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CHAPTER XIV
Elsie Duff

How all the boys and girls stared at me, as timidly, yet with a sense of importance derived from the distinction of having been so ill, I entered the parish school one morning, about ten o’clock! For as I said before, I had gone to school for some months before I was taken ill. It was a very different affair from Dame Shand’s tyrannical little kingdom. Here were boys of all ages, and girls likewise, ruled over by an energetic young man, with a touch of genius, manifested chiefly in an enthusiasm for teaching. He had spoken to me kindly the first day I went, and had so secured my attachment that it never wavered, not even when, once, supposing me guilty of a certain breach of orders committed by my next neighbour, he called me up, and, with more severity than usual, ordered me to hold up my hand. The lash stung me dreadfully, but I was able to smile in his face notwithstanding. I could not have done that had I been guilty. He dropped his hand, already lifted for the second blow, and sent me back to my seat. I suppose either his heart interfered, or he saw that I was not in need of more punishment. The greatest good he did me, one for which I shall be ever grateful, was the rousing in me of a love for English literature, especially poetry. But I cannot linger upon this at present, tempting although it be. I have led a busy life in the world since, but it has been one of my greatest comforts when the work of the day was over—dry work if it had not been that I had it to do—to return to my books, and live in the company of those who were greater than myself, and had had a higher work in life than mine. The master used to say that a man was fit company for any man whom he could understand, and therefore I hope often that some day, in some future condition of existence, I may look upon the faces of Milton and Bacon and Shakspere, whose writings have given me so much strength and hope throughout my life here.

The moment he saw me, the master came up to me and took me by the hand, saying he was glad to see me able to come to school again.

“You must not try to do too much at first,” he added.

This set me on my mettle, and I worked hard and with some success. But before the morning was over I grew very tired, and fell fast asleep with my head on the desk. I was informed afterwards that the master had interfered when one of my class-fellows was trying to wake me, and told him to let me sleep.

When one o’clock came, I was roused by the noise of dismissal for the two hours for dinner. I staggered out, still stupid with sleep, and whom should I find watching for me by the door-post but Turkey!

“Turkey!” I exclaimed; “you here!”

“Yes, Ranald,” he said; “I’ve put the cows up for an hour or two, for it was very hot; and Kirsty said I might come and carry you home.”

So saying he stooped before me, and took me on his strong back. As soon as I was well settled, he turned his head, and said:

“Ranald, I should like to go and have a look at my mother. Will you come? There’s plenty of time.”

“Yes, please, Turkey,” I answered. “I’ve never seen your mother.”

He set off at a slow easy trot, and bore me through street and lane until we arrived at a two-storey house, in the roof of which his mother lived. She was a widow, and had only Turkey. What a curious place her little garret was! The roof sloped down on one side to the very floor, and there was a little window in it, from which I could see away to the manse, a mile off, and far beyond it. Her bed stood in one corner, with a check curtain hung from a rafter in front of it. In another was a chest, which contained all their spare clothes, including Turkey’s best garments, which he went home to put on every Sunday morning. In the little grate smouldered a fire of oak-bark, from which all the astringent virtue had been extracted in the pits at the lanyard, and which was given to the poor for nothing.

Turkey’s mother was sitting near the little window, spinning. She was a spare, thin, sad-looking woman, with loving eyes and slow speech.

“Johnnie!” she exclaimed, “what brings you here? and who’s this you’ve brought with you?”

Instead of stopping her work as she spoke, she made her wheel go faster than before; and I gazed with admiration at her deft fingering of the wool, from which the thread flowed in a continuous line, as if it had been something plastic, towards the revolving spool.

“It’s Ranald Bannerman,” said Turkey quietly. “I’m his horse. I’m taking him home from the school. This is the first time he’s been there since he was ill.”

Hearing this, she relaxed her labour, and the hooks which had been revolving so fast that they were invisible in a mist of motion, began to dawn into form, until at length they revealed their shape, and at last stood quite still. She rose, and said:

“Come, Master Ranald, and sit down. You’ll be tired of riding such a rough horse as that.”

“No, indeed,” I said; “Turkey is not a rough horse; he’s the best horse in the world.”

“He always calls me Turkey, mother, because of my nose,” said Turkey, laughing.

“And what brings you here?” asked his mother. “This is not on the road to the manse.”

“I wanted to see if you were better, mother.”

“But what becomes of the cows?”

“Oh! they’re all safe enough. They know I’m here.”

“Well, sit down and rest you both,” she said, resuming her own place at the wheel. “I’m glad to see you, Johnnie, so be your work is not neglected. I must go on with mine.”

Thereupon Turkey, who had stood waiting his mother’s will, deposited me upon her bed, and sat down beside me.

“And how’s your papa, the good man?” she said to me.

I told her he was quite well.

“All the better that you’re restored from the grave, I don’t doubt,” she said.

I had never known before that I had been in any danger.

“It’s been a sore time for him and you too,” she added. “You must be a good son to him, Ranald, for he was in a great way about you, they tell me.”

Turkey said nothing, and I was too much surprised to know what to say; for as often as my father had come into my room, he had always looked cheerful, and I had had no idea that he was uneasy about me.

After a little more talk, Turkey rose, and said we must be going.

“Well, Ranald,” said his mother, “you must come and see me any time when you’re tired at the school, and you can lie down and rest yourself a bit. Be a good lad, Johnnie, and mind your work.”

“Yes, mother, I’ll try,” answered Turkey cheerfully, as he hoisted me once more upon his back. “Good day, mother,” he added, and left the room.

I mention this little incident because it led to other things afterwards. I rode home upon Turkey’s back; and with my father’s leave, instead of returning to school that day, spent the afternoon in the fields with Turkey.

In the middle of the field where the cattle were that day, there was a large circular mound. I have often thought since that it must have been a barrow, with dead men’s bones in the heart of it, but no such suspicion had then crossed my mind. Its sides were rather steep, and covered with lovely grass. On the side farthest from the manse, and without one human dwelling in sight, Turkey and I lay that afternoon, in a bliss enhanced to me, I am afraid, by the contrasted thought of the close, hot, dusty schoolroom, where my class-fellows were talking, laughing, and wrangling, or perhaps trying to work in spite of the difficulties of after-dinner disinclination. A fitful little breeze, as if itself subject to the influence of the heat, would wake up for a few moments, wave a few heads of horse-daisies, waft a few strains of odour from the blossoms of the white clover, and then die away fatigued with the effort. Turkey took out his Jews’ harp, and discoursed soothing if not eloquent strains.

At our feet, a few yards from the mound, ran a babbling brook, which divided our farm from the next. Those of my readers whose ears are open to the music of Nature, must have observed how different are the songs sung by different brooks. Some are a mere tinkling, others are sweet as silver bells, with a tone besides which no bell ever had. Some sing in a careless, defiant tone. This one sung in a veiled voice, a contralto muffled in the hollows of overhanging banks, with a low, deep, musical gurgle in some of the stony eddies, in which a straw would float for days and nights till a flood came, borne round and round in a funnel-hearted whirlpool. The brook was deep for its size, and had a good deal to say in a solemn tone for such a small stream. We lay on the side of the hillock, I say, and Turkey’s Jews’ harp mingled its sounds with those of the brook. After a while he laid it aside, and we were both silent for a time.

At length Turkey spoke.

“You’ve seen my mother, Ranald.”

“Yes, Turkey.”

“She’s all I’ve got to look after.”

“I haven’t got any mother to look after, Turkey.”

“No. You’ve a father to look after you. I must do it, you know. My father wasn’t over good to my mother. He used to get drunk sometimes, and then he was very rough with her. I must make it up to her as well as I can. She’s not well off, Ranald.”

“Isn’t she, Turkey?”

“No. She works very hard at her spinning, and no one spins better than my mother. How could they? But it’s very poor pay, you know, and she’ll be getting old by and by.”

“Not to-morrow, Turkey.”

“No, not to-morrow, nor the day after,” said Turkey, looking up with some surprise to see what I meant by the remark.

He then discovered that my eyes had led my thoughts astray, and that what he had been saying about his mother had got no farther than into my ears. For on the opposite side of the stream, on the grass, like a shepherdess in an old picture, sat a young girl, about my own age, in the midst of a crowded colony of daisies and white clover, knitting so that her needles went as fast as Kirsty’s, and were nearly as invisible as the thing with the hooked teeth in it that looked so dangerous and ran itself out of sight upon Turkey’s mother’s spinning-wheel. A little way from her was a fine cow feeding, with a long iron chain dragging after her. The girl was too far off for me to see her face very distinctly; but something in her shape, her posture, and the hang of her head, I do not know what, had attracted me.

“Oh! there’s Elsie Duff,” said Turkey, himself forgetting his mother in the sight—“with her granny’s cow! I didn’t know she was coming here to-day.”

“How is it,” I asked, “that she is feeding her on old James Joss’s land?”

“Oh! they’re very good to Elsie, you see. Nobody cares much about her grandmother; but Elsie’s not her grandmother, and although the cow belongs to the old woman, yet for Elsie’s sake, this one here and that one there gives her a bite for it—that’s a day’s feed generally. If you look at the cow, you’ll see she’s not like one that feeds by the roadsides. She’s as plump as needful, and has a good udderful of milk besides.”

“I’ll run down and tell her she may bring the cow into this field to-morrow,” I said, rising.

“I would if it were mine” said Turkey, in a marked tone, which I understood.

“Oh! I see, Turkey,” I said. “You mean I ought to ask my father.”

“Yes, to be sure, I do mean that,” answered Turkey.

“Then it’s as good as done,” I returned. “I will ask him to-night.”

“She’s a good girl, Elsie,” was all Turkey’s reply.

How it happened I cannot now remember, but I know that, after all, I did not ask my father, and Granny Gregson’s cow had no bite either off the glebe or the farm. And Turkey’s reflections concerning the mother he had to take care of having been interrupted, the end to which they were moving remained for the present unuttered.

I soon grew quite strong again, and had neither plea nor desire for exemption from school labours. My father also had begun to take me in hand as well as my brother Tom; and what with arithmetic and Latin together, not to mention geography and history, I had quite enough to do, and quite as much also as was good for me.

CHAPTER XV
A New Companion

During this summer, I made the acquaintance at school of a boy called Peter Mason. Peter was a clever boy, from whose merry eye a sparkle was always ready to break. He seldom knew his lesson well, but, when kept in for not knowing it, had always learned it before any of the rest had got more than half through. Amongst those of his own standing he was the acknowledged leader in the playground, and was besides often invited to take a share in the amusements of the older boys, by whom he was petted because of his cleverness and obliging disposition. Beyond school hours, he spent his time in all manner of pranks. In the hot summer weather he would bathe twenty times a day, and was as much at home in the water as any dabchick. And that was how I came to be more with him than was good for me.

There was a small river not far from my father’s house, which at a certain point was dammed back by a weir of large stones to turn part of it aside into a mill-race. The mill stood a little way down, under a steep bank. It was almost surrounded with trees, willows by the water’s edge, and birches and larches up the bank. Above the dam was a fine spot for bathing, for you could get any depth you liked—from two feet to five or six; and here it was that most of the boys of the village bathed, and I with them. I cannot recall the memory of those summer days without a gush of delight gurgling over my heart, just as the water used to gurgle over the stones of the dam. It was a quiet place, particularly on the side to which my father’s farm went down, where it was sheltered by the same little wood which farther on surrounded the mill. The field which bordered the river was kept in natural grass, thick and short and fine, for here on the bank it grew well, although such grass was not at all common in that part of the country: upon other parts of the same farm, the grass was sown every year along with the corn. Oh the summer days, with the hot sun drawing the odours from the feathery larches and the white-stemmed birches, when, getting out of the water, I would lie in the warm soft grass, where now and then the tenderest little breeze would creep over my skin, until the sun baking me more than was pleasant, I would rouse myself with an effort, and running down to the fringe of rushes that bordered the full-brimmed river, plunge again headlong into the quiet brown water, and dabble and swim till I was once more weary! For innocent animal delight, I know of nothing to match those days—so warm, yet so pure-aired—so clean, so glad. I often think how God must love his little children to have invented for them such delights! For, of course, if he did not love the children and delight in their pleasure, he would not have invented the two and brought them together. Yes, my child, I know what you would say,—“How many there are who have no such pleasures!” I grant it sorrowfully; but you must remember that God has not done with them yet; and, besides, that there are more pleasures in the world than you or I know anything about. And if we had it all pleasure, I know I should not care so much about what is better, and I would rather be made good than have any other pleasure in the world; and so would you, though perhaps you do not know it yet.

One day, a good many of us were at the water together. I was somebody amongst them in my own estimation because I bathed off my father’s ground, while they were all on a piece of bank on the other side which was regarded as common to the village. Suddenly upon the latter spot, when they were all undressed, and some already in the water, appeared a man who had lately rented the property of which that was part, accompanied by a dog, with a flesh-coloured nose and a villainous look—a mongrel in which the bull predominated. He ordered everyone off his premises. Invaded with terror, all, except a big boy who trusted that the dog would be more frightened at his naked figure than he was at the dog, plunged into the river, and swam or waded from the inhospitable shore. Once in the embrace of the stream, some of them thoughtlessly turned and mocked the enemy, forgetting how much they were still in his power. Indignant at the tyrant, I stood up in the “limpid wave”, and assured the aquatic company of a welcome to the opposite bank. So far all was very well. But their clothes! They, alas! were upon the bank they had left!

The spirit of a host was upon me, for now I regarded them all as my guests.

“You come ashore when you like,” I said; “I will see what can be done about your clothes.”

I knew that just below the dam lay a little boat built by the miller’s sons. It was clumsy enough, but in my eyes a marvel of engineering art. On the opposite side stood the big boy braving the low-bred cur which barked and growled at him with its ugly head stretched out like a serpent’s; while his owner, who was probably not so unkind as we thought him, stood enjoying the fun of it all. Reckoning upon the big boy’s assistance, I scrambled out of the water, and sped, like Achilles of the swift foot, for the boat. I jumped in and seized the oars, intending to row across, and get the big boy to throw the clothes of the party into the boat. But I had never handled an oar in my life, and in the middle passage—how it happened I cannot tell—I found myself floundering in the water.

Now, although you might expect that the water being dammed back just here, it would be shallow below the dam, it was just the opposite. Had the bottom been hard, it would have been shallow; but as the bottom was soft and muddy, the rush of the water over the dam in the winter-floods had here made a great hollow. There was besides another weir a very little way below which again dammed the water back; so that the depth was greater here than in almost any other part within the ken of the village boys. Indeed there were horrors afloat concerning its depth. I was but a poor swimmer, for swimming is a natural gift, and is not equally distributed to all. I might have done better, however, but for those stories of the awful gulf beneath me. I was struggling and floundering, half-blind, and quite deaf, with a sense of the water constantly getting up and stopping me, whatever I wanted to do, when I felt myself laid hold of by the leg, dragged under water, and a moment after landed safe on the bank. Almost the same moment I heard a plunge, and getting up, staggering and bewildered, saw, as through the haze of a dream, a boy swimming after the boat, which had gone down with the slow current. I saw him overtake it, scramble into it in midstream, and handle the oars as to the manner born. When he had brought it back to the spot where I stood, I knew that Peter Mason was my deliverer. Quite recovered by this time from my slight attack of drowning, I got again into the boat, and leaving the oars to Peter, was rowed across and landed. There was no further difficulty. The man, alarmed, I suppose, at the danger I had run, recalled his dog; we bundled in the clothes; Peter rowed them across; Rory, the big boy, took the water after the boat, and I plunged in again above the dam. For the whole of that summer and part of the following winter, Peter was my hero, to the forgetting even of my friend Turkey. I took every opportunity of joining him in his games, partly from gratitude, partly from admiration, but more than either from the simple human attraction of the boy. It was some time before he led me into any real mischief, but it came at last.

CHAPTER XVI
I Go Down Hill

It came in the following winter.

My father had now begun to teach me as well as Tom, but I confess I did not then value the privilege. I had got much too fond of the society of Peter Mason, and all the time I could command I spent with him. Always full of questionable frolic, the spirit of mischief gathered in him as the dark nights drew on. The sun, and the wind, and the green fields, and the flowing waters of summer kept him within bounds; but when the ice and the snow came, when the sky was grey with one cloud, when the wind was full of needle-points of frost and the ground was hard as a stone, when the evenings were dark, and the sun at noon shone low down and far away in the south, then the demon of mischief awoke in the bosom of Peter Mason, and, this winter, I am ashamed to say, drew me also into the net.

Nothing very bad was the result before the incident I am about to relate. There must have been, however, a gradual declension towards it, although the pain which followed upon this has almost obliterated the recollection of preceding follies. Nobody does anything bad all at once. Wickedness needs an apprenticeship as well as more difficult trades.

It was in January, not long after the shortest day, the sun setting about half-past three o’clock. At three school was over, and just as we were coming out, Peter whispered to me, with one of his merriest twinkles in his eyes:

“Come across after dark, Ranald, and we’ll have some fun.”

I promised, and we arranged when and where to meet. It was Friday, and I had no Latin to prepare for Saturday, therefore my father did not want me. I remember feeling very jolly as I went home to dinner, and made the sun set ten times at least, by running up and down the earthen wall which parted the fields from the road; for as often as I ran up I saw him again over the shoulder of the hill, behind which he was going down. When I had had my dinner, I was so impatient to join Peter Mason that I could not rest, and from very idleness began to tease wee Davie. A great deal of that nasty teasing, so common among boys, comes of idleness. Poor Davie began to cry at last, and I, getting more and more wicked, went on teasing him, until at length he burst into a howl of wrath and misery, whereupon the Kelpie, who had some tenderness for him, burst into the room, and boxed my ears soundly. I was in a fury of rage and revenge, and had I been near anything I could have caught up, something serious would have been the result. In spite of my resistance, she pushed me out of the room and locked the door. I would have complained to my father, but I was perfectly aware that, although she had no right to strike me, I had deserved chastisement for my behaviour to my brother. I was still boiling with anger when I set off for the village to join Mason. I mention all this to show that I was in a bad state of mind, and thus prepared for the wickedness which followed. I repeat, a boy never disgraces himself all at once. He does not tumble from the top to the bottom of the cellar stair. He goes down the steps himself till he comes to the broken one, and then he goes to the bottom with a rush. It will also serve to show that the enmity between Mrs. Mitchell and me had in nowise abated, and that however excusable she might be in the case just mentioned, she remained an evil element in the household.

When I reached the village, I found very few people about. The night was very cold, for there was a black frost. There had been a thaw the day before which had carried away the most of the snow, but in the corners lay remnants of dirty heaps which had been swept up there. I was waiting near one of these, which happened to be at the spot where Peter had arranged to meet me, when from a little shop near a girl came out and walked quickly down the street. I yielded to the temptation arising in a mind which had grown a darkness with slimy things crawling in it. I kicked a hole in the frozen crust of the heap, scraped out a handful of dirty snow, kneaded it into a snowball, and sent it after the girl. It struck her on the back of the head. She gave a cry and ran away, with her hand to her forehead. Brute that I was, I actually laughed. I think I must have been nearer the devil then than I have been since. At least I hope so. For you see it was not with me as with worse-trained boys. I knew quite well that I was doing wrong, and refused to think about it. I felt bad inside. Peter might have done the same thing without being half as wicked as I was. He did not feel the wickedness of that kind of thing as I did. He would have laughed over it merrily. But the vile dregs of my wrath with the Kelpie were fermenting in my bosom, and the horrid pleasure I found in annoying an innocent girl because the wicked Kelpie had made me angry, could never have been expressed in a merry laugh like Mason’s. The fact is, I was more displeased with myself than with anybody else, though I did not allow it, and would not take the trouble to repent and do the right thing. If I had even said to wee Davie that I was sorry, I do not think I should have done the other wicked things that followed; for this was not all by any means. In a little while Peter joined me. He laughed, of course, when I told him how the girl had run like a frighted hare, but that was poor fun in his eyes.

“Look here, Ranald,” he said, holding out something like a piece of wood.

“What is it, Peter?” I asked.

“It’s the stalk of a cabbage,” he answered. “I’ve scooped out the inside and filled it with tow. We’ll set fire to one end, and blow the smoke through the keyhole.”

“Whose keyhole, Peter?”

“An old witch’s that I know of. She’ll be in such a rage! It’ll be fun to hear her cursing and swearing. We’d serve the same to every house in the row, but that would be more than we could get off with. Come along. Here’s a rope to tie her door with first.”

I followed him, not without inward misgivings, which I kept down as well as I could. I argued with myself, “I am not doing it; I am only going with Peter: what business is that of anybody’s so long as I don’t touch the thing myself?” Only a few minutes more, and I was helping Peter to tie the rope to the latch-handle of a poor little cottage, saying now to myself, “This doesn’t matter. This won’t do her any harm. This isn’t smoke. And after all, smoke won’t hurt the nasty old thing. It’ll only make her angry. It may do her cough good: I dare say she’s got a cough.” I knew all I was saying was false, and yet I acted on it. Was not that as wicked as wickedness could be? One moment more, and Peter was blowing through the hollow cabbage stalk in at the keyhole with all his might. Catching a breath of the stifling smoke himself, however, he began to cough violently, and passed the wicked instrument to me. I put my mouth to it, and blew with all my might. I believe now that there was some far more objectionable stuff mingled with the tow. In a few moments we heard the old woman begin to cough. Peter, who was peeping in at the window, whispered—

“She’s rising. Now we’ll catch it, Ranald!”

Coughing as she came, I heard her with shuffling steps approach the door, thinking to open it for air. When she failed in opening it, and found besides where the smoke was coming from, she broke into a torrent of fierce and vengeful reproaches, mingled with epithets by no means flattering. She did not curse and swear as Peter had led me to expect, although her language was certainly far enough from refined; but therein I, being, in a great measure, the guilty cause, was more to blame than she. I laughed because I would not be unworthy of my companion, who was genuinely amused; but I was, in reality, shocked at the tempest I had raised. I stopped blowing, aghast at what I had done; but Peter caught the tube from my hand and recommenced the assault with fresh vigour, whispering through the keyhole, every now and then between the blasts, provoking, irritating, even insulting remarks on the old woman’s personal appearance and supposed ways of living. This threw her into paroxysms of rage and of coughing, both increasing in violence; and the war of words grew, she tugging at the door as she screamed, he answering merrily, and with pretended sympathy for her sufferings, until I lost all remaining delicacy in the humour of the wicked game, and laughed loud and heartily.

Of a sudden the scolding and coughing ceased. A strange sound and again silence followed. Then came a shrill, suppressed scream; and we heard the voice of a girl, crying:

“Grannie! grannie! What’s the matter with you? Can’t you speak to me, grannie? They’ve smothered my grannie!”

Sobs and moans were all we heard now. Peter had taken fright at last, and was busy undoing the rope. Suddenly he flung the door wide and fled, leaving me exposed to the full gaze of the girl. To my horror it was Elsie Duff! She was just approaching the door, her eyes streaming with tears, and her sweet face white with agony. I stood unable to move or speak. She turned away without a word, and began again to busy herself with the old woman, who lay on the ground not two yards from the door. I heard a heavy step approaching. Guilt awoke fear and restored my powers of motion. I fled at full speed, not to find Mason, but to leave everything behind me.

When I reached the manse, it stood alone in the starry blue night. Somehow I could not help thinking of the time when I came home after waking up in the barn. That, too, was a time of misery, but, oh! how different from this! Then I had only been cruelly treated myself; now I had actually committed cruelty. Then I sought my father’s bosom as the one refuge; now I dreaded the very sight of my father, for I could not look him in the face. He was my father, but I was not his son. A hurried glance at my late life revealed that I had been behaving very badly, growing worse and worse. I became more and more miserable as I stood, but what to do I could not tell. The cold at length drove me into the house. I generally sat with my father in his study of a winter night now, but I dared not go near it. I crept to the nursery, where I found a bright fire burning, and Allister reading by the blaze, while Davie lay in bed at the other side of the room. I sat down and warmed myself, but the warmth could not reach the lump of ice at my heart. I sat and stared at the fire. Allister was too much occupied with his book to take any heed of me. All at once I felt a pair of little arms about my neck, and Davie was trying to climb upon my knees. Instead of being comforted, however, I spoke very crossly, and sent him back to his bed whimpering. You see I was only miserable; I was not repentant. I was eating the husks with the swine, and did not relish them; but I had not said, “I will arise and go to my father”.