White Heather: A Novel (Volume 2 of 3)

CHAPTER X

GRAY DAYS

But, after all, that first plunge into city-life had had something of the excitement of novelty; it was the settling down thereafter to the dull monotonous round of labour, in this lonely lodging, with the melancholy gray world of mist surrounding him and shutting him in, that was to test the strength of his resolve. The first day was not so bad; for now and again he would relieve the slow tedium of the hours by doing a little carpentering about the room; and the sharp sound of hammer and nail served to break in upon that hushed, slumberous murmur of the great city without that seemed a mournful, distant, oppressive thing. But the next day of this solitary life (for it was not until the end of the week he was to see Mr. Weems) was dreadful. The dull, silent gray hours would not go by. Wrestling with Ewart's Agricultural Assistant, or Balfour's Elements of Botany, or with distressing problems in land-surveying or timber-measuring, he would think the time had passed; and then, going to the window for a moment's relief to eye and brain, he would see by the clock of the railway station that barely half an hour had elapsed since last he had looked at the obdurate hands. How he envied the porters, the cab-drivers, the men who were loading and unloading the waggons; they seemed all so busy and contented; they were getting through with their work; they had something to show for their labour; they had companions to talk to and joke with; sometimes he thought he could hear them laughing. And ah, how much more he envied the traveller who drove up and got leisurely out of the cab, and had his luggage carried into the station, himself following and disappearing from view! Whither was he going, then, away from this great, melancholy city, with its slow hours, and wan skies, and dull, continuous, stupefying murmur? Whither, indeed! – away by the silver links of Forth, perhaps, with the castled rock of Stirling rising into the windy blue and white; away by the wooded banks of Allan Water and the bonny Braes of Doune; by Strathyre, and Glenogle, and Glenorchy; and past the towering peaks of Ben Cruachan, and out to the far-glancing waters of the western seas. Indeed it is a sore pity that Miss Carry Hodson, in a fit of temper, had crushed together and thrust into the bottom of the boat the newspaper containing an estimate of Ronald's little Highland poem; if only she had handed it on to him, he would have learned that the sentiment of nostalgia is too slender and fallacious a thing for any sensible person to bother his head about; and, instead of wasting his time in gazing at the front of a railway station, he would have gone resolutely back to Strachan's Agricultural Tables and the measuring and mapping of surface areas.

On the third day he grew desperate.

'In God's name let us see if there's not a bit of blue sky anywhere!' he said to himself; and he flung his books aside, and put on his Glengarry cap, and took a stick in his hand, and went out.

Alas! that there were no light pattering steps following him down the stone stair; the faithful Harry had had to be left behind, under charge of Mr. Murray of the inn. And indeed Ronald found it so strange to be going out without some companion of the kind that when he passed into the wide, dull thoroughfare, he looked up and down everywhere to see if he could not find some homeless wandering cur that he could induce to go with him. But there was no sign of dog-life visible; for the matter of that there was little sign of any other kind of life; there was nothing before him but the wide, empty, dull-hued street, apparently terminating in a great wilderness of india-rubber works and oil-works and the like, all of them busily engaged in pouring volumes of smoke through tall chimneys into the already sufficiently murky sky.

But when he got farther north, he found that there were lanes and alleys permeating this mass of public works; and eventually he reached a canal, and crossed that, deeming that if he kept straight on he must reach the open country somewhere. As yet he could make out no distance; blocks of melancholy soot-begrimed houses, timber-yards, and blank stone walls shut in the view on every hand; moreover there was a brisk north wind blowing that was sharply pungent with chemical fumes and also gritty with dust; so that he pushed on quickly, anxious to get some clean air into his lungs, and anxious, if that were possible, to get a glimpse of green fields and blue skies. For, of course, he could not always be at his books; and this, as he judged, must be the nearest way out into the country; and he could not do better than gain some knowledge of his surroundings, and perchance discover some more or less secluded sylvan retreat, where, in idle time, he might pass an hour or so with his pencil and his verses and his memories of the moors and hills.

But the farther out he got the more desolate and desolating became the scene around him. Here was neither town nor country; or rather, both were there; and both were dead. He came upon a bit of hawthorn-hedge; the stems were coal-black, the leaves begrimed out of all semblance to natural foliage. There were long straight roads, sometimes fronted by a stone wall and sometimes by a block of buildings – dwelling-houses, apparently, but of the most squalid and dingy description; the windows opaque with dirt; the 'closes' foul; the pavements in front unspeakable. But the most curious thing was the lifeless aspect of this dreary neighbourhood. Where were the people? Here or there two or three ragged children would be playing in the gutter; or perhaps, in a dismal little shop, an old woman might be seen, with some half-withered apples and potatoes on the counter. But where were the people who at one time or other must have inhabited these great, gaunt, gloomy tenements? He came to a dreadful place called Saracen Cross – a very picture of desolation and misery; the tall blue-black buildings showing hardly any sign of life in their upper flats; the shops below being for the most part tenantless, the windows rudely boarded over. It seemed as if some blight had fallen over the land, first obliterating the fields, and then laying its withering hand on the houses that had been built on them. And yet these melancholy-looking buildings were not wholly uninhabited; here or there a face was visible – but always of women or children; and perhaps the men-folk were away at work somewhere in a factory. Anyhow, under this dull gray sky, with a dull gray mist in the air, and with a strange silence everywhere around, the place seemed a City of the Dead; he could not understand how human beings could live in it at all.

At last, however, he came to some open spaces that still bore some half-decipherable marks of the country, and his spirits rose a little. He even tried to sing 'O say, will you marry me, Nelly Munro?' – to force himself into a kind of liveliness, as it were, and to prove to himself that things were not quite so bad after all. But the words stuck in his throat. His voice sounded strangely in this silent and sickly solitude. And at last he stood stock-still, to have a look round about him, and to make out what kind of a place this was that he had entered into.

Well, it was a very strange kind of place. It seemed to have been forgotten by somebody, when all the other land near was being ploughed through by railway-lines and heaped up into embankments. Undoubtedly there were traces of the country still remaining – and even of agriculture; here and there a line of trees, stunted and nipped by the poisonous air; a straggling hedge or two, withered and black; a patch of corn, of a pallid and hopeless colour; and a meadow with cattle feeding in it. But the road that led through these bucolic solitudes was quite new and made of cinders; in the distance it seemed to lose itself in a network of railway embankments; while the background of this strange simulacrum of a landscape – so far as that could be seen through the pall of mist and smoke – seemed to consist of further houses, ironworks, and tall chimney-stacks. Anything more depressing and disconsolate he had never witnessed; nay, he had had no idea that any such God-forsaken neighbourhood existed anywhere in the world; and he thought he would much rather be back at his books than wandering through this dead and spectral land. Moreover it was beginning to rain – a thin, pertinacious drizzle that seemed to hang in the thick and clammy air; and so he struck away to the right, in the direction of some houses, guessing that there he would find some way of getting back to the city other than that ghastly one he had come by.

By the time he had reached these houses – a suburb or village this seemed to be that led in a straggling fashion up to the crest of a small hill – it was raining heavily. Now ordinarily a gamekeeper in the Highlands is not only indifferent to rain, but apparently incapable of perceiving the existence of it. When was wet weather at Inver-Mudal ever known to interfere with the pursuits or occupations of anybody? Why, the lads there would as soon have thought of taking shelter from the rain as a terrier would. But it is one thing to be walking over wet heather in knickerbocker-stockings and shoes, the water quite clean, and the exercise keeping legs and feet warm enough, and it is entirely another thing to be walking through mud made of black cinders, with clammy trousers flapping coldly round one's ankles. Nay, so miserable was all this business that he took refuge in an entry leading into one of those 'lands' of houses; and there he stood, in the cold stone passage, with a chill wind blowing through it, looking out on the swimming pavements, and the black and muddy road, and the dull stone walls, and the mournful skies.

At length, the rain moderating somewhat, he issued out from this shelter, and set forth for the town. A tramway-car passed him, but he had no mind to be jammed in amongst a lot of elderly women, all damp and with dripping umbrellas. Nay, he was trying to convince himself that the very discomfort of this dreary march homeward – through mud and drizzle and fog – was a wholesome thing. After that glimpse of the kind of country that lay outside the town – in this direction at least – there would be less temptation for him to throw down his books and go off for idle strolls. He assured himself that he ought to be glad that he found no verdant meadows and purling brooks; that, on the contrary, the aspect of this suburban territory was sufficiently appalling to drive him back to his lodgings. All the same, when he did arrive there, he was somewhat disheartened and depressed; and he went up the stone staircase slowly; and when he entered that solitary, dull little room, and sate down, he felt limp and damp and tired – tired, after a few miles' walk! And then he took to his books again, with his mouth set hard.

Late that night he was sitting as usual alone, and rather absently turning over his papers; and already it had come to this that now, when he chanced to read any of these writings of his of former days, they seemed to have been written by some one else. Who was this man, then, that seemed to go through the world with a laugh and a song, as it were; rating this one, praising that; having it all his own way; and with never a thought of the morrow? But there was one piece in particular that struck home. It was a description of the little terrier; he had pencilled it on the back of an envelope one warm summer day when he was lying at full length on the heather, with Harry not half a dozen yards off, his nose between his paws. Harry did not know that his picture was being taken.

Auld, gray, and grizzled; yellow een;
A nose as brown's a berry;
A wit as sharp as ony preen —
That's my wee chieftain Harry.

Lord sakes! – the courage of the man!
The biggest barn-yard ratten,
He'll snip him by the neck, o'er-han',
As he the deil had gatten.

And when his master's work on hand,
There's none maun come anear him;
The biggest Duke in all Scotland,
My Harry's teeth would fear him.

But ordinar' wise like fowl or freen,
He's harmless as a kitten;
As soon he'd think o' worryin'
A hennie when she's sittin'.

But Harry, lad, ye're growin' auld;
Your days are gettin' fewer;
And maybe Heaven has made a fauld
For such wee things as you are.

And what strange kintra will that be?
And will they fill your coggies?
And whatna strange folk there will see
There's water for the doggies?

Ae thing I brawly ken; it's this —
Ye may hae work or play there;
But if your master once ye miss,
I'm bound ye winna stay there.

It was the last verse that struck home. It was through no failure of devotion on the part of the faithful Harry that he was now at Inver-Mudal; it was his master that had played him false, and severed the old companionship. And he kept thinking about the little terrier; and wondering whether he missed his master as much as his master missed him; and wondering whether Meenie had ever a word for him as she went by – for she and Harry had always been great friends. Nay, perhaps Meenie might not take it ill if Maggie wrote to her for news of the little dog; and then Meenie would answer; and might not her letter take a wider scope, and say something about the people there, and about herself? Surely she would do that; and some fine morning the answer – in Meenie's handwriting – would be delivered in Abbotsford Place; and he knew that Maggie would not be long in apprising him of the same. Perhaps, indeed, he might himself become possessed of that precious missive; and bring it away with him; and from time to time have a glance at this or that sentence of it – in Meenie's own actual handwriting – when the long dull work of the day was over, and his fancy free to fly away to the north again, to Strath-Terry and Clebrig and Loch Naver, and the neat small cottage with the red blinds in the windows. It seemed to him a long time now since he had left all of these; he felt as though Glasgow had engulfed him: while the day of his rescue – the day of the fulfilment of his ambitious designs – was now growing more and more distant and vague and uncertain, leaving him only the slow drudgery of these weary hours. But Meenie's letter would be a kind of talisman; to see her handwriting would be like hearing her speak; and surely this dull little lodging was quiet enough, so that in the hushed silence of the evening, he, reading those cheerful phrases, might persuade himself that it was Meenie's voice he was listening to, with the quiet, clear, soft laugh that so well he remembered.

And so these first days went by; and he hoped in time to get more accustomed to this melancholy life; and doggedly he stuck to the task he had set before him. As for the outcome of it all – well, that did not seem quite so facile nor so fine a thing as it had appeared before he came away from the north; but he left that for the future to decide; and in the meantime he was above all anxious not to perplex himself by the dreaming of idle dreams. He had come to Glasgow to work; not to build impossible castles in the air.

CHAPTER XI

KATE

And yet it was a desperately hard ordeal; for this man was by nature essentially joyous, and sociable, and fitted to be the king of all good company; and the whole of his life had been spent in the open, in brisk and active exercise; and sunlight and fresh air were to him as the very breath of his nostrils. But here he was, day after day, week after week, chained to these dismal tasks; in solitude; with the far white dream of ambition becoming more and more distant and obscured; and with a terrible consciousness ever growing upon him that in coming away from even the mere neighbourhood of Meenie, from the briefest companionship with her, he had sacrificed the one beautiful thing, the one precious possession, that his life had ever held for him or would hold. What though the impalpable barrier of Glengask and Orosay rose between him and her? He was no sentimental Claude Melnotte; he had common sense; he accepted facts. Of course Meenie would go away in due time. Of course she was destined for higher things. But what then? What of the meanwhile? Could anything happen to him quite so wonderful, or worth the striving for, as Meenie's smile to him as she met him in the road? What for the time being made the skies full of brightness, and made the pulses of the blood flow gladly, and the day become charged with a kind of buoyancy of life? And as for these vague ambitions for the sake of which he had bartered away his freedom and sold himself into slavery – towards what did they tend? For whom? The excited atmosphere the Americans had brought with them had departed now: alas! this other atmosphere into which he had plunged was dull and sad enough, in all conscience; and the leaden days weighed down upon him; and the slow and solitary hours would not go by.

One evening he was coming in to the town by way of the Pollokshaws road; he had spent the afternoon hard at work with Mr. Weems, and was making home again to the silent little lodging in the north. He had now been a month and more in Glasgow; and had formed no kind of society or companionship whatever. Once or twice he had looked in at his brother's; but that was chiefly to see how the little Maggie was going on; his sister-in-law gave him no over-friendly welcome; and, indeed, the social atmosphere of the Reverend Andrew's house was far from being congenial to him. As for the letter of introduction that Meenie had given him to her married sister, of course he had not had the presumption to deliver that; he had accepted the letter, and thanked Meenie for it – for it was but another act of her always thoughtful kindness; but Mrs. Gemmill was the wife of a partner in a large warehouse; and they lived in Queen's Crescent; and altogether Ronald had no thought of calling on them – although to be sure he had heard that Mrs. Gemmill had been making sufficiently minute and even curious inquiries with regard to him of a member of his brother's congregation whom she happened to know. No; he lived his life alone; wrestling with the weariness of it as best he might; and not quite knowing, perhaps, how deeply it was eating into his heart.

Well, he was walking absently home on this dull gray evening, watching the lamp-lighter adding point after point to the long string of golden stars, when there went by a smartly appointed dog-cart. He did not particularly remark the occupants of the vehicle, though he knew they were two women, and that one of them was driving; his glance fell rather on the well-groomed cob, and he thought the varnished oak dog-cart looked neat and business-like. The next second it was pulled up; there was a pause, during which time he was of course drawing nearer; and then a woman's voice called to him —

'Bless me, is that you, Ronald?'

He looked up in amazement. And who was this, then, who had turned her head round and was now regarding him with her laughing, handsome, bold black eyes? She was a woman apparently of five-and-thirty or so, but exceedingly well preserved and comely; of pleasant features and fresh complexion; and of rather a manly build and carriage – an appearance that was not lessened by her wearing a narrow-brimmed little billycock hat. And then, even in this gathering dusk, he recognised her; and unconsciously he repeated her own words —

'Bless me, is that you, Mrs. – Mrs. – Menzies – ' for in truth he had almost forgotten her name.

'Mrs. This or Mrs. That!' the other cried. 'I thought my name was Kate – it used to be anyway. Well, I declare! Come, give us a shake of your hand – auntie, this is my cousin Ronald! – and who would hae thought of meeting you in Glasgow, now!'

'I have been here a month and more,' Ronald said, taking the proffered hand.

'And never to look near me once – there's friendliness! Eh, and what a man you've grown to – ye were just a bit laddie when I saw ye last – but aye after the lasses, though – oh aye – bless me, what changes there hae been since then!'

'Well, Katie, it's not you that have changed much anyway,' said he, for he was making out again the old familiar girlish expression in the firmer features of the mature woman.

'And what's brought ye to Glasgow?' said she – but then she corrected herself: 'No, no; I'll have no long story wi' you standing on the pavement like that. Jump up behind, Ronald, lad, and come home wi' us, and we'll have a crack thegither – '

'Katie, dear,' said her companion, who was a little, white-faced, cringing and fawning old woman, 'let me get down and get up behind. Your cousin must sit beside ye – '

But already Ronald had swung himself on to the after seat of the vehicle; and Mrs. Menzies had touched the cob with her whip; and soon they were rattling away into the town.

'I suppose ye heard that my man was dead?' said she presently, and partly turning round.

'I think I did,' he answered rather vaguely.

'He was a good man to me, like Auld Robin Gray,' said this strapping widow, who certainly had a very matter-of-fact way in talking about her deceased husband. 'But he was never the best of managers, poor man. I've been doing better ever since. We've a better business, and not a penny of mortgage left on the tavern.'