mechanical motion, as if with a conscious effort of the will. His face was so white, and wore such a look of loss, that it almost terrified me like the presence of something awful. I stood speechless. He looked at me for a moment, and then came slowly up to me, and laid his hand on my shoulder.

“Ranald,” he said, “we were to have been married next year.”

Before the grief of the man, mighty in its silence, my whole being was humbled. I knew my love was not so great as his. It grew in my eyes a pale and feeble thing; and I felt worthless in the presence of her dead, whom alive I had loved with peaceful gladness. Elsie belonged to Turkey, and he had lost her, and his heart was breaking. I threw my arms round him, and wept for him, not for myself. It was thus I ceased to be a boy.

Here, therefore, my story ends. Before I returned to the university, Turkey had enlisted and left the place.

My father’s half-prophecy concerning him is now fulfilled. He is a general. I will not tell his name. For some reason or other he had taken his mother’s, and by that he is well known. I have never seen him, or heard from him, since he left my father’s service; but I am confident that if ever we meet, it will be as old and true friends.