INLAND from the river’s mouth the dark plough-fields stretched sombre, restful, wide, uncut by detail. The smaller roads intersecting the country were treeless in the main, and did not draw the eye from the majesty of the defined woods. There was everything to suggest breadth and full air; and the sky, as Gilbert rode up towards a farm cresting the swell of the high horizon, was as suggestive of it as the earth. The clear gray meeting the sweep of the world was an immensity on which cloud-masses, too high for rain, but full of it, looked as though cut adrift by some Titanic hand and left to sail derelict on the cold heavens.
The road he was travelling was enlivened by a stream of people, all going in the same direction as himself, and mostly on foot, though a couple of gigs, whose occupants looked as much too large for them as the occupants of country gigs generally do, were ascending to the farm at that jog which none but agriculturally-interested persons can suffer.
A displenishing sale, or ‘roup,’ as it is called, had been advertised there, which was drawing both thrifty and extravagant to its neighbourhood. Curiosity was drawing Gilbert. A compact little roan, bought for hacking about the country, was stepping briskly under him, showing its own excellent manners and the ease and finish of its rider’s seat. Beside the farm a small crowd was gathered round the pursy figure of a water-butt on high legs, which stood out against the sky.
As he went, he observed, coming down a cart-road, two other mounted people, a man and a woman. He judged that he and they would meet where their respective ways converged and he was not wrong, for in another minute he was face to face with Robert Fullarton and Lady Eliza Lamont. He drew aside to let them pass on. Lady Eliza bowed and her mare began to sidle excitedly to the edge of the road, upset by the sudden meeting with a strange horse.
‘Good-day to you, sir,’ she said, as she recognised him. ‘I am fortunate to have met you. It was most obliging of you to come and inquire for me as you did.’
‘Indeed, I could do no less,’ replied Gilbert, hat in hand, ‘and I am very glad to see your ladyship on horseback again.’
‘Lord, sir! I was out the next day. Fullarton, let me make you acquaint with Mr. Speid of Whanland. Sir, Mr. Robert Fullarton of Fullarton.’
The two gentlemen bowed gravely.
Lady Eliza was so anxious to assure the man beside her of her perfect good faith and good feeling after the painful meeting of a few weeks ago that she would willingly have gone arm-in-arm to the ‘roup’ with Gilbert, had circumstances and decorum allowed it. She brought her animal abreast of the roan and proceeded with the two men, one on either side of her. Robert, understanding her impulse, would have fallen in with it had not the sharp twinge of memory which the young man’s presence evoked almost choked him. It was a minute before he could speak.
‘You are newly come, sir,’ he said at last. ‘I am to blame for not having presented myself at Whanland before.’
Gilbert made a civil reply.
‘I hear this is likely to be a large sale,’ observed Fullarton, as they rode along. ‘There is a great deal of live stock, and some horses. Have you any interest in it?’
‘The simple wish to see my neighbours has brought me,’ replied Gilbert. ‘I have so much to learn that I lose no chance of adding anything to my experience.’
While they were yet some way from their destination the crowd parted for a moment, and Lady Eliza caught sight of the object in its midst. She pointed towards it.
‘Ride, Fullarton! ride, for God’s sake, and bid for the water-butt!’ she cried.
‘Tut, tut, my lady. What use have you for it?’
‘It will come very useful for drowning the stable terrier’s puppies. She has them continually. Ride, I tell you, man! Am I to be overrun with whelps because you will not bestir yourself?’
Gilbert could scarce conceal his amusement, and was divided between his desire to laugh aloud and an uneasy feeling that the lady would appeal to him.
The auctioneer was seen at this juncture to leap down from the wood-pile on which he stood, and a couple of men hurried forward and began to remove the water-butt. It was being hustled away like some corpulent drunkard, its legs trailing the ground stiffly and raising a dust that threatened to choke the bystanders.
The yard was full of people, and, as the auctioneer had paused between two lots, and was being refreshed at the expense of the farm’s owner, tongues were loose, and the air was filled with discussion, jests, and the searching smell of tobacco and kicked-up straw. Among the few women present Gilbert perceived Granny Stirk, seated precariously on the corner of the wood-pile from which the auctioneer had just descended. Beside her was a tall, shock-headed lad of nineteen or so, whom only the most unobservant could suspect of belonging to the same category as the farm-boys, though his clothes were of the same fashion as their own, and his face wore the same healthy tanned red. He was spare and angular, and had that particular focus of eye which one sees in men who steer boats, drive horses, pay out ropes, and whose hands can act independently while they are looking distant possibilities in the face. A halter dangled from his arm. He was very grave and his thoughts were evidently fixed on the door of the farm stable. In spite of his sharp-cut personality, he stood by Granny Stirk in a way that suggested servitude.
Gilbert left his companions and went towards the couple. Granny’s face was lengthened to suit the demands of a public occasion, and her little three-cornered woollen shawl was pinned with a pebble brooch.
‘What ails ye that ye canna see the laird of Whanland?’ she said, turning to the boy as Speid stopped beside them.
He shuffled awkwardly with his cap.
‘He’s ma grandson, an’ it’s a shelt[1] he’s after.’
Gilbert was getting a little more familiar with local speech.
‘Do you intend to buy?’ he said to the lad.
Jimmy Stirk brought his eyes back to his immediate surroundings, and looked at the speaker. They were so much lighter than the brown face in which they were set, and their gaze was so direct, that Gilbert was almost startled. It was as though someone had gripped him.
‘Ay, that’s it. He’s to buy,’ broke in Granny. ‘He’s aye wanted this, an’ we’d be the better of twa, for the auld ane’s getting fairly done.’
‘I doubt I’ll no get it yet,’ said the boy.
‘He’s sold near a’ the things he’s got,’ continued Granny, looking at her grandson’s feet, which Gilbert suddenly noticed were bare. ‘A’m fair ashamed to be seen wi’ him.’
‘How much have you got together?’ inquired the young man.
Jimmy opened his hand. There were ten pounds in the palm.
‘He got half that, July month last, from a gentleman that was like to be drowned down by the river’s mouth; he just gaed awa an’ ca’ed him in by the lugs,’[2] explained his grandmother.
‘Did you swim out?’ asked Speid, interested.
‘Ay,’ replied Jimmy, whose eyes had returned to the door.
‘That was well done.’
‘I kenned I’d get somethin’,’ observed the boy.
The auctioneer now emerged from the farm-house and the crowd began to draw together like a piece of elastic. He came straight to the wood-pile.
‘Are you needing all that to yoursel’?’ he enquired, looking jocosely at the bystanders as he paused before Granny Stirk.
‘Na, na; up ye go, my lad. The biggest leear in the armchair,’ said the old woman as she rose.
‘It’s ill work meddling wi’ the Queen o’ the Cadgers,’ remarked a man who stood near.
Gilbert determined to stay in his place by the Stirks, for the commotion and trampling going on proclaimed that the live stock were on the eve of being brought to the hammer. The cart-horses were the first to be disposed of, so, having found someone who offered to put the roan into a spare stall, he abandoned himself to the interest with which the scene inspired him.
Jimmy Stirk’s face, when the last team had been led away, told him the all-important moment had come. The boy moistened his lips with his tongue and looked at him. His hand was shut tightly upon the money it held.
It was difficult to imagine what use the owner of the farm might have found for the animal being walked about before the possible buyers, for he was just fifteen hands and seemed far too light to carry a heavy man, or to be put between the shafts of one of those clumsy gigs which rolled unevenly into Kaims on market-days. In spite of the evident strain of good blood, he was no beauty, being somewhat ewe-necked and too long in the back. But his shoulder sloped properly to the withers and his length of stride behind, as he was walked round, gave promise of speed; his full eye took a nervous survey of the mass of humanity surrounding him. The man who led him turned him abruptly round and held him facing the wood-pile. Gilbert could hear Jimmy Stirk breathing hard at his shoulder.
The auctioneer looked round upon the crowd with the noisome familiarity of his class, a shepherd’s crook which he held ready to strike on the planks at his feet substituting the traditional hammer.
‘You’ll no’ hae seen the like o’ lot fifty-seven hereabout,’ he began. ‘Yon’s a gentleman’s naig—no ane o’ they coorse deevils that trayvels the road at the term wi’ an auld wife that’s shifting hoose cocked up i’ the cart—he wouldna suit you, Granny.’
He looked down at the old woman, the grudge he bore her lurking in his eye.
‘Hoots!’ she exclaimed; ‘tak him yoursel’, gin ye see ony chance o’ bidin’ on his back!’
The auctioneer was an indifferent horseman.
‘A gentleman’s naig, I’m telling ye! Fit for the laird o’ Fullarton, or maybe her ladyship hersel’,’ he roared, eager to cover his unsuccessful sally and glancing towards Robert and Lady Eliza, who sat on horseback watching the proceedings. ‘Aicht pounds! Aicht pounds! Ye’ll na get sic a chance this side o’ the New Year!’
There was a dead silence, but a man with a bush of black whisker, unusual to his epoch, cast a furtive glance at the horse.
‘Speak up, Davie MacLunder! speak up!’
Another dead silence followed.
‘Fiech!’ said David MacLunder suddenly, without moving a muscle of his face.
‘Seven pound! Seven pounds! Will nane o’ you speak? Will I hae to bide here a’ the day crying on ye? Seven pound, I tell ye! Seven pound!’
‘Seven pound five,’ said a slow voice from behind a haystack.
‘I canna see ye, but you’re a grand man for a’ that,’ cried the auctioneer, ‘an’ I wish there was mair like ye.’
‘Seven ten,’ said Jimmy Stirk.
‘Aicht,’ continued the man behind the haystack.
Though Gilbert knew lot fifty-seven to be worth more than all the money in Jimmy’s palm, he hoped that the beast’s extreme unsuitability to the requirements of those present might tell in the lad’s favour. The price rose to eight pound ten.
‘Nine,’ said Jimmy.
‘And ten to that,’ came from the haystack.
‘Ten pound,’ said the boy, taking a step forward.
There was a pause, and the auctioneer held up his crook.
‘Ten pounds!’ he cried. ‘He’s awa at ten pounds! Ane, twa——’
‘Ten pound ten!’ shouted Davie MacLunder.
Jimmy Stirk turned away, bitter disappointment in his face. In spite of his nineteen years and strong hands, his eyes were filling. No one knew how earnestly he had longed for the little horse.
‘Eleven,’ said Gilbert.
‘Eleven ten!’
‘Twelve.’
The auctioneer raised his crook again, and threw a searching glance round.
‘Twelve pound! Twelve pound! Twelve pound for the last time! Ane, twa, three——’
The crook came down with a bang.
‘Twelve pound. The laird of Whanland.’
‘He is yours,’ said Speid, taking the bewildered Jimmy by the elbow. ‘Your grandmother was very civil to me the first time I saw her, and I am glad to be able to oblige her.’
The boy looked at him in amazement.
Gilbert had slipped some money into his pocket before starting for the sale; he held the two gold pieces out to him.
‘You can take him home with you now,’ he said, smiling.
Jimmy Stirk left the ‘roup’ in an internal exultation which had no outward nor visible sign but an additional intensity of aspect, the halter which had hung over his arm adorning the head of the little brown horse, on whose back he jogged recklessly through the returning crowd. His interest in the sale had waned the moment he had become owner of his prize; but his grandmother, who had set out to enjoy herself and meant to do so thoroughly, had insisted on his staying to the end. She kept her seat at the foot of the wood-pile till the last lot had changed hands, using her tongue effectively on all who interfered with her, and treating her grandson with a severity which was her way of marking her sense of his good fortune.
Granny Stirk, or ‘the Queen of the Cadgers,’ as local familiarity had christened her, was one of those vigorous old people, who, having lived every hour of their own lives, are always attracted by the possibilities of youth, and whose sympathy goes with the swashbuckling half of the world. For the tamer portion of it, however respectable, they have little feeling, and are often rewarded by being looked upon askance during life and very much missed after death. They exist, for the most part, either in primitive communities or in very old-fashioned ones, and rarely in that portion of society which lies between the two. Gilbert, with his appearance of a man to whom anything in the way of adventure might happen, had roused her interest the moment she saw him holding Lady Eliza’s mare outside her own cottage door. His expression, his figure, his walk, the masculine impression his every movement conveyed, had evoked her keenest sympathy, and, besides being grateful for his kindness to Jimmy, she was pleased to the core of her heart by the high-handed liberality he had shown. It was profitable to herself and it had become him well, she considered.
The cadgers, or itinerant fish-sellers, who formed a distinct element in the population of that part of the coast, were a race not always leniently looked upon by quiet folk, though there was, in reality, little evil that could be laid to their charge but the noise they made. While they had a bad name, they were neither more nor less dishonest and drunken than other people, and had, at least, the merit of doing their business efficiently. It was they who carried the fish inland after the boats came in, and those who stood on their own feet and were not in the pay of the Kaims fishmongers, kept, like the Stirks, their own carts and horses. When the haul came to be spread and the nets emptied, the crowding cadgers would buy up their loads, either for themselves or for their employers, and start inland, keeping a smart but decent pace till they were clear of the town, and, once on the road, putting the light-heeled screws they affected to their utmost speed. Those whose goal was the town of Blackport, seven or eight miles from the coast, knowing that the freshest fish commanded the highest price, used the highroad as a racecourse, on which they might be met either singly or in a string of some half-dozen carts, pursuing their tempestuous course.
The light carts which they drove were, in construction, practically flat boxes upon two wheels, on the front of which sat the driver, his legs dangling between the shafts. As they had no springs and ran behind horses to which ten miles an hour was the business of life, the rattle they made, as they came bowling along, left no one an excuse for being driven over who had not been born deaf. Those in the employ of the Kaims fishmongers would generally run in company, contending each mile hotly with men, who, like Jimmy Stirk, traded for themselves, and took the road in their own interests.
More than forty years before the time of which I speak, Granny Stirk, then a strikingly handsome young woman, lived with her husband in the cottage which was still her home. Stirk, a cadger well known on the road for his blasphemous tongue and the joyfulness of his Saturday nights, was reported to be afraid of his wife, and it is certain that, but for her strong hand and good sense, he would have been a much less successful member of society. As it was, he managed to lead an almost decent life, and was killed, while still a young man, in an accident.
Mrs. Stirk thus found herself a widow, with two little boys under ten, a cart, a couple of angular horses, and no male relations; in spite of the trouble she had had with him, she missed her man, and, after his funeral, prepared herself to contend with two things—poverty and the dulness of life. She cared little for the company of her own sex, and the way in which her widowhood cut her off from the world of men and movement galled and wearied her. So it was from inclination as well as necessity that she one day mounted the cart in her husband’s vacant place, and appeared at Kaims after the boats came in, to be greeted with the inevitable jeers. But the jeers could not stop her shrewd purchasing, nor alter the fact that she had iron nerves and a natural judgment of pace, and in the market she was soon let alone as one with whom it was unprofitable to bandy words. For curses she cared little, having heard too many; to her they were light things to encounter in the fight for her bread, her children, and the joy of life.
Her position became assured one day, when, after a time of scarcity in the fish-market, a good haul held out the prospect of an unusual sale inland. A string of cadgers who had started before Mrs. Stirk were well out on the road when she appeared from a short-cut considered unfit for wheels, and, having hung shrewdly to their skirts, passed them just outside Blackport, her heels on the shaft, her whip ostentatiously idle, and her gold earrings swinging in her ears.
When her eldest son was of an age to help her, he ran away to sea; and when she gave up the reins to the second, she retired to the ordinary feminine life of her class with the nickname of the ‘Queen of the Cadgers’ and a heavier purse. Behind her were a dozen years of hard work. When her successor died, as his father had done, in the prime of life, the sailor son, as a sort of rough payment for his own desertion, sent his boy Jimmy to take his place; the arrangement suited Mrs. Stirk, and her grandson took kindly to his trade. They had spent a couple of years together when Gilbert Speid came into their lives as owner of the land on which their cottage stood.
Lady Eliza remained in her saddle for the whole of the sale, though Fullarton put his horse in the stable. She beckoned to Gilbert to join them, and the two men stood by her until the business was over and the crowd began to disperse. They rode homewards together, their roads being identical for a few miles, threading their way through the led horses, driven cattle, and humanity which the end of the ‘roup’ had let loose. Jimmy Stirk passed them on his new acquisition, for he had flung himself on its back to try its paces, leaving his grandmother to follow at her leisure.
‘Did you buy that horse for the saddle or for harness?’ inquired Fullarton, as the boy passed them.
‘He is not mine,’ replied Gilbert. ‘It was young Stirk who bought him.’
‘But surely I heard the auctioneer knock him down to you?’
‘I outbid him by two pounds. He had not enough, so I added that on for him. I never saw anyone so much in earnest as he was,’ explained Gilbert.
Fullarton was silent, and Lady Eliza looked curiously at the young man.
‘I don’t know anything about the boy,’ he added, feeling rather foolish under her scrutiny. ‘I fear you think me very soft-hearted.’
‘That is to your credit,’ said Fullarton, with the least touch of artificiality.
‘Perhaps you have the quality yourself, sir, and are the more leniently inclined towards me in consequence,’ replied Gilbert, a little chafed by the other’s tone.
‘We shall have all our people leaving us and taking service at Whanland,’ said Lady Eliza. ‘You have obliged me also, for my fish will arrive the fresher.’
‘Do you deal with the Stirks?’ inquired Gilbert.
‘I have done so ever since I came to this part of the country, out of respect for that old besom, Granny. I like the boy too; there is stout stuff in that family.’
‘Then I have committed no folly in helping him?’ said Speid.
‘Lord, no, sir! Fullarton, this is surely not your turning home?’
‘It is,’ said he, ‘and I will bid you good-evening, for Mr. Speid will escort you. Sir, I shall wait upon you shortly, and hope to see you later at my house.’
Gilbert and Lady Eliza rode on together, and parted at the principal gate of Morphie; for, as he declined her invitation to enter on the plea of the lateness of the hour, she would not suffer him to take her to the door.
From over the wall he got a good view of the house as he jogged down the road, holding back the little roan, who, robbed of company, was eager for his stable. With its steep roofs and square turrets at either end of the façade, it stood in weather-beaten dignity among the elms and ashes, guiltless of ornament or of that outburst of shrubs and gravel which cuts most houses from their surroundings, and is designed to prepare the eye for the transition from nature to art. But Morphie seemed an accident, not a design; an adjunct, in spite of its considerable size, to the pasture and the trees. The road lay near enough to it for Speid to see the carved coat-of-arms over the lintel, and the flagged space before the door stretching between turret and turret. He hurried on when he had passed it, for splashes of rain were beginning to blow in his face, and the wind was stirring in the tree-tops.
Where a field sloped away from the fringe of wood, he paused a moment to look at one of those solid stone dovecots which are found in the neighbourhood of so many gentlemen’s houses in the northern lowlands of Scotland. Its discoloured whitewash had taken all the mellow tones that exposure and damp can give, and it stood, looking like a small but ancient fort, in a hollow among the ragged thorn-trees. At either end of its sloping roof a flight of crowsteps terminated in a stone ball cutting the sky. Just above the string-course which ran round the masonry a few feet below the eaves was a row of pigeon-holes; some birds circling above made black spots against the gray cloud.
Gilbert buttoned up his coat, and let the roan have his way.