THE wind sweeps freshly down from among the hills, a busy knave, drying up the gleaming pools along the road as he hurries forward for a moment’s pause and boisterous gossip with these two ash-trees. Very solemn and abstracted as they stand, these elders of the wood, looking as if session or synod were the least convention they could stoop to, it is wonderful how tolerant they are of every breath of gossip, and with what ready interest they rustle over all their twigs to see a new unwonted stranger face pass under them. Menie Laurie, pausing to look up through the hoar branches to the full blue sky, is too well known and familiar to receive more than the friendly wave of recognition accorded to every cottar neighbour nigh.
And clear and fresh as your own life, Menie, is the blue bright sky which stoops above you. White clouds all streaked and broken fly over it at a headlong pace, now and then throwing from their hasty hands a sprinkling of rain that flashes in the sunshine. April is on the fields, moving in that quiet stir with which you can hear the young green corn-blades rustle, as they strike through the softened soil. April sits throned upon the hills, weeping as she smiles in the blue distance, and trying on her veil of misty sunshine, after a hundred fantastic fashions, like a spoiled child; and April, Menie Laurie—April, restless, fearless, springing forward on the future, gladdening all this bright to-day with a breath of rippling sweet commotion, which dimples all the surface over, but never disturbs the deeper waters at their fountain-head—is in your youthful heart.
Hurrying to many a bright conclusion are the speculations that possess it now—not extremely reasonable, or owning any curb of logic—not even very consequent, full of joyous irrelevancies—digressions at which yourself would laugh aloud if this running stream of fancy were but audible and expressed—notwithstanding, full of interest, full of pleasure, and keeping time with their rapid pace to the flying progress of the clouds.
And the road glides away merrily under these straying footsteps; now hastening, now loitering, as the momentary mood suggests. Old hawthorns, doddered and crabbed, stand here and there forlorn upon the edges of the way; and where the hedge is younger and less broken, there are warm banks of turf, and clear bits of gleaming water, which it would be an insult to call ditches, looking up through tangled grass, and a wilderness of delicate stem and leaf, half weeds, half flowers. But now we have a stile to cross, mounting up from the high-road; and now it is a sunny hillside path, narrow and hemmed in between a low stone-wall, from which all manner of mosses and tufts of waving herbage have taken away the rudeness, and a field of young green corn: innocent enough just now are these soft plants low upon the fragrant soil in the blade; but you shall see how the bearded spikes will push you to the wall, and the red poppies mock you, lying safe under shelter of the tall corn-forest, if you try to pass in September where you can pass so easily in Spring.
A soft incline, at first sloping smoothly under the full sunshine—by-and-by more rugged and broken, with something that looks half like the ancient channel of a hill-spring, breaking all the soft pasture-grass into a rough projecting outline, like a miniature coast—and now a low hedge rough with thorns and brambles, instead of the dyke; for, after all, this is no gentle southland hill, but one of the warders of the Scottish Border, waving his plumed cap proudly in the fresh spring air, as he looks over the low-lying debatable moors on the other side, and defies the fells of Cumberland. If this were June, as it is April, you would see foliage clustering richly about the bold brow which he lifts to the clouds; just now the branches hang down, like long light brown ringlets, half unravelled with the spring rain and morning dew, and droop upon his falling shoulders as low as this green nest here, so sheltered and solitary, which he holds in his expanded arms.
It is no easy task to come at the state entrance and principal gate of the farmhouse of Crofthill. But now that you have caught sight of its white walls and slated roof, hold on stoutly—fear no gap in the hedge, no rude stone-stair projecting out of the grey limestone dyke—and two or three leaps and stumbles will bring you to the mossy paling, and to some possible entrance-door. If there is no one about—a very improbable circumstance, seeing that some curious eye at a window must have ere now found out a passenger on the ascent, or some quick ear heard the dry hedgerow branches crash under the coming foot—it is impossible to describe the strange feeling of isolation which falls upon you, here at the door of as friendly a little home as is on all the Border. At your right hand those warder hills, in many a diverse tint of long-worn livery, hold the vigilant line as far as Criffel, whose post is on the sea; on the other side they disappear like a file of grey-headed marshal-men, into the cloudy distance; underneath, remote, and still, breaking softly into the fresh daylight, mapped out with gleaming burns and long lines of winding road, lies the level country we have left; and Burnside yonder, with its thin silvery glimmer of attendant water, its dark background of trees, and the Brigend hamlet of which it is patrician and superior, lies quiet and silent under the full sun.
The farmhouse of Crofthill is but two storeys high, and, with a strange triangular slope of garden before it, fronts sideways, indifferent to the landscape, though there is one glorious gable-window which makes amends. Menie Laurie, bound for the Crofthill farmhouse, knows the view so well that she does not pause for even a momentary glance, but, lightly stepping over the last stile, is ready to meet this welcoming figure which already calls to her, running down the garden to the little mossy wicket in the paling of the lower end.
“July! July! you might have come to meet me,” said Menie. The air is so quiet that her soft girl’s voice rings over all the hill.
July—but you must not look for anything like the gorgeous summer month, in this little timid slight figure running down the sloping way with her light brown hair so soft and silky that it is almost impossible to retain it either in braid or curl, floating on the air behind her, and her gentle pale face faintly glowing with a little flush of pleasure. If there had been anything symbolic in the name, they had better have called her February, this poor little July Home; but there is nothing symbolic in the name—only John Home of Crofthill, many a long year ago, had the hap to find somewhere, and bring triumphantly to his house on the hill, a pretty little sentimental wife, with some real refinement in her soft nature, and a good deal of the fantastic girl-romance, which passes muster for it among the unlearned. Mrs Home, who called her son Randall, called her little daughter Julia—Mrs Home’s husband, who knew of nothing better than Johns or Janets, being quiescent, and kindly submissive. But by-and-by, gentle Mrs Home drooped like the pale little flower she was, and fell with the cold spring showers into her grave. Then came big Miss Janet Home from Mid-Lothian, where she had spent her younger days, to be mistress of her brother’s southland farm; and Miss Janet’s one name for the flush of summer, and for her brother’s little motherless petted girl, was Juley; so July came to be the child’s acknowledged name.
But July springs half into Menie Laurie’s arms, and they go up through the garden together, to where Miss Janet stands waiting on the threshold. In simple stature, Miss Janet would make two of her little niece; and though there is no other superfluous bulk about her, her strong and massive framework would not misbecome a man; though a verier woman’s heart never beat within the daintiest boddice, than this one which sometimes “thuds” rather tumultuously, under the large printed dark cotton gown of Miss Janet Home.
“Eh, bairn, I’m glad to see you,” said Miss Janet, holding in her own large brown hand the soft fingers of Menie. “Come in-by, and get yoursel rested. You see there’s a letter frae Randy this morning—”
With many a fit of indignation had Menie resented this Randy, which contracted so unceremoniously her hero’s name; but the penitent Miss Janet perpetually forgot, and immediately attributed the little cloud on her favourite’s brow to some jealousy of this same letter of Randy’s—and pique that it should come to Randy’s humble home instead of to his lady-love.
“I’m aye sae uplifted about a letter,” continued Miss Janet, as she led her visitor in, “though you that gets them every day mayna think—Eh, Miss Menie, my dear! I mind noo it’s a’ me; but you needna gloom at what was just a forget. I’ll never ca’ him Randy again; but, you see, I mind him so weel in his wee coatie—a bit smout o’ a bairn.”
This did not exactly mend matters; but Menie had taken off her bonnet by this time, and found her usual seat in the dim farm-parlour, with its small windows and low-roofed green-stained walls. It was one of the articles of Miss Janet’s creed, that blinds looked well from without; so, although there could never a mortal look in through the thick panes to spy the household economics of Crofthill, only one narrow strip of the unveiled casement appeared between the little muslin curtain and the blind. The gable window, commanding as it did half the level country of Dumfriesshire, was less protected; but the front one cast a positive shadow upon the dark thrifty coloured carpet, the hair-cloth chairs, the mahogany table with its sombre cover, and gave to the room such an atmosphere of shrouded shadowed quiet, that the little bouquet of daffodils and wallflowers on the side-table hung their heads with languid melancholy, and an unaccustomed spectator scarcely ventured with more than a whisper to break the calm.
But Menie Laurie was not unaccustomed, and knew very well where was the brightest corner, nor had much hesitation in drawing up the blind. But Menie had grown very busy with the “fancy” work she had brought with her, when Miss Janet approached with Randall’s letter in her hand. Scandal said that Menie Laurie’s pretty fingers were never so industrious at home as they found it agreeable to be abroad, and Menie was coy and occupied, and put Randall’s letter aside.
“My dear, if you’re busy I’ll read it to you, mysel,” said Miss Janet, who had no appreciation of coyness, “and you can tell your faither, July, that Miss Menie’s come, and that the tea’s just ready; and ye can gie a look ben to the kitchen as you’re passing, and see that Tibbie’s no forgetting the time; and now gang about quiet, like a good bairn, and dinna disturb me. I’m gaun to read the letter.”
And Miss Janet smoothed down her apron, to lay this prized epistle safely on her knee, and wiped her glasses with affectionate eagerness. “My dear, I’m no a grand reader of Randall’s write mysel,” said Miss Janet, clearing her voice, “and he’s getting an awfu’ crabbed hand, as you ken; but I’ve good-will, and you’ll just put up with me.”
It would have been hard for any one gifted with a heart to fail of putting up with Miss Janet as she conned her nephew’s letter. True, she had to pause now and then for a word—true, that she did not much assist Randall’s punctuation; but it was worth even a better letter than Randall’s to see the absorbed face, the affectionate care upon her brow, the anxiety that pondered over all these crabbed corners, and would not lose a word. Menie Laurie had soul enough not to be impatient—even to look up at the abstracted Miss Janet with a little dew in her eye, though her process of reading was very slow.
But now came Tibbie, the household servant of Crofthill, with the tea; and now a little stir in the passage intimated that the maister, fresh from his hillside fields, was hanging up his broad-brimmed hat in the passage. Miss Janet seated herself at the tray—Menie drew her chair away from the window, and a little nearer to the table, and, heralded by July, who came in again like a quiet shadow, her little pale face appearing in the midst of a stream of soft hair once more blown out of its fastenings by the wind—John Home of Crofthill made his appearance, stooping under his low parlour-door.
And perhaps it was these low portals which gave to the lofty figure of the hillside farmer its habitual stoop; but John Home might have been a moss-trooping chieftain for his strength—a baron of romance, for the unconscious dignity and even grace of his bearing. He was older than you would have expected July’s father to be, and had a magnificent mass of white hair, towering into a natural crest of curls over his forehead. The eyes were blue, something cold by natural colour, but warm and kindly in their shining—the face full of shrewd intelligence, humour, and good judgment. He had been nothing all his life but the farmer of Crofthill—and Crofthill was anything but a considerable farm; nevertheless John Home stood in the countryside distinct as his own hill—and not unlike. A genius son does not fall to the lot of every southland farmer, and Randall’s aspirations had elevated, unawares, the whole tone of the family. Randall’s engagement, too, and the magic which made Mrs Laurie of Burnside’s young lady-daughter, and not any farmhouse beauty near, so kindly and intimate a visitor in Crofthill, was not without its additional influence; but the house lost nothing of its perfectly unpretending simplicity in the higher aims to which it unconsciously opened its breast.
“And what is this I hear, of going to London?” said John Home, as he took his seat at table. Self-respect hinders familiarity—the good farmer did not like to call his daughter-in-law elect by her own simple Christian name; so half in joke, and half to cover the shy, constitutional hesitation, of which even age had not recovered him, Menie bore in Crofthill, in contrast with the other name of July habitual there, the pretty nickname of May—“Is it true that Burnside is to flit bodily, as July says? I ken ane that will like the change; but I must say that I ken some mair that will not be quite so thankful.”
“Ye may say that, John,” said Miss Janet, with a sigh. “I’m sure, for his ain part, Miss Menie, he’ll no think the place is like itsel, and you away; for if ever I saw a man”——
“Whisht,” said Crofthill hurriedly. The good man did not like his partiality spoken of in presence of its object. “But I would like to hear when this terrible flitting is to be.”
“My mother has not made up her mind yet,” said Menie. “It was yesterday the letter came, and I left her still as undecided as ever—for she is only half inclined to go, Mr Home; and as for Jenny”——
“It will be worth while to hear what Jenny says of London,” said John Home with a smile; “but the countryside will gather a cloud when we think May’s gone from Burnside. Well, July, speak out, woman; what is’t you’re whispering now?”
“I was saying that Randall would be glad,” said July softly. July had a fashion of whispering her share of the conversation to her next neighbour, to be repeated for the general benefit.
“Eh, puir laddie!” exclaimed Miss Janet, with glistening eye. “I could find it in my heart to be glad too, Miss Menie, though we are to lose you, for his sake. I think I see the glint in his eye when he hears the good news.”
And Miss Janet’s own eyes shone with loving, unselfish sympathy, as she repeated, “Randy, puir callant! and no a creature heeding about him, mair than he was a common young man, in a’ yon muckle toun!”
“We’ll let Randall say his pleasure himsel,” said his father, who was more delicately careful of embarrassing Menie than either sister or daughter—perhaps more, indeed, than the occasion required. “For my part, I’m no glad, and never would pretend to be; and if Mrs Laurie makes up her mind to stay”——
“What then?” said Menie, looking up quickly, with a flush of displeasure.
“I’ll say she’s a very sensible woman,” said the farmer. “Ay, May, my lassie, truly will I, for a’ that bonnie gloom of yours—or whatever my son Randall may have to say.”