Chapter XX: Letters From Airlie

"Oh," said Coquette, as they walked along the winding path, with the beautiful scenery of the district gradually opening up before them, "I did get two letters for you, uncle, at Tarbert, and forgot all about them. Here they are; shall I read them?"

The two letters which she produced from, her pocket had the Airlie stamp on them; and Mr. Cassilis at once bade her do as she pleased. So she broke the seal of the first, and began to read aloud:

"'Honoured Sir and master in the Lord,--I tak up my pen to let ye know that I have been,'--what is this?" said Coquette.

The Minister took it from her, and continued himself:

"--that I have been stung. Atweel I wat no man ever heard me complain unnecessary-wise about my poseetion in life, which I accept with gratitude and humeelity from the Giver of all Good--to wit the Dispenser of all Mercies at present and to come; but I maun tak the leeberty o' saying, honoured Sir, that I cannot bide in this house any langer to be treated worse than the beast that perisheth. From the fingers to the elbows--and my face and neck likewise--am I covered wi' the venomous stings o' bees, and do suffer a pain grievous, and like unto the plagues which were put on the people of Egypt for their sins. Honoured Sir, I canna bear wi' they callants any longer, as I chanced upon one o' them laughing like to split, and am aware it was a skeein to inflict this wrong and injury upon me, which I howp will cause you to inquire into, and begging the favour of a reply to say when ye are coming back--and what sore punishment will be meeted out to them that richly deserve the same--I am, your humble and obedient servant in the Lord,

"ANDREW BOGUE."

"Can it be," said the Minister, when he had read this letter aloud, "can it be that those mischievous boys have conspired to set a lot of bees to sting him?"

Coquette looked somewhat frightened; but the Whaup observed, cheerfully--

"Indeed, sir, those brothers of mine are fearful. I have done my best with them to keep them out of mischief; but it is no use. And to go and set a bees' bike at an auld man----!"

The Whaup shook his head disconsolately. His brothers were incorrigible--even he had been compelled to desist from his efforts to improve them.

"Do you hear him?" said Coquette, in a low voice to Lord Earlshope. "And it was he himself who did plan all that about the bees, and got them, and put them in a bag."

"And then," said Earlshope, aloud, to the Whaup, "the worst of it is that they go and blame you for what they do themselves; so that the whole district has got to dread you, whereas you have been trying to put down these pranks."

The Whaup turned towards Lord Earlshope, and slowly winked one of his eyes. By this time the Minister had opened the other letter, and was perusing it in silence. It ran as follows:--

"Dear and Reverend Sir,--It behoves me to accomplish, or in other words to fulfil the promise which I, as an elder in your church, made to you, on your setting forth, to make you acquaint, or familiarise you with, the events and occurrences, the state of feeling, and general condition of this parish. Towards yourself, their spiritual governor, leader, and guide, the people do show themselves most loyal and friendly, hoping you will continue your voyages abroad to the benefiting of your health, and that you may be saved from the perils of the waters--or, as I might have said, from the dangers that encompass them who go down to the sea in ships. As for the young man who is to take your pulpit, God willing, next Sabbath, report speaks well of his forbears; but divers persons who have heard him in Arbroath, Greenock, and elsewhere, do fear that he is not severe enough in defining the lines and limits of doctrine, holding rather to the admonitory side, which does not give his hearers sufficient chance, or opportunity, to use a less pagan word, to get at his own stand-point, which is a grave, or, it might be said with safety, a serious matter; for whereas those ministers who have been long with us, and who have given proofs of their doctrinal soundness, may be permitted to deal more with reproof and exhortation, it is for the younger generation of preachers to declare themselves clearly and sharply, that the church universal may not be ensnared and entrapped in the dark, there being, I grieve to hear, a dangerous leaven of looseness in the colleges and other places where young men congregate, or, as I might say, come together. The only news of importance, besides this subject, which I have to communicate, is that Pensioner Lamont did once more, on the night of Tuesday, become most abnormal drunk, and did dance and play his fiddle in an uproarious and godless manner in the house of Mrs. Pettigrew; and likewise that Lauchie--who is vulgarly called Field Lauchie--Macintyre's wife's bairn has been visited with the rash, which I hope will be taken as a sign of the warning finger of Providence, and cause the said Lauchie to give over, or, as I may say, abandon, his abominable and reckless conduct of walking to the town of Ardrossan every Sabbath day, and remaining there until the evening, I fear in no good company. This, dear and reverend sir, from yours to command, ÆNEAS GILLESPIE."

"Good news from Airlie?" asked Lady Drum.

"Yes--in a manner, yes," replied the Minister, with dreamy eyes. It was a new thing for him to hear only the distant echo of his parish.

"Your boys seem to want their elder brother to control them?" continued Lady Drum.

"Yes," said the Minister. "He prevails on them to leave the Manse quiet when he is there, though it may be only to lead them into greater mischief elsewhere. But they will have to look after themselves now for the rest of the autumn and winter."

"Why?"

"Because Tom is returning to his studies at Glasgow," observed the Minister.

Coquette had been standing to watch some water-hens which, on the opposite bank, were scrambling about in the rushes, and she came up only in time to hear these last words.

"You are going to Glasgow?" she said to the Whaup.

"Yes," he replied, with some gravity. "I mean to work hard this winter."

"And you will not be at Airlie all the time?"

"Does that distress you?" he asked.

"Nobody but Leesiebess and her husband," said Coquette, wistfully. "It will not be pleasurable--the Manse--in the dark time of the winter, with the cold of the hill. But I am glad you do go. You will work hard; you will forget your games of mischief; you will come back more like a man; and when you tell me you have studied well, and have got--what is it called?--your certification, I will come out to meet you at the Manse, and I will have a wreath of laurel-leaves for you, and you will be the great hero of the hour."

"It is something to look forward to," said the Whaup, almost sadly. "And when I come back will you be just the same, Coquette?--as quiet and happy and pretty as you always are?"

"I do not know that I am quiet, or happy, or pretty, more than any one else," said Coquette; "but I hope I shall be always the same to you, if you come back in one year--two years--ten years."

The Whaup did not reply to that, but he said to himself: "_If she would only wait two years! In two years' time I should have worked to some purpose, and I would come home and ask her to marry me._"

All the rest of their walk along the pretty and picturesque bank he was restless and impatient in manner--speaking to nobody, thinking much. He cut with his stick at the rushes in the water or at the twigs of the hedge, as if they were the obstacles that lay in his way towards the beautiful goal he was dreaming of. At last he got into the yacht again and went below. When the others followed, some time after, they found him busy with his books.

Coquette went to him and said:

"Why do you read? Have I offended you? Are you angry with me?"

"No, no," he said, rising and going away; "you are a deal too kind towards me, and towards all those people who don't understand how good you are."

Coquette stood by in blank astonishment; she let him pass her and go up on deck without uttering a word.

By this time the _Caroline_ was lying at anchor in Loch Crinan, and the afternoon was drawing on apace. The day had dulled somewhat, and far out among the western isles that lay along the horizon there was a faint, still mist that made them shadowy and vague. Nevertheless, the Whaup would have the skipper give him the pinnace for a run out in quest of the guillemot plumage that Coquette had desired; and when, indeed, that young lady appeared on deck, she beheld the tiny boat, with its spritsail catching a light breeze, running far out beyond the sharp island-rocks that crowd the entrance to the natural harbour.

"It is so small a boat to go out to sea," she said to Lord Earlshope, who was following the pinnace with his glass.

Meanwhile, the Whaup had stationed himself at the prow of the small craft, steadying himself with his gun as she began to dip to the waves; while all in front and around there opened out the great panorama of lochs and islands, between Luing and Scarba on the north, and the three dusky peaks of Jura in the south. The gloomy Sound of Corrievreckan was steeped in mist; and Dubhchamus Point was scarcely visible; but nearer at hand, in the middle of the grey and desolate sea, lay Maoile Rock, and Ris an Valle, with Ruisker and the Ledge apparently under the shadow of the Paps. The bright little boat, despite her ballast and her cargo, went lightly as a feather over the waves; and the Whaup kept his eyes alert. There were plenty of birds about--the solitary solan poised high in the air--the heron calling from out of the twilight that hung over the distant shores--gulls of every description, from the pretty kittiwake to the great black-winged depredator--but in vain he scanned the heaving plain of waves for the special object of his quest. At last, however, they heard the cry of the divers down in the south, and thither the small boat was directed. The sound came nearer and nearer--apparently there were dozens or hundreds of them all about--yet no feather of one of them could be seen. Then there was a swift rustle out beyond the boat--a dark moving line, rapidly crossing the waves--and the pink flame leapt from the two barrels of the Whaup's gun. The pinnace was put about, and run towards a certain dark speck that was seen floating on the waves; while at the same moment over all the west there broke a great and sudden fire of yellow--streaming down from the riven clouds upon the dusky grey of the sea. In this wild light the islands grew both dark and distant; and near at hand there was a glare on the water that dazzled the eyes and made all things look fantastic and strange. It lasted but for a moment. The clouds slowly closed again; the west grew grey and cold; over all the sea there fell the leaden-hued twilight; while the bow of the boat--going this way and that in search of the dead bird--seemed to move forward into the waste of waters like the nose of a retriever.

They picked up the bird--there was but one. The Whaup was not satisfied. They could still hear the distant calling, and so they stood out a bit farther to sea--none of them, perhaps, noticing how rapidly the darkness was descending.

"There is a squall coming," said the man at the tiller, looking far down into the south-west.

The Whaup saw nothing but a strangely black line along the misty horizon--a line of deep purple. He was unwilling to go back then. Besides, both sea and sky were sufficiently calm; and the coming breeze would just suffice to run them into Loch Crinan.

"We had better make for the yacht, sir," said the man nearest him. "It looks bad down there."

Unwilling as he was to give up, the Whaup perceived that the thin line of black had become a broader band. He was still looking far over the mystic plain of the waves towards that lurid streak, when he seemed to hear an unfamiliar sound in the air. It was not a distant sound, but apparently a muttering as of voices all around and in front, hoarse, and low, and ominous. And while he still stood watching, with a curiosity which dulled all sense of fear, the slow widening of the blackness across the sea, a puff of wind smote his cheek, and brought the message that those troubled voices of the waves were deepening into a roar. Near the boat the sea was comparatively calm, and the darkening sky was quite still; but it appeared as though a great circle were inclosing them, and that the advancing line of storm could be heard raging in the darkness without being itself visible. In the intense stillness that reigned around them, this great hoarse, deepening tumult of sounds found a strange echo; and then, while the men were making ready for the squall, the water in the immediate neighbourhood became powerfully agitated--a hissing of breaking waves was heard all around--then the first blow of the wind struck the boat as if with a hammer.

By this time the sail had been brailed up; and the tempest that now came roaring along the black surface of the sea smote nothing but spars and oars as it hurried the pinnace along with it. Running before the wind, and plunging into the great hollows of the waves, that seemed to be racing towards the shore, the light boat shipped but little water, except when a gust of wind drove the crest of a breaking wave across the rowers; but there came torrents of rain sweeping along with the gale; and presently they found themselves shut out from sight of land by the driving clouds. The Whaup still kept outlook at the bow; but he had long ago laid aside his gun.

It was now a question of making the entrance to the loch without running on the rocks with which it is studded; and as the boat rose and sank with the waves, and reeled and staggered under the tearing wind, the Whaup, dashing back the salt water from his eyes and mouth, and holding on to the prow, peered into the wild gloom ahead, and was near shouting joyously aloud from the mere excitement and mildness of the chase. It was a race with the waves; and the pinnace rolled and staggered down in a drunken fashion into huge black depths only to rise clear again on the hissing masses of foam; while wind and water alike--the black and riven sky, the plunging and foaming sea, and the great roaring gusts of the gale that came tearing up from the south--seemed sweeping onward for those dusky and jagged points which formed the nearest line of land.

Coquette was standing on deck, her one small hand clinging to the cold steel shrouds, while her face, terror-stricken and anxious, was fixed on the blackness of the storm that raged outside the troubled stillness of the harbour. Lord Earlshope begged her to go below from the fierce torrents of the rain; and when she paid no heed to him, he brought a heavy mantle, and covered her with it from head to foot. She spoke not a word; and only trembled slightly when the wind came in with a fierce cry from that angry warring of the elements that was going on beyond the islands.

The darkness fell fast; and yet as far as they could see there was no speck of a boat coming in from the wild and moving waste of grey. To the girl standing there and gazing out, it appeared as though the horizon of the other world--that mystic margin on which, in calmer moments, we seem to see the phantoms of those who have been taken from us passing in a mournful procession, speechless and cold-eyed, giving to us no sign of recognition--had come close and near, and might have withdrawn behind its shadowy folds all the traces of life which the sea held. Could it be that the black pall of death had fallen just beyond those gloomy islands, and hidden for ever from mortal eyes that handful of anxious men who had lately been struggling towards the shore? Was the bright young existence she had grown familiar with, and almost learned to love, now snatched away without one mute pressure of the hand to say farewell? She stood there as if in a dream; and the things that passed before her eyes had become spectral and ghastly. She scarcely knew that she heard voices. She clung to the steel ropes--there was something like a faint "hurrah!" wafted in with the tumult of the sea--there was the vision of a face gleaming red and joyous with the salt spray and the rain--and then she knew that she was sinking, with a sound as of the sea closing over her head.