Chapter IV: An Idyllic Life

When Sandie awoke again, he felt so much fresher, lightsomer, and better, and was admitted by the doctor to be so far recovered that he was permitted to sit up a little and engage in conversation with his mother and gentle little nurse, Maggie May.

The latter interested Sandie very much indeed. He had never before seen a child-girl half so lovely. To him she was idyllic, a poem, a dream-child. It seemed to this romantic ploughboy-student as if Maggie May--what a sweet name, too!--had flown straight out from the pages of Anacreon.

Of course there may have been a good deal of super-sentimentality about all this, for the mind is always more sensitive when the body is feeble and weak; and weak Sandie still was, and would be for many a day. However, it may be confessed, before we go any farther, that Maggie May was an innocent, artless, and a very beautiful child.

I have myself an opinion that no girl can be really beautiful who is not truly good, whose heart is not imbued with religion and in touch with nature. If the soul, in all truthfulness, does not shine through the eyes, be they brown or be they blue, then, ah! me, beauty is far, far away. And yet many girls now-a-days think that the more closely they approach in figure, face, and complexion to the waxen dummies we see in the windows of hairdressers the prettier they must be. A greater mistake could not be made. Let me say earnestly to every girl who may read these lines, “Cultivate mind and soul if you wish to become beautiful.”

This is a digression, and I apologise for it, and proceed with my true story.

A day or two afterwards, Sandie’s sister came over to the manse, and the mother went home.

Maggie May and she soon became fast friends, and together it was evident they would soon nurse Sandie back to life.

Maggie May possessed a zither, on which, for so young a girl, she played charmingly, singing thereto old Scotch songs, such as “The Flowers of the Forest,” “The Parting,” “Wae’s me for Prince Charlie,” and other Jacobite lilts, that caused the tears to come welling up into Sandie’s eyes till he could see nothing for the mist they produced; for Sandie was still very weak and hysterical.

The minister came daily, twice a day, to see the patient. One day he brought Sandie’s Horace.

“Do you mean to tell me, Sandie,” said the minister, “that you read Latin?”

“Oh, yes, just a little. And a little Greek,” he added.

Mackenzie patted his thin white hand, and looked wonderingly down into his pinched and worn face.

From that moment Sandie knew he had found a friend.

Then he told him all--all his ambitions, all his struggles, and all his doubts and fears.

Mackenzie was silent for a time after he had ceased speaking. Then he took Sandie’s hand in his. “Listen!” he said. “I was a bursar at my University, or I would not be where I am now, for my people were only fisher-folks at Peterhead. I was a bursar, and I have ever since kept up my classics. Now, I can put you in the way of working up for the Grand Competition at the end of October, if you care to come over here about twice or thrice a week.”

Once more came that wildering mist of tears to Sandie’s weak eyes. “The Lord be praised and you be thanked,” he said, pressing Mackenzie’s hand. “He has raised me up a friend, and I am more happy now and hopeful than I have ever been in life.”

For another whole week Sandie was still so weak as to be unable to leave his room; then he was able to totter out into the minister’s garden, and seat himself on the summer-seat, in the warm spring sunshine, in the healthful bracing breath of the sweetest month in all the year.

Maggie May went with him, and sat near him, and read to him little stories, in which he pretended to take great interest, though it really was the story-teller, not the story, he was studying all the time. Soon after his first out-going, young blood began to assert itself, and he somehow felt ashamed of being ill or a patient. He was getting rapidly stronger, at all events, and one morning announced his intention of going home. The minister knew it would be useless to argue with him. Genius is wilful, and there was every probability even now that Sandie would eventually prove that he possessed genius. “What is genius after all,” said somebody, or words to this effect, “but the capability of plodding and steady work?” I am certainly not prepared to agree with this. Genius depends greatly on brain power and brain formation. I never would expect much except a grunt from a sow, however much she applied herself to study.

Sandie went home. The spring and merry May were now almost gone. The joy of June would soon be here. The men, and even Jeannie, the simple servant lassie, were busily engaged thinning the young turnips. As Sandie drove slowly down the loanings in the gig, he could hear their merry voices as they talked and laughed, with now and then Jeannie’s gentle voice raised in song, to which Jamie appended a deep broad bass. The horses were still in the fields as he had seen them last--Glancer nibbling the shoulder of Tippet, Tippet nibbling that of Glancer, the best proof one horse can give his fellow that he loves and respects him.

The banks by the dike and ditch-sides were now all ablaze with the most charming wild-flowers. I might be accused of making copy were I to mention the half of them; but on the water itself floated the spotlessly white water-anemone and the wild forget-me-not. On the banks near by nodded the crimson ragged-robin and blood-red selené. They seemed to be looking at and admiring their own sweet faces reflected from the pools beneath. But the banks were also patched with sky-blue speedwells, starred over with great, solemn-looking, oxeye daisies, and backed by a profusion of the tall and lordly purple orchis.

Sandie took all this in at a glance. His own humble home was the chief part of the picture before him; the banks of wild-flowers, and the clear flowing wee burns or streamlets, were but settings.

His doctor had warned him that he must not use his study for some days to come. Sandie had promised, and he determined to obey. Well, he could not work just yet, so he determined to fall back upon Robbie Burns and Anacreon. With a volume of each in his pocket, he went to the fields every day, and just dawdled along behind the workers, the rooks in turn following up at a respectful distance behind all. Sandie read to the workers, and read so pleasantly, that one moment he would have all hands laughing enough to scare the very rooks, and next the men-folks looking solemn and sad, and the salt, salt tear in Jeannie’s eyes. Dear me! what a power there is in poetry and song when it is well and feelingly read! Somehow I cannot help thinking that, to read poetry well, the reader himself must be possessed of a portion of the divine afflatus.

“Well, mother,” said Sandie one evening, just after June had come in, “I’ve made up my mind to go in for the bursary competition in the end of October. I can but fail.”

“You winna fail, laddie. I’ll pray.”

“Ah! mother, prayer is only one thing. I’m going to work.”

“You winna kill yoursel’?”

“No fears, mother. Honest work never killed anybody, though the hoofs of a daft Shetland pony skilfully applied might. No; I’m going to work, mother mine, and go over twice a week to see Minister Mackenzie. It really is good of him to promise to put me on the straight road, isn’t it?”

“It is, laddie. It was mebbe all for the best that the pony hurt you.”

“I think it was.”

“God moves in a mysterious way, Sandie.”

“He does, mother; but now there is something else worrying me. Should I succeed in getting a bursary, that, with the addition of a little pupil-teaching, will be enough to support me, won’t father miss my work very much all winter?”

“We maun do the best we can, laddie; that maunna stand in the way o’ your advancement. Na, na, Sandie; banish a’ sich thochts frae your heid.”

“Weel then, mother, I’ll make my first run over to the minister’s to-morrow, and to save time I’ll ride on Lord Raglan. He’ll be turned into one of Mackenzie’s fields till I’m ready to come back.”

* * * * *

That was one of the most pleasant day’s outings that ever Sandie had had, and there were many such to follow during the long sweet summer days.

Mackenzie was simply astonished at the amount of the lad’s erudition. He, however, managed to put him right in many little things; that is, there were subjects that Sandie had been studying, and studying hard too, which would not be required of him while competing for a bursary. It would be obviously worse than useless to continue with these. So the minister was of real service to our ploughboy-student.

But Mackenzie was wise in his day and generation. No one knew better than he that a brain kept constantly on the rack soon becomes a weakened brain, and that poverty of blood and body follows. So on the days when Sandie came over to the manse, the kindly minister just granted him three hours of tuition in the forenoon; then came luncheon, and after that he was sent off to fish. On these little piscatorial forays, Sandie’s constant companion was little Maggie May. None knew better than she where the best

and biggest mountain trout lay, or where to use fly and where to fish with bait; and her knowledge she invariably communicated to her big companion. And he--well, he never had been very much of a fisherman, but now it seemed to him that he was less artistic than ever. If the truth must be told, he could not do so much as he could have wished, because he wanted to watch Maggie May. There was something in every look and movement of this beautiful child, and in her innocent prattle as well, that drew Sandie irresistibly towards her. To his way of thinking she was idyllic.

Was he falling in love with the bonnie bairn? Oh, I do not wish for a single moment to suggest anything of the sort; only be it remembered that Sandie really was a poet at heart, and that poets love all things lovely that they see around them.

Towards six o’clock sport always ended, and with their bags on their backs, and fishing-rods over their shoulders, they went together slowly back to the manse.

Dinner followed. Mackenzie would always insist on his pupil staying to dinner. Then, in the calm summer’s gloaming, Sandie would bid his friends adieu, mount Lord Raglan, and ride slowly home. Mrs. M‘Crae and his father invariably sat up for him, and he had always much that was hopeful to tell them. But he must even yet spend a few hours in his study; for, pleasant though they were, Sandie could not help looking upon those fishing excursions as so much time wasted or thrown away. Therefore he resorted to his rustic study in the corn loft, and there he would sometimes sit till grey daylight in the morning. This at the summer’s height is not necessarily very late, for, far away north in Aberdeenshire, about mid-summer, there is really very little darkness.

But never, I ween, did sleeper sleep more sweetly than did Sandie when his head was at last on the pillow. Slumber stole over his senses--immediate, instantaneous--and he never awoke until Tyro the collie put his paws on the bed and licked his ear; and thus for the present was his life almost an idyllic one. Alas! this is a kind of life that does not last long with any one in this weary world.