CHAPTER XXVII.

MARGARET McBRIDE KISSES HELEN.

It would always be a great pleasure for me to be watching Dan, the way he would be toiling against the heather, and draining in the moss in the seasons, and rearing his horses, for his great war-horse sired many foals, and maybe to this day you will see the traces of that breed in the little crofts where the horses and cattle beasts are as long bred as the names of the folk that own them. They were black for the most part, the breed of the war-horse, and very proud in their bearing, but bigger beasts than the native breed, and not so much cow-hocked (although that is a hardy sign), nor so scroggy at the hoof--ay, and they would trot for evermore. You will maybe hear to this day a farmer saying of a mare of that strain: "She is one of the old origineels."

But whiles the twenty years of his soldiering would come over the man, and ye would be hearing him at his camp-songs in the French language, and there would come a prideful swing to his body, and a quick way of speech, and an overbearing look, as though maybe the common work was galling, and the sheep and beasts nothing better than for boiling in a soldier's camp-kettle. These times would maybe be after a fair or a wedding, and indeed he was not to be interfered with except by his own native folk, for he would ride at a ganger or an exciseman for the pleasure of seeing them run like dafties when the mood was on him--or a drop too much in him--and for no ill-nature whatever; but it was fearsome to see the big black horse stretch to the gallop, with flying mane and wicked eye a-rolling. But Belle could tame her man, and she kent his every mood and his every look. It was droll and laughable too to see her hand his little son to Dan (for old Betty was right: there was another son to Belle--not a "scroosch," as the old one said, but one boy, and they put Hamish on him for a name: Hamish Og they called him, and he ruled that house).

"Here is your son to be holding for a little, my man," that dark woman Belle would be saying, and Dan, in his big moods, would be answering--

"Have I not held the sword in my hand for twenty years, and what were weans to me in these days?"

"Very little--I am hoping, Dan," his wife would answer with a straight dark look, and the beginning of a laugh in her eyes, for always Dan would be remembering the first boy this wife of his had reared in those years, and a kind of shame would come over him, and Belle would laugh for that she had her man back, and her laughter was a thing to gladden the heart, and Dan would never be tired of hearing it. So the big mood would pa.s.s, and the hard-fighting farmer would be at work again; but whiles, after the laughing, the old longing, half-fierce look would be in Belle's eyes, and I kent it was not Dan or Hamish Og she was thinking of, but her first-born, Bryde.

And as the years wore on there was another thing to be watching in Belle. She would take the wean in a shawl swathed round her limber figure, and only the little head of him outside of it, and his eyes seeing things, like a young bird, and she would walk to the rise where old John of Scaurdale's man waved the lanthorn to McGilp on the night when I chased the deer, and there she would stand for long, looking seaward and crooning to the wean. This she would be doing every night before the gloaming.

"He will come on yon road," she would sometimes be telling Hamish Og, and point to the grey sea away to the suthard.

Now these freits are very catchy, and will follow folks that put faith in them, and there are many such folk to this day; and even Margaret McBride would always be putting great faith in the crowing of a c.o.c.k--a n.o.ble fellow he was, of the Scots Grey breed. At the feeding-time Margaret would be thrang with her white hands in a measure of grain, and I would be hearing her speaking to the chanticleer. If he would be crowing once, it was not good, and she would be coaxing him.

"Have you not better word than that?" she would flyte at him at the second cry; and if the bird would crow the three times, she would be lavish with the feeding and grow cheerful. And there was a time when Mistress Helen was with her at this task, and curious at all the talking.

"If he will cry three times--is it that something happens?" said Helen.

"It will be good news."

"Perhaps a lover comes?"

"I am not to have a man, it seems," says Margaret.

"If my lover comes," murmured Helen softly, with her slow smile, "I will know--another way."

"In what way?" says Margaret, throwing the last of the grain to the fowls about her feet.

"Something will _leap up_ here, ma belle, where my heart is."

And for some reason Margaret, the Flower of Nourn, dropped her grain dish and kissed her guest.

Now there is little to be telling when little things only are in the memory, and yet the days with little to be remembering are the happy days, that go past quickly like youth, and leave but vague memories of sunshine and laughter--of nights, and song, and dance. And there were great nights of happiness, for in these days the folk had the time to be knowing one the other, and neighbourly. And maybe in an evening there would be gathered at Dan's place all the old friends of his youth. You would be seeing Ronald McKinnon and Mirren, sitting in the circle round the fire, thrang at the knitting--both man and wife--kemping as they called it: that is, each would tie a knot in the worsted and make a race of it, who would be finished first. And Jock McGilp too would be there, standing off and on, between the stories of his wild seafaring days and the ghost stories of his youth; and Robin McKelvie and his sister that met us on the sh.o.r.e head of the isle that night the Red Laird pa.s.sed; and there was no Red Roland in her mind these days, for she had weans to her oxter. And maybe, perched on a table like a heathen G.o.d, the tailor would be working; and if there were young la.s.sies with their lads, ye would have the fiddle going, and the hoochin' and the dancing.

And even in the cottars' houses the good-wife would have a meal on such a night, and it would be pork and greens, or herring and potatoes; and then when it was bedtime in the morning, the ceilidhers would take the road, with maybe a piper at the head of them, and it would be at another house they would be meeting on the next night. Wae's me, these days are fast going, and there are bolts and bars on the doors now.

The story of a winter's ceilidhing would be a great book for fine stories.

And into a meeting of this kind, when the evening was well on, came Hugh McBride, and there was the great sc.r.a.ping of chairs and stools back from the fire, and Belle would have been putting a fire in a better room; but Dan had been too long in the field for these capers, for all that Hugh would be Laird and very grand above common folk. Dan waved him to a chair in his polite way, and made him very welcome. But Hugh was not seeing chairs that night, much less sitting quietly.

There was a sparkle in his eye and a flush on his cheeks, and his smile was for everybody, and when the lave of the folk were on the road he told us the news.

"Mistress Helen will be having me," says he. "Och, I will have been singing every love-song I was remembering since I left the gate at Scaurdale."

And we made a great "to-do" about it, and we were not any the better maybe for what we drank to his luck, and the la.s.s's luck; and on the hill-road home he was at the singing again.

"She is a fine la.s.s, Hamish--my wife that will be; is she no'?"

"A fine la.s.s."

"For a while--a long while the night,--it was in my mind that she would not be caring to have me, for she has the wale of brisk Ayrshire lads to pick from, and she swithered long."

"'We were babies together,' says she, 'in your mother's house?'

"I heard tell of that from my mother."

"'And Bryde, he was not born yet--Bryde, your relative?'"

"He was born in the hill house yonder, beside the 'three lonely ones,'

Helen."

"'Three lonely ones, Hugh,' said she, very low--'three lonely ones. I feel it in my bones that always there will be three lonely ones.'

"Till the frost and the rain of a million years level the hills," said I.

"'A million years, Hugh! It is long to wait.'

"It will not be so long as I have waited, Helen; and she smiled at that, Hamish, and then--

"'You have a very old name in this place, my guardian says.'

"Ay, an old name, Helen.

"'Then,' said she, 'I think--I think I will be, what they say, "all in the family."'"

"What would she mean by that, Hugh?"

"I am not sure," said he, "but I ken that John o' Scaurdale and my father are set on a weddin', and the la.s.s kens it too, and I am thinking it is the land she is thinking of; it will be all in the family when we make a match of it."

"Just that," said I; but in my mind there was another thought that I never was telling, and this was it--

Mistress Helen was thinking that Bryde would never have Margaret, because of a fault that was none of his making, and that would leave two lonely ones; and maybe, too, she was thinking that she herself would never be having Bryde (for another reason), and that would make three lonely ones. As for being all in the family--well, if she could not be having Bryde, she could be having his cousin, and I'm thinking that not the half of an acre of land was even in her mind at all. But it would not do to be telling that to a man that would just have left his trysted wife.

When Margaret had the word there were tears standing in her eyes.

"I am wondering if there would be something to leap up when Helen promised herself to our Hugh," said she.

CHAPTER XXVIII.

IN WHICH BETTY COMPLAINS OF GROWING-PAINS.

It was the Halflin that brought me word that Betty was not so well, and would I be coming to see her.