Czytaj książkę: «A Widow's Tale, and Other Stories», strona 36
"Eh! eh! what is that he says? – what is that he says?"
"Sir, I would fain, fain do you a pleasure, if that were possible," Peter said.
It was some time before the old knight spoke. "Gramercy for your kindness, lad," he said; "I have plenty to do for me all I want. I seek no service from the like of you."
"Yet it would be given out of a good heart," Peter said.
These words of manly kindness to the weak, given with an insistence of which Peter, blate of nature as the minister had said – that is, proudly shy of expressing emotion, as it is the drawback of his countrymen to be – would not have believed himself capable, made a curious commotion in the still air of that chamber, where all was stagnant, and life and charity were seldom heard. Sir Walter put out a blanched hand with a gesture to the minister, calling him forward, "Ye have tutored the lad what to say."
"I would think shame," said Melville, "to try to tutor what's native to a gentle spirit. And, Sir Walter, you are more understanding than to believe what you say."
The old knight dropped his head again, and was silent once more. Then he said, without raising his face, with his eyes fixed on the low red of the fire, and a voice half buried in his fur collar, "Did I hear ye say Pate?"
"His name is Peter – "
"Pate," repeated the old man, vaguely. "There was once another – but keen, keen as a hawk, and gallant, and fine in every limb. Not like that yeoman from the fields. Take him hence, take him hence! There is that in the turn of his head that goes, that goes" – he made a pause, and gave forth a long slow breath "to my hert!"
And again there was silence. Peter would have stolen away by natural instinct, but did not dare to break the deep stillness by a movement, and the minister stood doubtful, hesitating, afraid to shorten an interview that might have important results, yet afraid at the same time to injure the impression that had been made.
"Ay, Pate," Sir Walter said almost to himself, "Pate – like day to night, like a prince to a churl – but just a turn of the head, a trick of the voice. Eh! ye are still here? is it a service do ye think, young man, to spy on the privacy of one that, kinsman or no kinsman, is the head of your name?" he raised himself, putting his hand upon the table – "in Fife," he added with a faint laugh, "in Fife – saving the rights of my lord. Ay, my lord, that's the question. Well, sir! I thank ye for your coming, and dismiss ye from further attendance. Master Melville, at your leisure I will see you again."
The hall was vacant when Peter, with strange visions through his brain, confused with his own good impulses and the less kind ones that came hurrying after, stepped into it again. He did not know what he had expected or hoped for, but there was disappointment and a little offence in his mind. He was not sure if he had acquitted himself as a man in this unusual trial or if he had failed. He was new to all these strange and conflicting feelings. The old man in his chamber, the death in life which Pate's animated youth had never seen before, and the young lady in the hall, had given to him equally a great thrill and sensation of the novel and unknown. Life seemed to have begun for him to-day.
CHAPTER IV
In Sir Walter's chamber, after that interview, there were many comings and goings. Sir John Low, as it was still the habit to call the curate, came every day, for the knight, in the many fluctuations of his mind, had at the last swayed towards the ritual and formulas to which he had been accustomed in his youth, and there were consolations boldly administered, though with precaution, by the curate which the minister, although no further removed than the next parish, would have esteemed sinful mummeries and offences to the truth. Mr Melville gave no absolution, which the curate dispensed with confidence, soothing the aged gentleman with rites by which his wavering mind was supported, though he could not give above half his attention to them, but sat turning over and over in his mind the one question that occupied him even when the viaticum was put to his lips. Sir John came and went, and a silent man from St Andrews, with a soberly clad attendant bearing a bag full of papers and an inkhorn, also came and went, spending hours in the Castle, and called in ever for a new discussion by the major-domo, Neil Morison, who shared all the consultations, to which indeed his master gave but the same distracted half attention which he gave to the rites of the Church. The time had come to him when he could not fix his mind to anything – whether it was those matters which were pressed upon him as for his soul's weal, or those others which were in reality the permanent subjects of his thoughts. Sir Walter, indeed, amid his dreams and distractions, which broke everything with which he was occupied as an image reflected in water is broken by every blowing breeze, was conscious of many people coming and going, who were not seen of men. While he pondered over the disposal of his property, his sons, to whom it should have gone by course of nature, came and went fitfully, more clearly realised at those moments when, in his malaise of mind and body, he became impotent of all other thoughts, and turned towards them as of old. Something had brought them back into the still air of that death-chamber – something which no one knew of, which the old man himself did not understand. It was the look of young Pate Oliphant, the turn of his head, something in his voice, those subtle tokens of kin which come and go, broken always, like that same reflection in water, not to be traced, but thrilling for a moment now and then through every nerve. That fugitive likeness had not inclined him towards Peter of Over-Kellie. It had struck out rather a tone of wrath, of harsh contrariety and opposition in his mind – with the impulse to push that interloper out of his way who dared to remind him of Pate, his own Pate of the other times. In his confusion of mind he did not remember how that suggestion came – had he dared to speak of Pate, this stranger who had no right? He forgot how it came. But Pate and the others had come back: they were vaguely about him, always eluding him when he would have appealed to them – present there he felt, by some secret understanding, known only to himself and them, which if he betrayed it would harm them all. And Sir John, quieting all the vague terrors in the old man's mind in respect to death – terrors only half real, too, for nothing was very real with Sir Walter – mingled other counsels, suggestions of another name in which there perhaps was an escape from the confusion of his soul.
The silent man from St Andrews disappeared one dim morning when the world was all white, stifled in an easterly haar, after a sitting of an hour with Sir Walter in his chamber – and that afternoon when the minister of Carnbee appeared he was informed that all was nearly over, and that the old knight, who had hung so long between life and death, was in the very act of ending. The curtain was held back that Mr Melville might enter; but as this was at the very moment when Sir John was bending over the couch of the sufferer administering those rites which were sacrilege to the preacher, Melville solemnly and indignantly withdrew, and stood outside till all should be over. He stood against the curtain with a stern expression on his face, his eyes half closed, his lips sometimes moving. I fear he was angry that this mummery should be permitted in a "Christian land," and thought many a harsh word of his brother, even while he prayed fervently for the passing soul which these rites were dismissing in peace. A little time after Sir John emerged, solemn too, yet with something of triumph in his look. "He hath gone forth well provided on his last journey," he said; "his end has been peace." "If you call that peace," Melville could not keep from saying; "I hope his end was also justice." "It was judgment," said the other priest, walking back as if in a procession with his little vials: and the old hall, so large, so empty, its great windows full of the whitened mist, the shroud of the haar that covered all things, looked more desolate, cold bare, and empty of life than words could say.
Before Sir Walter was carried to his rest in the family vault in Carnbee kirkyard it was known all over Fife that Kellie Castle and estates had been left by his will neither to his sister nor to the next of kin, but to the head of the family, my Lord Oliphant, then in London with King James, and not likely to put himself to much trouble in doing honour to the funeral. It is true that he was the head of the family, and also that there existed an additional link in the fact that Sir Walter had married his sister. But the fief of Kellie was one which came not from the parent house, but was acquired for his own hand by the original holder, the founder of this branch, so that its bequest to the chief was no reversion, but a free gift. Lord Oliphant was not rich; and poor as had been the state kept by the old knight in the lingering end of his days, his inheritance was not one to be despised. The knowledge made a great sensation in the neighbourhood, where there had been many speculations on the subject, the claims of Mistress Jean and of Pate Oliphant having been largely discussed. By some of the neighbours it had been believed that Sir Walter had no right to exclude the heir-at-law; but this had been warmly disputed by others, who held that the death of all the immediate members of his own family left the old knight a free hand, and that, in the absence of any legal settlement, he had a right to do what he liked with his own. His funeral brought together all the gentry from that side of Fife, both gentle and simple indeed, of the East Neuk, neighbours and tenants, a numerous company. And at this ceremony the positions of the two clergymen were reversed. Sir John of Pittenweem was not looked upon with very favourable eyes in the Kingdom, and his return to the ancient ways, though it had to be winked at by those who were aware that authority was no longer entirely on the side of the Reformed Kirk, and that protection was now extended even to something very like the odious Mass – was much against him in the opinion of the multitude. That he had "played his cantrips" about the dying man was whispered from one to another, and that he was a rank prelatist was universally known. Maister Melville, that excellent and sound divine, had now all the say.
There were other strange features in this funeral which were long remembered. For one thing, there was nobody to conduct the mourning with authority. Peter Oliphant stepped forward to follow the coffin, and no one gainsaid his right to take the place of chief mourner; but he was modest and a little backward in marshalling the others, notwithstanding the support he received from several of the chief gentlemen present, who acknowledged the title of the next of kin, even though it was known that he was not the heir. But was he not the heir? would not natural right prevail, though in opposition to an old man's testament, a doited old man! These words were freely spoken even as the long procession set out upon the heavy country road, winding dark and silent between the hedgerows. Was he not a doited old man? Had not he taken, as somebody had related, Pate Oliphant for his own son Pate, who, poor lad, had been but a rover, and broken, folk said, his father's heart? And there were some even who whispered that it was with the idea that Pate of Over-Kellie was his own Pate, and to punish that ne'er-do-weel, that Sir Walter in his dotage had left his lands away from the natural heir. This discussion, however, was not all or even the most remarkable part of what occurred. For at the cross-roads, where the way to Carnbee turned off from the highway, a young gentleman, followed by three or four retainers, came up almost at a gallop, with every sign of hard riding, and in his travelling-dress, and made an effort to disturb the decorum of the funeral by forcing his horse into the line and taking the place next to the coffin where Pate walked leading the procession. This incident caused a pause, and such an interruption of the solemnity as threw the line of the mourners into confusion, and turned the conventional stillness and whispered conversations of the funeral party into something like a brawl. The new-comer proclaimed himself the representative of Lord Oliphant, his son, sent to render the last honours to his kinsman, and could only be prevented with the greatest difficulty from taking his place forcibly at the head. This noisy interruption, and the bad manners of the young gallant, who, when prevented from taking the place of Pate, rode on himself and his followers at either side of the coffin, breaking the quiet not only by the excitement of their appearance but by the clangour of their ride, and the breach of all those Scotch decorums which have always been so rigid in respect to burial. Brawling at such a moment was not indeed unheard of, any more than at any other moment, in the temper of the times. But the depths of the peaceful country, where no such thing had been thought of, and where my Lord Oliphant had neither friend nor enemy, was displeasing to all. Nevertheless, perhaps, had it not been for the steady backing of the minister and one or two of the elder men, the position of Pate would have been a disagreeable one; for the sympathies of the gentry were more with the Master of Oliphant than with the humbler youth, whose blood they acknowledged, but whose breeding had been that of a yeoman rather than of a landed gentleman. Pate himself, however, proved his gentility by a bearing much more noble than that of the intruder. He held his place with determination and without flinching, yielding no step. And thus they carried old Sir Walter to his grave.
On the return, however, Pate was less certain of his right and less supported. It was the intruder then who had the upper hand. The elder men might look coldly upon so irreverent an assertion of the position; but the younger ones, who knew, or desired to know, the Master of Oliphant, were glad to push forward, to claim his acquaintance, and to accompany him back to Kellie Castle, where at least he had now the first right to be. Pate felt himself left behind to the company of the tenants and the smaller lairds, who, like himself, were rather patronised than on an equal footing with the great proprietors. Mr Melville made an effort to draw him into the quiet of the manse, which would have been safer; but it was more natural that, indignant and injured as he felt himself, he should prefer the sympathy of the others, who were full of angry suggestion and advice. The young man had been profoundly disappointed and cast down by Sir Walter's will. It was the destruction of his brightest hopes: but it had not occurred to him that the question was not closed, or that there might still be a chance of having justice done him. Now the utterances of companions were no longer in whispers. The doited auld man? Was he indeed a doited auld man? Pate thought of the heavy look, the dreamy eye, the sudden kindling like a flame of Sir Walter's brief words and moments of animation. He shook his head at first, but afterwards his own mind took fire. It was galling to hear the voices, already gay, of the others who clustered round young Oliphant, and streamed after him, full of pleasure in the excitement of the stranger's arrival, and also in their release from the gloomy ceremony: he and his friends came behind, and different were their tones and their looks.
"It is e'en like the impudence of thae minions of the Court," said one of the neighbours, "that follow the English fashion, and despise their native ways."
"English fashion or no," said another, "right is right. Body and banes! if it were me, I would have my lord before the Feifteen before I drew breath."
"And let them prove that the old knight was fit to mak' a disposition – "
"I'll tell ye just this, Over-Kellie," said one of the tenants, raising an expository hand. "I had a word with Andrew Morison, that is the cousin of Neil at the Castle, and the hired man of Maister Playfair of St Andrews, the writer – him ye ken of. He had a look within yon closed cha'mer, at his maister's call, to bring in the papers. And Andrew, he says the auld man was like an auld ghaist – the colour o' the pairchment spread out on the table, and his een dead in his heid."
"Which was nowise natural," said another. "I hae seen him mysel', when there was question o' a feu or siclike, that took his pairt, and a free-spoken man that would hae his argument and tak' his jest like another. You'll no tell me it's the time to test, when a man's like yon."
"If it had been a reasonable testament – "
"Or like a leal kinsman: now Sir Walter was aye considered a very honourable person when he was in his own command."
"Pate Oliphant," said one of his own comrades, "I would fecht till my last drop o' blood, before I wad yield Kellie Castle and your auld name to a popinjay of an Englished lord."
"My auld name," said Pate, holding his head high, "is in no danger, Beatoun, from any man."
"Oh, ay, ay," cried Beatoun, impatiently, "we all ken your pride. But Oliphant of Over-Kellie is one thing and Oliphant of Kellie Castle is another: and Lord! if it were but for this day's work – "
"Cause enough, and reason gude for feud or fray; but it's law and not blood that's in the question," said another. "A bit of yellow pairchment and a muckle false seal, and the name of a doited auld man!"
All these speeches and many more of the same kind rang in Pate's ear and echoed through and through him as he rode home.
CHAPTER V
The house of Over-Kellie had not the dignity of the Castle; yet the living-room into which Peter strayed with absent eyes, flinging himself down on an oak bench beside the long table, was not entirely without pretension. The windows were high in the walls; the fire was a wide-spreading ingle, with some seats under its ruddy arch. A large oaken table occupied the centre of the room; but it was kept with greater care than was common, cleanly swept, with a pair of large silver candlesticks on the high mantel-shelf, and some carving on the panels. On one side of the fireplace a casement had been put in with a broad sill, so that the women might have light for their work, and weapons hung upon the walls by way of ornament – an old Andrea Ferrara, and some pieces of plain armour such as were worn by squires and yeomen. The only thing that made any stronger call upon the attention was the carving of the mantelpiece, on which there was what seemed a rough copy of the shield which occupied a similar position at Kellie Castle, with the motto sprawling in rather ungainly letters, out of proportion with the armorial bearings, À tout pourvoir, in a lengthened scroll by itself.
The Leddy, or, to compromise the matter, the Mistress of Over-Kellie, which was a title equally befitting, whether she was by right Gudewife or Leddy, came hurriedly out of the house to greet Pate, eager to hear all that had happened, and what had specially befallen himself in this crisis of his affairs. The Mistress had still hoped, or persuaded herself she hoped, that the previous news about Sir Walter's will might be untrue; and, as she followed her son up the few steps which led to the great room, had overflowed in a string of questions, echoed by her daughter Margaret, who followed close upon her steps. "Oh, Pate! what did they say till ye? was the writer there? was there any person that had authority? Pate, my man, did you lay his head in the grave? – for sure, it was your right."
"Ay," said Peter, "I laid his head in the grave – muckle good as that did me; for sure, as you say, it was my right."
"And is it true about the testament?" asked his sister.
"It canna be true – I will not believe it: it is but the ill-will of Maister Playfair," said the Mistress; "they were ever against our house."
"Mother, mother, what has the writer to do with it? he cannot alter what Sir Walter says. But maybe it is not so ill as we thought," said Margaret, with devouring eyes on her brother's face.
"Let me be! let me be! I would like a stoup of your ale, mother. The roads are very heavy both for man and beast."
"You are tired, my bonnie lad! Na, I'll not say another word," said the Mistress, while Margaret flew down-stairs to get him the refreshment he asked. "We might have thought if we had not been so taken up concerning the news. Na, na, I will not hurry you, my Patie. Just take your time, my bonnie lad!"
And she seated herself on the settle near the fire, and took up, not without a little ostentation and with a sigh of excitement, her habitual work. Margaret stood gazing on the other side of the table while he drank, and their united force of curiosity and suspense moved him more by repression than it had done by utterance.
"Well, then," said Pate, "hear this: my Lord Oliphant – that is the head of our name – if I were ten times over the first of it in Fife, no mortal man can contradict that."
A sob of opposition and protest came from the overcharged bosom of the Mistress. Mortal man she was not, but woman; and therefore resistant to every statement which diminished the importance of those she loved.
"The head of our name," repeated Pate, with a wave of his hand, in fine acknowledgment of an allegiance which was not agreeable to him. "There is therefore excuse, if excuse were wanted. It is no alienation; but might, in the language of some persons, be conceived a giving back."
Pate was not without his share of schooling; he could be sententious, which has always been a possibility to a Scotsman, when he chose.
"Given back!" said the quick Margaret, "but it never came from thence. Look at the Buik, and look at the tree. It was no fief of Aberdalghie, but won by our awin spear and our awin bow."
The women were wild with this outrageous pretence; but Pate, whose heart, he thought, was broken, bent his head down on his hands and spoke no word.
Afterwards he began to tell them what had happened, which they listened to with cries of indignation and wrath. If it had been the Prince of Scotland (or of Wales, as it was heard with indignation that the heir of the crown was now to be called) who had tried to push forth Pate from his lawful place, his mother and sister would have risked their loyalty to resist it. But a young popinjay of a Master of Oliphant, as Robbie Beatoun had justly said! And then by degrees they elicited from Pate all he had heard about Sir Walter's incompetence, and how Sir John and the Writer between them had swayed his mind, in spite of all that Maister Melville, good friend and true, had been able to do.
"I am no for fechting," said the Mistress. "I've seen more of it in my time than I would desire to see again; but to sustain a mortal wrong, and not to say a word – I would raise the country afore I would abide that."
"I would rather sell my shoon off my feet, and my gown off my back!" said Margaret, ever the first to see what was the real question.
"Whisht, mother, whisht! If it was to raise the country and haud the Castle against whoever should oppose! Ah!" cried Pate, with a sigh, "that was the way in the former days, when there was a king in Scotland."
"And what for no?" cried the Mistress, with a gleam of war in her eyes; but then she threw her apron over her head and began to cry. "The Lord forgive me," she said; "to bid the lads to fecht, that are aye o'er ready; and me that have seen the son brought in stiff and stark to his ain mother's hearthstane! Oh no, my Patie, no! I am an ill woman to think such thoughts."
"If that were the way of it!" cried Pate. "But the strong hand will not serve us, mother; and he is the chief of our name. How could I rouse the fisher-lads at St Monance, that are most Oliphants, against the head of our own name?"
"There's not one of them but would follow you, Pate. It is you that are the head of the name!"
"Whisht, Peggy! – to their death and the ruin of their sma' houses, and starvation to their bairns – me that should rather feed and fend them!" Peter half turned with a wave of his hand towards the motto rudely carved upon the mantelpiece, "À tout pourvoir." He pronounced it as his equal might do to-day, Aw toutt pourvoïre. "If ye ken nothing else, you ken the meaning of that."
The women turned their eyes to it sadly, both answering, yet with reluctance, to the spell. "Indeed it was an ill day it was pitten there," said the Mistress, shaking her head. "Your father, honest man – and blessed be his rest! – was just wud of these auld words. Never was there a crown-piece to ware upon unthankful folk but yon was what he said. Yon fishers in St Monance! He would point it to me that would have held him back, and says he, 'Ye dinna understand, Marg'ret, but I understand. The haill tot provided for: that's what it means – and the honour of my name.' 'Laird, laird,' I aye said, 'you are far o'er muckle taken up with the honour of your name.'"
"Not so," said Pate.
"Never so!" cried young Margaret, kindled and shining forth, her eyes "keen with honour" in a glow of youth and brightness against the old dull panelled wall.
"And that is just what cuts deepest," said the young man – "the law, and the siller: it is either to abide the wrong, or to risk the pickle land and the old rooftree, and your living, mother. Say that Peggy is safe in Rob Beatoun's hands. But there is you and me, and them that hang upon us. Me, I could go away to the wars in Germany, where there's ever place for a Scot, like many a kinsman before me; but that would be no pleasant issue for my mother."
"O Pate! Pate!" she cried, otherwise speechless, holding up her hands in an agony.
"And the plea at law," he went on. "The plea at law! there's something that is as devouring as the grave. And it's that is the only way. Look, mother! shall I take your living and mine and fling it to thae dogues? I might get righted of my wrong; but if not we would be beggars, with a wallet on our back and a staff in our hand. And what would come of the name then, or the old o'erword of the name? My heart is just broken," cried Pate, with a wild movement of his arms. "Run the risk of everything we yet possess – or else brook the wrong. How is a man to decide? Whiles I think I would sooner perish than brook the wrong – "
"You must not do it, you must not do it!" cried the mother and daughter in one breath.
"Or be counted among the dyvors at the horn," cried Pate. "The broken men that have neither land nor dwelling to their name. The Lord preserve me! but I am in a sore strait. Dishonour one way and ruin the t'other. To be stripped of all, or to sit still like a coward and brook the wrong and the shame."
At this moment the attention of the agitated group was suddenly diverted. The sound of a horse's hoofs, urged in a headlong gallop along the road, had been audible for a minute or two: and now there rang into the air the sudden clash of the swinging gate, the bringing up of a horse upon the paved yard, and the sound of some one flinging from the saddle. "Where are they? in the big room?" some one cried: and the door swinging open admitted Mistress Jean from the Castle, breathless with haste, excitement, and agitation, her fair face glowing, her bright hair waving, her riding-skirt splashed with the heavy mud of the road. "Oh take me in!" she cried. "Oh save me, Leddy; I have no place to hide my head, and Kellie has come into a stranger's hands."
"My bonnie bairn!" cried the Mistress, rising from her seat, "who has dared to frichten you like this?"
"Oh, I'm safe, I'm safe," cried Mistress Jean, "now I'm here. But I thought I would never win here – " She flung herself into the great chair from which the Mistress had risen. "The hall is full of men," she said, pushing back her hair from her forehead, "drinking wine and holding muckle loud talk – and my brother, Sir Walter, that was lying there yestreen, only laid in his grave this very day."
"If there was any man that dared," cried Peter, flaming up in response, with a kindled eye and flashing face, "to lay a little finger upon you – "
"On me!" cried Mistress Jean, in high disdain. "He would have brooked a buffet in reply, and that I can answer for; but yonder young lord – if he's the Maister of Oliphant, as they say, he does muckle harm to a good name – he cried to me as a bonnie lass, the coward loon! and held wine to me to drink the health of the new lord – me! that am Leddy by all rules in my ain right."
"And so you are," cried Margaret; "I have ever said so – if nature and law were the same."
The Mistress shook her head. "Not for a lass, not for a lass!" she said; but her kind hand rested with a caressing touch upon the girl's shoulder. "Think no more o't," she said, "my bonnie doo! you are safe here."
"But I must think more of it," cried Mistress Jean. "I am no doo, but of a fighting race. He is riding off the morn, that painted pyet of a Maister – maybe to-night. And by St Margaret! – which is a good oath, for we bear her blood – I'll hold the auld house against him and all his! I will do it! Cousin Pate, you're my chief vassal, for you're the next of the name: you're my captain; up with you, when you hear what I say! Raise every Oliphant in Fife. They are no maidens spinning at their wheels, but buirdly men!"
Pate had started with a reddening cheek at the word vassal; but with another glance at her, a smile of wonderful tenderness and brightness came over his face, and he bowed his head with a look of mingled reverence and protection beautiful to see. "That am I," he said, "and at my Lady's bidding I'll – " He paused again. The old cloud, dissipated for a moment, came over him. "But, Mistress Jean," he said, "bethink you first what it will be. Clean rebellion against King and law."
