CHAPTER XXIII: ARMAGEDDON
The home season of the herring fishery was to commence a few days
after the occurrences last recorded. The boats had all returned
from other stations, and the little harbour was one crowd of stumpy
masts, each with its halliard, the sole cordage visible, rove
through the top of it, for the hoisting of a lug sail, tanned to
a rich red brown. From this underwood towered aloft the masts of
a coasting schooner, discharging its load of coal at the little
quay. Other boats lay drawn up on the beach in front of the Seaton,
and beyond it on the other side of the burn. Men and women were
busy with the brown nets, laying them out on the short grass of
the shore, mending them with netting needles like small shuttles,
carrying huge burdens of them on their shoulders in the hot sunlight;
others were mending, calking, or tarring their boats, and looking
to their various fittings. All was preparation for the new venture
in their own waters, and everything went merrily and hopefully.
Wives who had not accompanied their husbands now had them home
again, and their anxieties would henceforth endure but for a night
--joy would come with the red sails in the morning, lovers were
once more together, the one great dread broken into a hundred
little questioning fears; mothers had their sons again, to watch
with loving eyes as they swung their slow limbs at their labour, or
in the evenings sauntered about, hands in pockets, pipe in mouth,
and blue bonnet cast carelessly on the head: it was almost a single
family, bound together by a network of intermarriages, so intricate
as to render it impossible for any one who did not belong to the
community to follow the threads or read the design of the social
tracery.
And while the Seaton swarmed with "the goings on of life," the town
of Portlossie lay above it still as a country hamlet, with more
odours than people about: of people it was seldom indeed that three
were to be spied at once in the wide street, while of odours you
would always encounter a smell of leather from the saddler's shop,
and a mingled message of bacon and cheese from the very general
dealer's--in whose window hung what seemed three hams, and only
he who looked twice would discover that the middle object was
no ham, but a violin--while at every corner lurked a scent of
gillyflowers and southernwood. Idly supreme, Portlossie the upper
looked down in condescension, that is in half concealed contempt,
on the ant heap below it.
The evening arrived on which the greater part of the boats was to
put off for the first assay. Malcolm would have made one in the
little fleet, for he belonged to his friend Joseph Mair's crew,
had it not been found impossible to get the new boat ready before
the following evening; whence, for this one more, he was still his
own master, with one more chance of a pleasure for which he had
been on the watch ever since Lady Florimel had spoken of having a
row in his boat. True, it was not often she appeared on the shore
in the evening; nevertheless he kept watching the dune with his
keen eyes, for he had hinted to Mrs Courthope that perhaps her
young lady would like to see the boats go out.
Although it was the fiftieth time his eyes had swept the links in
vague hope, he could hardly believe their testimony when now at
length he spied a form, which could only be hers, looking seaward
from the slope, as still as a sphinx on Egyptian sands.
He sauntered slowly towards her by the landward side of the dune,
gathering on his way a handful of the reddest daisies he could
find; then, ascending the sandhill, approached her along the top.
"Saw ye ever sic gowans in yer life, my leddy?" he said, holding
out his posy.
"Is that what you call them?" she returned.
"Ow ay, my leddy--daisies ye ca' them. I dinna ken but yours is
the bonnier name o' the twa--gien it be what Mr Graham tells me
the auld poet Chaucer maks o' 't."
"What is that?"
"Ow, jist the een o' the day.--the day's eyes, ye ken. They're
sma' een for sic a great face, but syne there's a lot o' them to
mak up for that. They've begun to close a'ready, but the mair they
close the bonnier they luik, wi' their bits o' screwed up mooies
(little mouths). But saw ye ever sic reid anes, or ony sic a size,
my leddy?"
"I don't think I ever did. What is the reason they are so large
and red?"
"I dinna ken. There canna be muckle nourishment in sic a thin soil,
but there maun be something that agrees wi' them. It's the same a'
roon' aboot here."
Lady Florimel sat looking at the daisies, and Malcolm stood a few
yards off watching for the first of the red sails, which must soon
show themselves, creeping out on the ebb tide. Nor had he waited
long before a boat appeared, then another and another--six huge
oars, ponderous to toil withal, urging each from the shelter of
the harbour out into the wide weltering plain. The fishing boat of
that time was not decked as now, and each, with every lift of its
bows, revealed to their eyes a gaping hollow, ready, if a towering
billow should break above it, to be filled with sudden death.
One by one the whole fleet crept out, and ever as they gained the
breeze, up went the red sails, and filled: aside leaned every boat
from the wind, and went dancing away over the frolicking billows
towards the sunset, its sails, deep dyed in oak bark, shining redder
and redder in the growing redness of the sinking sun.
Nor did Portlossie alone send out her boats, like huge seabirds
warring on the live treasures of the deep; from beyond the headlands
east and west, out they glided on slow red wing,--from Scaurnose,
from Sandend, from Clamrock, from the villages all along the coast,
--spreading as they came, each to its work apart through all the
laborious night, to rejoin its fellows only as home drew them back
in the clear gray morning, laden and slow with the harvest of the
stars. But the night lay between, into which they were sailing
over waters of heaving green that for ever kept tossing up roses
--a night whose curtain was a horizon built up of steady blue, but
gorgeous with passing purple and crimson, and flashing with molten
gold.
Malcolm was not one of those to whom the sea is but a pond for fish,
and the sky a storehouse of wind and rain, sunshine and snow: he
stood for a moment gazing, lost in pleasure. Then he turned to Lady
Florimel: she had thrown her daisies on the sand, appeared to be
deep in her book, and certainly caught nothing of the splendour
before her beyond the red light on her page.
"Saw ye ever a bonnier sicht, my leddy?" said Malcolm.
She looked up, and saw, and gazed in silence. Her nature was full
of poetic possibilities; and now a formless thought foreshadowed
itself in a feeling she did not understand: why should such a
sight as this make her feel sad? The vital connection between joy
and effort had begun from afar to reveal itself with the question
she now uttered.
"What is it all for?" she asked dreamily, her eyes gazing out on
the calm ecstasy of colour, which seemed to have broken the bonds
of law, and ushered in a new chaos, fit matrix of new heavens and
new earth.
"To catch herrin'," answered Malcolm, ignorant of the mood that
prompted the question, and hence mistaking its purport.
But a falling doubt had troubled the waters of her soul, and through
the ripple she could descry it settling into form. She was silent
for a moment.
"I want to know," she resumed, "why it looks as if some great thing
were going on. Why is all this pomp and show? Something ought to
be at hand. All I see is the catching of a few miserable fish! If
it were the eve of a glorious battle now, I could understand it
--if those were the little English boats rushing to attack the
Spanish Armada, for instance. But they are only gone to catch fish.
Or if they were setting out to discover the Isles of the West, the
country beyond the sunset!--but this jars."
"I canna answer ye a' at ance, my leddy," said Malcolm; "I maun
tak time to think aboot it. But I ken brawly what ye mean." Even
as he spoke he withdrew, and, descending the mound, walked away
beyond the bored craig, regardless now of the far lessening sails
and the sinking sun. The motes of the twilight were multiplying fast
as he returned along the shore side of the dune, but Lady Florimel
had vanished from its crest. He ran to the top: thence, in the dim
of the twilight, he saw her slow retreating form, phantom-like,
almost at the grated door of the tunnel, which, like that of a
tomb, appeared ready to draw her in, and yield her no more.
"My leddy, my leddy," he cried, "winna ye bide for 't?"
He went bounding after her like a deer. She heard him call, and
stood holding the door half open.
"It's the battle o' Armageddon, my leddy," he cried, as he came
within hearing distance.
"The battle of what?" she exclaimed, bewildered. "I really can't
understand your savage Scotch."
"Hoot, my leddy! the battle o' Armageddon 's no ane o' the Scots
battles; it's the battle atween the richt and the wrang, 'at ye
read aboot i' the buik o' the Revelations."
"What on earth are you talking about?" returned Lady Florimel in
dismay, beginning to fear that her squire was losing his senses.
"It's jist what ye was sayin,' my leddy: sic a pomp as yon bude to
hing abune a gran' battle some gait or ither."
"What has the catching of fish to do with a battle in the Revelations?"
said the girl, moving a little within the door.
"Weel, my leddy, gien I took in han' to set it furth to ye, I wad
hae to tell ye a' that Mr Graham has been learnin' me sin ever I
can min.' He says 'at the whole economy o' natur is fashiont unco
like that o' the kingdom o' haven: its jist a gradation o' services,
an' the highest en' o' ony animal is to contreebute to the life o'
ane higher than itsel'; sae that it's the gran' preevilege o' the
fish we tak, to be aten by human bein's, an' uphaud what's abune
them."
"That's a poor consolation to the fish," said Lady Florimel.
"Hoo ken ye that, my leddy? Ye can tell nearhan' as little aboot
the hert o' a herrin'--sic as it has--as the herrin' can tell
aboot yer ain, whilk, I'm thinkin', maun be o' the lairgest size."
"How should you know anything about my heart, pray?" she asked,
with more amusement than offence.
"Jist by my ain," answered Malcolm.
Lady Florimel began to fear she must have allowed the fisher lad
more liberty than was proper, seeing he dared avow that he knew
the heart of a lady of her position by his own. But indeed Malcolm
was wrong, for in the scale of hearts, Lady Florimel's was far
below his. She stepped quite within the door, and was on the point
of shutting it, but something about the youth restrained her, exciting
at least her curiosity; his eyes glowed with a deep, quiet light,
and his face, even grand at the moment, had a greater influence
upon her than she knew. Instead therefore of interposing the door
between them, she only kept it poised, ready to fall to the moment
the sanity of the youth should become a hair's breadth more doubtful
than she already considered it.
"It's a' pairt o' ae thing, my leddy," Malcolm resumed. "The herrin
's like the fowk 'at cairries the mate an' the pooder an' sic like
for them 'at does the fechtin'. The hert o' the leevin' man's the
place whaur the battle's foucht, an' it's aye gaein' on an' on there
atween God an' Sawtan; an' the fish they haud fowk up till 't."
"Do you mean that the herrings help you to fight for God?" said
Lady Florimel with a superior smile.
"Aither for God or for the deevil, my leddy--that depen's upo'
the fowk themsel's. I say it hauds them up to fecht, an' the thing
maun be fouchten oot. Fowk to fecht maun live, an' the herrin'
hauds the life i' them, an' sae the catchin' o' the herrin' comes
in to be a pairt o' the battle."
"Wouldn't it be more sensible to say that the battle is between the
fishermen and the sea, for the sake of their wives and children?"
suggested Lady Florimel supremely.
"Na, my leddy, it wadna he half sae sensible, for it wadna justifee
the grandur that hings ower the fecht. The battle wi' the sea 's no
sae muckle o' an affair. An', 'deed, gien it warna that the wives
an' the verra weans hae themsel's to fecht i' the same battle o'
guid an' ill, I dinna see the muckle differ there wad be atween
them an' the fish, nor what for they sudna ate ane anither as the
craturs i' the watter du. But gien 't be the battle I say, there
can be no pomp o' sea or sky ower gran' for 't; an' it's a weel
waured (expended) gien it but haud the gude anes merry an' strong,
an' up to their work. For that, weel may the sun shine a celestial
rosy reid, an' weel may the boatie row, an' weel may the stars luik
doon, blinkin' an' luikin' again--ilk ane duin' its bonny pairt
to mak a man a richt hertit guid willed sodger!"
"And, pray, what may be your rank in this wonderful army?" asked
Lady Florimel, with the air and tone of one humouring a lunatic.
"I'm naething but a raw recruit, my leddy; but gien I hed my chice,
I wad be piper to my reg'ment."
"How do you mean?"
"I wad mak sangs. Dinna lauch at me, my leddy, for they're the best
kin' o' wapon for the wark 'at I ken. But I'm no a makar (poet),
an' maun content mysel' wi' duin' my wark."
"Then why," said Lady Florimel, with the conscious right of social
superiority to administer good counsel,--"why don't you work
harder, and get a better house, and wear better clothes?"
Malcolm's mind was so full of far other and weightier things that
the question bewildered him; but he grappled with the reference to
his clothes.
"'Deed, my leddy," he returned, "ye may weel say that, seein' ye
was never aboord a herrin' boat! but gien ye ance saw the inside
o' ane fu' o' fish, whaur a body gangs slidderin' aboot, maybe up
to the middle o' 's leg in wamlin' herrin,' an' the neist meenute,
maybe, weet to the skin wi' the splash o' a muckle jaw (wave), ye
micht think the claes guid eneuch for the wark--though ill fit,
I confess wi' shame, to come afore yer leddyship."
"I thought you only fished about close by the shore in a little
boat; I didn't know you went with the rest of the fishermen: that's
very dangerous work--isn't it?"
"No ower dangerous my leddy. There's some gangs doon ilka sizzon;
but it's a' i' the w'y o' yer wark."
"Then how is it you're not gone fishing tonight?"
"She's a new boat, an' there's anither day's wark on her afore we
win oot.--Wadna ye like a row the nicht, my leddy?"
"No, certainly; it's much too late."
"It'll be nane mirker nor 'tis; but I reckon ye're richt. I cam
ower by jist to see whether ye wadna like to gang wi' the boats a
bit; but yer leddyship set me aff thinkin' an' that pat it oot o'
my heid."
"It's too late now anyhow. Come tomorrow evening, and I'll see if
I can't go with you."
"I canna, my leddy--that's the fash o' 't! I maun gang wi' Blue
Peter the morn's nicht. It was my last chance, I'm sorry to say."
"It's not of the slightest consequence," Lady Florimel returned;
and, bidding him goodnight, she shut and locked the door.
The same instant she vanished, for the tunnel was now quite dark.
Malcolm turned with a sigh, and took his way slowly homeward along
the top of the dune. All was dim about him--dim in the heavens,
where a thin veil of gray had gathered over the blue; dim on
the ocean, where the stars swayed and swung, in faint flashes of
dissolving radiance, cast loose like ribbons of seaweed: dim all
along the shore, where the white of the breaking wavelet melted
into the yellow sand; and dim in his own heart, where the manner
and words of the lady had half hidden her starry reflex with a
chilling mist.
