The McBrides.

by John Sillars.

PART I.

CHAPTER I.

WHICH TELLS OF THE COMING OF THE GIPSY.

It was April among the hills, waes me, the far-away days of my youth, when the hills were smiling through the mists of their tears, and the green gra.s.ses thrusting themselves through the withered mat of the pasture like slender fairy swords. April in the hills, with the curlews crying far out on the moorside, past the Red Ground my grandfather wrought, and where again the heather will creep down, rig on rig, for all the stone d.y.k.es, deer fences, and tile drains that ever a man put money in. I never knew why it was they called it "Red Ground," for it was mostly black peaty soil, but my grandfather would be saying, "It will be growing corn. Give it wrack, and it will be growing corn for evermore."

They tell me he was a great farmer for all he was laird, and never happier than at his own plough tail, breaking a colt to work in chains; and he it was who improved the stock in cattle and horse in our glens, for he would be aye telling the young farmers, "Gie the quey calves plenty o' milk, as much as they'll lash into themselves. Be good to them when the baby flesh is on them, and they'll grow and thrive, and your siller'll a' come back in the milking."

The countryside clavered and havered when he bought his pedigree bulls and his pedigree mares. "It's money clean wasted," said the old farmers, "for a calf's a calf no odds what begets it, and a horse that can work in chains and take its turn on the road is horse enough for any man, without sinking money in dumb beasts, and a' this sire-and-dam pother." It would anger the old man that talk, ay, even when he was the old frail frame of what once he was,--like a dead and withered ash-tree, dourly awaiting the death gale to send it crashing down, to lie where once its shade fell in the hot summer days of its youth,--and the blood would rise up on his neck, where the flesh had shrunk like old cracked parchment, and left cords and pipes of arteries and veins, gnarled like old ivy round a tree.

Querulous he was and ill-tempered with the scoffers. "Man, if I had twenty more years I would grow hoofs on your horse and udders on your in-coming queys." Well, well, I'm fond of this farming, but I have set out to tell a tale, which in my poor fancy should even be like a rotation of crops, from the breaking in of the lea to the sowing out in gra.s.s, with the sun and winds and sweet rains to ripen and swell the grain--the crying of the harvesters and the laughing of la.s.sies among the stocks in the gloaming, the neighing of horse and the lowing of kine in the evening.

On that morning so long ago Dan and I were ploughing stubble, and I followed my horses in all joy, laughing to see them snap as I turned them in at the head-rigs, and coaxing them as they threw their big glossy shoulders into the collar on the brae face. So the morning wore on as I ploughed, with maybe a word now and then to d.i.c.k, and a touch of the rein to Darling, and the sea-gulls screaming after us as the good land was turned over. The sun came glinting through the hill mist, and the green buds were bursting in the hedgerows for very gladness.

I was free from the college, free from the smoke-wrack and the grime of the town, free to hear the birds awake and singing in the planting behind the stackyard, and I breathed great gulps of air and felt clean and purged of all the evil of the town; for if there is vice in the country, it is to my mind evil without sordidness.

I remember my foolish thoughts were something like these, even though my reading should have taught me better, for the Garden of Eden was a fine place to sin in by all accounts, yet the environment did not mitigate the punishment. In these young days, when my body glowed from a swim and my eyes were clear, I thought the minister too hard on that original iniquity.

It was coming on for dinner-time--lowsin' time, as we say in the field--when Dan shouted--

"Hamish," says he, "who'll yon be that's travellin' so fast above the Craig-an-dubh?"

"I will be telling you that, Dan, when she's half a mile nearer."

"Ye hinna the toon mirk rubbed out your een yet, Hamish, or ye would ken the bonny spaewife. I've been watchin' her this last three 'bouts."

"Dan, Dan," said I, "do you think of nothing but women and horses?

Have ye never learned the lesson of Joseph?"

"Man, Hamish," says he, with a whimsical smile and a hand at his moustache, "ye should put a' things in their proper order. Horses and weemen noo. It's not a bad thing--a while wi' a la.s.s after the horses are bedded and foddered, but horses first; and as for Joseph"--his smile broadened until I could see his teeth--"if it had been Dauvit the leddy had met on the stair, the meenisters wid never hiv heard a cheep about it. . . .

"It's a fine lesson yon, I aye think, for auld men to be preaching, but deevil a word about their ain youthfu' rants. Ye're a l.u.s.ty lad yirsel', and there's many a cheery nicht among the la.s.ses wi'

petticoats and short-goons, and I'll teach ye hoo tae whistle them oot if ye would leave your books and come raking wi' Dan."

We had unyoked the horses and got astride, and when we came to the gate there was the bonny spaewife carrying a bairn in a tartan shawl. Dan drew up, and I also; so there we stood, the horses in an impatient semi-circle on the road, Dan and I on horseback, and the woman looking up at us.

She had the blackest eyes I ever saw, and hair black and curly as a water-dog's cl.u.s.tered over her head, and the wee rain-drops clung about the curls round her ears and brow. Her nose was delicate and faultless, and her complexion was that born of sun and rain and wind.

There seemed a smile to play round her red lips, and a sombreness about her eyes (so that she held mine fixed), until Dan spoke.

"I think, Belle," said he, "you're gettin' bonnier, and if it wasna for the wean I would leave a kiss on your bonny red mouth."

Round the pupils of her black eyes a little ring began to glow, as though a light came from a great distance through darkness, her white teeth bit on her under lip, and she stepped closer to Dan's horse.

"Haud away, woman, haud away, for the love o' your Maker; the stallion canna thole weemen about him."

I fear me the town had taken some of the game out of me, for when I saw the big dark horse flatten his ears, the wicked eyes rolling, and the great fore-hoofs drumming on the road, ready to leap and batter the woman and her bairn to a b.l.o.o.d.y pulp fornent me, my stomach turned, as we say, and I felt sick and giddy. Many a morning had I stood at the loose-box door and watched the devil in the horse and the devil in the man battle for mastery, and aye the horse was cowed. Even on the mornings when I heard Dan's step, soft and wary on the cobbles, before the sun was up, and knew by the look of him, and the gruffness in his voice, that he had travelled many a weary mile from his light-o'-love, and that sleep had not troubled him, I would hear the stable door opening and Dan whistling like the cheery early bird as he opened the corn-kist. After the morning feed the battle began, for Chieftain had a devil, but I think Dan had seven of that ilk.

"It's him or me, Hamish," he would croon, "him or me, but I'm likin'

myself a' the time"; and he kept the lathering, plunging devil off himself, whiles with his fists, and whiles with a short stick.

"I'll handle him were he twice as big and twice as bad. I'll hae nae gentlemen among the horse when there's lea to plough!" and the fight would go on. But Dan was the only man who could handle Chieftain, and there seemed a kind of laughing comradeship between them.

I have digressed that you might see with my eyes the queer uncanny thing that happened on the road there between the woman and the horse.

I have told you the spaewife--if spaewife you would call her, for I think sorceress fitted her better--I have said she came close to Chieftain's head, her black eyes fairly lowing; and as the brute, his skin twitching, gathered himself to rear on her, she hit him full on the mouth with her little brown hand, and hissed a word at him in her own tongue. As the word struck my ears I felt myself tingle to my finger-tips, and the world seemed to go quiet all round me. The horse's ears went forward, and he stretched his great neck, and there he was quiet as an old pony, nibbling with his lips at the woman's shawl and hair.

And the woman looked at Dan.

A kind of half laugh, half sigh, left his lips.

"I wish," said he, "I had your gait o' handlin' horse. It's desperate sudden, but it's sure, as our friend Hamish wid observe. Maybe, my dear, you'll hiv a spell tae turn the horse tae himsel' again and something extra, an' I'm no' sayin' but what I would be likin' him better, for sittin' here on a quate beast that sould be like the ravening devil o' holy writ is no' canny."

"Spell," said the girl, for indeed she was little more, and under her brown skin I could see the darker red rising. "Spell, ye night-hawk!"

and her broad bosom heaved with the rage in her, and her body trembled with living anger.

"I come o' folk, ye reiver, that lay down and rose up among their horse, in the black tents, that loved and hated among their horse, that lived and died among their horse, and ye would talk to me o' spells.

Did I but say the word to that black horse, not you nor any o' the folk ye cam' crooked among would straddle him and live to boast o' it after."

Dan sat his horse like a statue. It makes my old eyes moist and my throat choky to this day to think of it, for I loved him through everything. Could he have had command of heavy horse, and won his rest on some glorious field, brave, headstrong, devil-may-care Dan; but there he sat and looked on the Ca.s.sandra, and his eyes were laughing from his stern face as he took a turn on the rope reins.

"Back, my bonny horse," said he to Chieftain, and there was a kind of joyous lilt in his voice. "Draw away your pair, Hamish, and this lan'

horse o' mine. We'll miss our dinner maybe, but I've an unco hankering after this word."

Away down in my heart I knew what was coming, and I watched the woman loosen her tartan shawl and lay her infant in a neuk among the hedge roots.

"I'm waitin' now, my dear," said Dan, "and in case I dee I'll tell ye I think I could break you in, for I like the devil temper bleezin' in your bonny black een, and your lips would warm a deein' man. My dear, I think I could be your man for a' ye say I cam' crooked; for spaewife or no--G.o.d's life, ye're awfu' bonny, Belle."

The gipsy gave a little lilting laugh.

"You," says she--"you. I'm not saying but you're a pretty man, and I've good looks enough for baith--if I loved ye; but, man, my love would be a flame. Wid ye burn with me, lad; wid ye burn?"

"I think I would too," said he, "for your een have started the bleeze a'ready, and I'm dootin' it'll finish in brimstane."

"Ay, ay, Dan; I'm spaein' true. I jibed at you, although you did not say the word o' the glens o' the wee creatur' under the hedge there, as ye might have. Ye've good blood in ye, lad, and I'm loving your spirit, but I'm the Belle o' your death, Dan, the Death-Bell. Now!"

No words of mine can convey my impression of that scene. There were the hills, silent and grandly contemptuous, there was a rabbit loping across the road to the hedge foot, and there the road the woman had come stretched upwards; but as she spoke some subtle essence seemed to flood her veins, her sombre eyes flashed, her cheeks glowed darkly, and she trembled so that I could see her clenched hands flutter like segans.[1] It was not excitement, but to my mind as though some vital powerful force had taken possession of her body and shook it, as an aspen quivers in a gale.

The power seemed to grow stronger and stronger as she spoke, until with her word it seemed to break free and envelop us.

Where I have written "Now" she leaned rigidly towards Chieftain and almost hissed, so sharply came a word between her teeth. With some such sound, I think, will the devil unshackle his hounds. Well for me that my horses were rugging at the hedge, or I had never been troubled more with headache.

For the stallion reared his huge bulk into the air with a scream of brute rage. I have never heard such a sound since, and never wish to again. He turned like an eel, his mouth agape, and the veins round his nostrils like cord. His great gleaming teeth snapped like a trap at his rider's legs, and snapped again after he had a blow on the head that might have stunned him, and at the hollow sound of it I felt my teeth take an edge to them. Twice he reared and fell backwards, and twice Dan was astride as he rose. I could see the sweat running down his face and the bulging of the muscles as his knees pressed and clung to the heaving spume-spattered flanks. I think he knew he was fighting for his life, but his smile seemed graven on his face, though it looked like the smile of a man in sore distress. I knew every muscle felt red-hot, and time would give the victory to the stronger brute. And then I saw the change like a lightning-flash. Dan's shoulders haunched themselves, his head was low and stretched forward, and a look of the most devilish ferocity came over his face, his lips were pulled down, and his eyes almost hidden under the bunched and corrugated brows.

There was a knotted rope rein in his hand, and his arm, brown and bare to the elbow, and hard as an oak branch, rose, and I saw his teeth clench till the muscles on his jaws stood out like crab-apples.