CHAPTER IX
We Learn Other Things
We were more than ever at the farm now. During the summer, from the
time we got up till the time we went to bed, we seldom approached the
manse. I have heard it hinted that my father neglected us. But that
can hardly be, seeing that then his word was law to us, and now I
regard his memory as the symbol of the love unspeakable. My elder
brother Tom always had his meals with him, and sat at his lessons in
the study. But my father did not mind the younger ones running wild,
so long as there was a Kirsty for them to run to; and indeed the men
also were not only friendly to us, but careful over us. No doubt we
were rather savage, very different in our appearance from town-bred
children, who are washed and dressed every time they go out for a
walk: that we should have considered not merely a hardship, but an
indignity. To be free was all our notion of a perfect existence. But
my father's rebuke was awful indeed, if he found even the youngest
guilty of untruth, or cruelty, or injustice. At all kinds of
escapades, not involving disobedience, he smiled, except indeed there
were too much danger, when he would warn and limit.
A town boy may wonder what we could find to amuse us all day long; but
the fact is almost everything was an amusement, seeing that when we
could not take a natural share in what was going on, we generally
managed to invent some collateral employment fictitiously related to
it. But he must not think of our farm as at all like some great farm
he may happen to know in England; for there was nothing done by
machinery on the place. There may be great pleasure in watching
machine-operations, but surely none to equal the pleasure we had. If
there had been a steam engine to plough my father's fields, how could
we have ridden home on its back in the evening? To ride the horses
home from the plough was a triumph. Had there been a thrashing-
machine, could its pleasures have been comparable to that of lying in
the straw and watching the grain dance from the sheaves under the
skilful flails of the two strong men who belaboured them? There was a
winnowing-machine, but quite a tame one, for its wheel I could drive
myself--the handle now high as my head, now low as my knee--and watch
at the same time the storm of chaff driven like drifting snowflakes
from its wide mouth. Meantime the oat-grain was flowing in a silent
slow stream from the shelving hole in the other side, and the wind,
rushing through the opposite doors, aided the winnower by catching at
the expelled chaff, and carrying it yet farther apart. I think I see
old Eppie now, filling her sack with what the wind blew her; not with
the grain: Eppie did not covet that; she only wanted her bed filled
with fresh springy chaff, on which she would sleep as sound as her
rheumatism would let her, and as warm and dry and comfortable as any
duchess in the land that happened to have the rheumatism too. For
comfort is inside more than outside; and eider down, delicious as it
is, has less to do with it than some people fancy. How I wish all the
poor people in the great cities could have good chaff beds to lie
upon! Let me see: what more machines are there now? More than I can
tell. I saw one going in the fields the other day, at the use of which
I could only guess. Strange, wild-looking, mad-like machines, as the
Scotch would call them, are growling and snapping, and clinking and
clattering over our fields, so that it seems to an old boy as if all
the sweet poetic twilight of things were vanishing from the country;
but he reminds himself that God is not going to sleep, for, as one of
the greatest poets that ever lived says, _he slumbereth not nor
sleepeth_; and the children of the earth are his, and he will see that
their imaginations and feelings have food enough and to spare. It is
his business this--not ours. So the work must be done as well as it
can. Then, indeed, there will be no fear of the poetry.
I have just alluded to the pleasure of riding the horses, that is, the
work-horses: upon them Allister and I began to ride, as far as I can
remember, this same summer--not from the plough, for the ploughing was
in the end of the year and the spring. First of all we were allowed to
take them at watering-time, watched by one of the men, from the stable
to the long trough that stood under the pump. There, going hurriedly
and stopping suddenly, they would drop head and neck and shoulders
like a certain toy-bird, causing the young riders a vague fear of
falling over the height no longer defended by the uplifted crest; and
then drink and drink till the riders' legs felt the horses' bodies
swelling under them; then up and away with quick refreshed stride or
trot towards the paradise of their stalls. But for us came first the
somewhat fearful pass of the stable door, for they never stopped, like
better educated horses, to let their riders dismount, but walked right
in, and there was just room, by stooping low, to clear the top of the
door. As we improved in equitation, we would go afield, to ride them
home from the pasture, where they were fastened by chains to short
stakes of iron driven into the earth. There was more of adventure
here, for not only was the ride longer, but the horses were more
frisky, and would sometimes set off at the gallop. Then the chief
danger was again the door, lest they should dash in, and knock knees
against posts and heads against lintels, for we had only halters to
hold them with. But after I had once been thrown from back to neck,
and from neck to ground in a clumsy but wild gallop extemporized by
Dobbin, I was raised to the dignity of a bridle, which I always
carried with me when we went to fetch them. It was my father's express
desire that until we could sit well on the bare back we should not be
allowed a saddle. It was a whole year before I was permitted to mount
his little black riding mare, called Missy. She was old, it is
true--nobody quite knew how old she was--but if she felt a light
weight on her back, either the spirit of youth was contagious, or she
fancied herself as young as when she thought nothing of twelve stone,
and would dart off like the wind. In after years I got so found of
her, that I would stand by her side flacking the flies from her as she
grazed; and when I tired of that, would clamber upon her back, and lie
there reading my book, while she plucked on and ground and mashed away
at the grass as if nobody were near her.
Then there was the choice, if nothing else were found more attractive,
of going to the field where the cattle were grazing. Oh! the rich hot
summer afternoons among the grass and the clover, the little
lamb-daisies, and the big horse-daisies, with the cattle feeding
solemnly, but one and another straying now to the corn, now to the
turnips, and recalled by stern shouts, or, if that were unavailing, by
vigorous pursuit and even blows! If I had been able to think of a
mother at home, I should have been perfectly happy. Not that I missed
her then; I had lost her too young for that. I mean that the memory of
the time wants but that to render it perfect in bliss. Even in the
cold days of spring, when, after being shut up all the winter, the
cattle were allowed to revel again in the springing grass and the
venturesome daisies, there was pleasure enough in the company and
devices of the cowherd, a freckle-faced, white-haired, weak-eyed boy
of ten, named--I forget his real name: we always called him Turkey,
because his nose was the colour of a turkey's egg. Who but Turkey knew
mushrooms from toadstools? Who but Turkey could detect earth-nuts--and
that with the certainty of a truffle-hunting dog? Who but Turkey knew
the note and the form and the nest and the eggs of every bird in the
country? Who but Turkey, with his little whip and its lash of brass
wire, would encounter the angriest bull in Christendom, provided he
carried, like the bulls of Scotland, his most sensitive part, the
nose, foremost? In our eyes Turkey was a hero. Who but Turkey could
discover the nests of hens whose maternal anxiety had eluded the
_finesse_ of Kirsty? and who so well as he could roast the egg with
which she always rewarded such a discovery? Words are feeble before
the delight we experienced on such an occasion, when Turkey,
proceeding to light a fire against one of the earthen walls which
divided the fields, would send us abroad to gather sticks and straws
and whatever outcast combustibles we could find, of which there was a
great scarcity, there being no woods or hedges within reach. Who like
Turkey could rob a wild bee's nest? And who could be more just than he
in distributing the luscious prize? In fine, his accomplishments were
innumerable. Short of flying, we believed him capable of everything
imaginable.
What rendered him yet dearer to us, was that there was enmity between
him and Mrs. Mitchell. It came about in this way. Although a good
milker, and therefore of necessity a good feeder, Hawkie was yet upon
temptation subject to the inroads of an unnatural appetite. When she
found a piece of an old shoe in the field, she would, if not compelled
to drop the delicious mouthful, go on, the whole morning or afternoon,
in the impossibility of a final deglutition, chewing and chewing at
the savoury morsel. Should this have happened, it was in vain for
Turkey to hope escape from the discovery of his inattention, for the
milk-pail would that same evening or next morning reveal the fact to
Kirsty's watchful eyes. But fortunately for us, in so far as it was
well to have an ally against our only enemy, Hawkie's morbid craving
was not confined to old shoes. One day when the cattle were feeding
close by the manse, she found on the holly-hedge which surrounded it,
Mrs. Mitchell's best cap, laid out to bleach in the sun. It was a
tempting morsel--more susceptible of mastication than shoe-leather.
Mrs. Mitchell, who had gone for another freight of the linen with
which she was sprinkling the hedge, arrived only in time to see the
end of one of its long strings gradually disappearing into Hawkie's
mouth on its way after the rest of the cap, which had gone the length
of the string farther. With a wild cry of despair she flew at Hawkie,
so intent on the stolen delicacy as to be more open to a surprise than
usual, and laying hold of the string, drew from her throat the
deplorable mass of pulp to which she had reduced the valued gaud. The
same moment Turkey, who had come running at her cry, received full in
his face the slimy and sloppy extract. Nor was this all, for Mrs.
Mitchell flew at him in her fury, and with an outburst of abuse boxed
his ears soundly, before he could recover his senses sufficiently to
run for it. The degradation of this treatment had converted Turkey
into an enemy before ever he knew that we also had good grounds for
disliking her. His opinion concerning her was freely expressed to us
if to no one else, generally in the same terms. He said she was as bad
as she was ugly, and always spoke of her as _the old witch_.
But what brought Turkey and us together more than anything else, was
that he was as fond of Kirsty's stories as we were; and in the winter
especially we would sit together in the evening, as I have already
said, round her fire and the great pot upon it full of the most
delicious potatoes, while Kirsty knitted away vigorously at her blue
broad-ribbed stockings, and kept a sort of time to her story with the
sound of her needles. When the story flagged, the needles went slower;
in the more animated passages they would become invisible for
swiftness, save for a certain shimmering flash that hovered about her
fingers like a dim electric play; but as the story approached some
crisis, their motion would at one time become perfectly frantic, at
another cease altogether, as finding the subject beyond their power of
accompanying expression. When they ceased, we knew that something
awful indeed was at hand.
[Illustration]
In my next chapter I will give a specimen of her stories, choosing one
which bears a little upon an after adventure.
