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Occasionally there would be quite a small crowd gathered at night by the window of Mrs. Forsyth’s drawing-room, which was on the ground-floor, listening to music such as had never before been heard in Rothieden. More than once, when Robert had not found Sandy Elshender at home on the lesson-night, and had gone to seek him, he had discovered him lying in wait, like a fowler, to catch the sweet sounds that flew from the opened cage of her instrument. He leaned against the wall with his ear laid over the edge, and as near the window as he dared to put it, his rough face, gnarled and blotched, and hirsute with the stubble of neglected beard—his whole ursine face transfigured by the passage of the sweet sounds through his chaotic brain, which they swept like the wind of God, when of old it moved on the face of the waters that clothed the void and formless world.
‘Haud yer tongue!’ he would say in a hoarse whisper, when Robert sought to attract his attention; ‘haud yer tongue, man, and hearken. Gin yon bonny leddy ‘at yer grannie keeps lockit up i’ the aumry war to tak to the piano, that’s jist hoo she wad play. Lord, man! pit yer sowl i’ yer lugs, an’ hearken.’
The soutar was all wrong in this; for if old Mr. Falconer’s violin had taken woman-shape, it would have been that of a slight, worn, swarthy creature, with wild black eyes, great and restless, a voice like a bird’s, and thin fingers that clawed the music out of the wires like the quills of the old harpsichord; not that of Mary St. John, who was tall, and could not help being stately, was large and well-fashioned, as full of repose as Handel’s music, with a contralto voice to make you weep, and eyes that would have seemed but for their maidenliness to be always ready to fold you in their lucid gray depths.
Robert stared at the soutar, doubting at first whether he had not been drinking. But the intoxication of music produces such a different expression from that of drink, that Robert saw at once that if he had indeed been drinking, at least the music had got above the drink. As long as the playing went on, Elshender was not to be moved from the window.
But to many of the people of Rothieden the music did not recommend the musician; for every sort of music, except the most unmusical of psalm-singing, was in their minds of a piece with ‘dancin’ an’ play-actin’, an’ ither warldly vainities an’ abominations.’ And Robert, being as yet more capable of melody than harmony, grudged to lose a lesson on Sandy’s ‘auld wife o’ a fiddle’ for any amount of Miss St. John’s playing.
CHAPTER XV. ERIC ERICSON
One gusty evening—it was of the last day in March—Robert well remembered both the date and the day—a bleak wind was driving up the long street of the town, and Robert was standing looking out of one of the windows in the gable-room. The evening was closing into night. He hardly knew how he came to be there, but when he thought about it he found it was play-Wednesday, and that he had been all the half-holiday trying one thing after another to interest himself withal, but in vain. He knew nothing about east winds; but not the less did this dreary wind of the dreary March world prove itself upon his soul. For such a wind has a shadow wind along with it, that blows in the minds of men. There was nothing genial, no growth in it. It killed, and killed most dogmatically. But it is an ill wind that blows nobody good. Even an east wind must bear some blessing on its ugly wings. And as Robert looked down from the gable, the wind was blowing up the street before it half-a-dozen footfaring students from Aberdeen, on their way home at the close of the session, probably to the farm-labours of the spring.
This was a glad sight, as that of the returning storks in Denmark. Robert knew where they would put up, sought his cap, and went out. His grandmother never objected to his going to see Miss Napier; it was in her house that the weary men would this night rest.
It was not without reason that Lord Rothie had teased his hostess about receiving foot-passengers, for to such it was her invariable custom to make some civil excuse, sending Meg or Peggy to show them over the way to the hostelry next in rank, a proceeding recognized by the inferior hostess as both just and friendly, for the good woman never thought of measuring The Star against The Boar’s Head. More than one comical story had been the result of this law of The Boar’s Head, unalterable almost as that of the Medes and Persians. I say almost, for to one class of the footfaring community the official ice about the hearts of the three women did thaw, yielding passage to a full river of hospitality and generosity; and that was the class to which these wayfarers belonged.
Well may Scotland rejoice in her universities, for whatever may be said against their system—I have no complaint to make—they are divine in their freedom: men who follow the plough in the spring and reap the harvest in the autumn, may, and often do, frequent their sacred precincts when the winter comes—so fierce, yet so welcome—so severe, yet so blessed—opening for them the doors to yet harder toil and yet poorer fare. I fear, however, that of such there will be fewer and fewer, seeing one class which supplied a portion of them has almost vanished from the country—that class which was its truest, simplest, and noblest strength—that class which at one time rendered it something far other than ridicule to say that Scotland was pre-eminently a God-fearing nation—I mean the class of cottars.
Of this class were some of the footfaring company. But there were others of more means than the men of this lowly origin, who either could not afford to travel by the expensive coaches, or could find none to accommodate them. Possibly some preferred to walk. However this may have been, the various groups which at the beginning and close of the session passed through Rothieden weary and footsore, were sure of a hearty welcome at The Boar’s Head. And much the men needed it. Some of them would have walked between one and two hundred miles before completing their journey.
Robert made a circuit, and, fleet of foot, was in Miss Napier’s parlour before the travellers made their appearance on the square. When they knocked at the door, Miss Letty herself went and opened it.
‘Can ye tak ‘s in, mem?’ was on the lips of their spokesman, but Miss Letty had the first word.
‘Come in, come in, gentlemen. This is the first o’ ye, and ye’re the mair welcome. It’s like seein’ the first o’ the swallows. An’ sic a day as ye hae had for yer lang traivel!’ she went on, leading the way to her sister’s parlour, and followed by all the students, of whom the one that came hindmost was the most remarkable of the group—at the same time the most weary and downcast.
Miss Napier gave them a similar welcome, shaking hands with every one of them. She knew them all but the last. To him she involuntarily showed a more formal respect, partly from his appearance, and partly that she had never seen him before. The whisky-bottle was brought out, and all partook, save still the last. Miss Lizzie went to order their supper.
‘Noo, gentlemen,’ said Miss Letty, ‘wad ony o’ ye like to gang an’ change yer hose, and pit on a pair o’ slippers?’
Several declined, saying they would wait until they had had their supper; the roads had been quite dry, &c., &c. One said he would, and another said his feet were blistered.
‘Hoot awa’!’2 exclaimed Miss Letty.—‘Here, Peggy!’ she cried, going to the door; ‘tak a pail o’ het watter up to the chackit room. Jist ye gang up, Mr. Cameron, and Peggy ‘ll see to yer feet.—Noo, sir, will ye gang to yer room an’ mak yersel’ comfortable?—jist as gin ye war at hame, for sae ye are.’
She addressed the stranger thus. He replied in a low indifferent tone,
‘No, thank you; I must be off again directly.’
He was from Caithness, and talked no Scotch.
‘’Deed, sir, ye’ll do naething o’ the kin’. Here ye s’ bide, tho’ I suld lock the door.’
‘Come, come, Ericson, none o’ your nonsense!’ said one of his fellows. ‘Ye ken yer feet are sae blistered ye can hardly put ane by the ither.—It was a’ we cud du, mem, to get him alang the last mile.’
‘That
An exclamation of pitiful sympathy, inexplicable to the understanding. Thus the author covers his philological ignorance of the cross-breeding of the phrase.