The Summer Tenant. An Idyll of the Three Brothers

Front matter

THE SUMMER TENANT: An Idyll of the Three Brothers. BY CATTER THUN, Author of "Edinburgh Assembly Sketches," " Tartanvale," " Camustronary," S-V, EMnburgb : J. GARDNER HITT, 37 GEORGE STREET. Xon&on : SIMPKIN, MARSHALL, HAMILTON, KENT & CO., Limited. THESE PAGES, HASTILY RUN TOGETHER, THE AUTHOR AFFECTIONATELY DEDICATES TO HIS FRIENDS IN A FORFARSHIRE PARISH, AS THE SMALL TRIBUTE OF A HIGHLANDER, WHO FOR FOUR YEARS WENT OUT AND IN AMONG THEM AND WHO, WITH DEEP REGRET, SAW THEM ALL FOR THE LAST TIME. Edinburgh, 7th August 1893. CONTENTS. CHAP. PAGE I. IN THE SILENT LAND, I II. CONCERNING A TELEGRAM, 7 III. AN ENCOUNTER, I_ IV. THE HOUSEHOLD OF MR. SACKEMALL 30 V. A YOUNG MAN OF POWERFUL IMAGINATION ARRIVES, . 42 VI. THE SHOOTING TENANT 52 VII. THE FOOL OF DONNAN 65 VIII. A SABBATH IN DONNAN, 71 IX.

AT HAMRA LODGE, 86 X. THE ELF-LIGHTS, ........ 92 XI. THE FATE OF M'TAGGART, 102 XII. THE SOUTH-GOING STEAMER Il6 XIII. THE FLIGHT OF THE "HAWK," 124 XIV. JOHN GOES AWAY, 133 XVV WHAT APPEARED IN THE CHURCH OF DONNAN, . . I38 XVI. THE NIGHT OF THE TEMPEST, I45 XVII. THE LONE VIGIL, 152 N.B. — It may be well to remark that none of the characters in this book have any real existence. Only leading types of character have been brought forward, and made to inhere in imaginary substrata. NEM OIL LHMPS. WITH PATENT SAFETY BURNERS, SPECIAL DESIGNS THIS SEASON IN Floor Extension Lamps, Hall Lamps, Reading Lamps, And Table Lamps, JAMES GRA Y & SON invite inspection of their NEW STOCK OF OIL LAMPS just to hand. The Patterns are of great artistic merit, and unsurpassed in value. The Selection is the Finest in Scotland.

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Chapter I. In The Silent Land

Just where the great Highland hills stoop down to touch the western sea — where the mist and the brumal tempest often descend — where the spirit of solitude prevails above all things else, lies the quaint little village of Donnan. The houses, of which there may be forty or thereby, face the sea, or rather the sea arm, which runs up amid the mountains. Some of these houses are primitive enough, and a few are built of good stone and lime. The in habitants are an industrious people, tilling small portions of very unworkable soil, and fishing in Loch Donnan — for so the firth is named — or in the deep sea without. Their lives are singularly uneventful — broken by little change. For them day succeeds day monotonously, as the waves roll on the shore. From the village there branches off through the tortuous valleys a very rough and precipitous road, which is rarely enlivened by anything save the shriek of shrill winds, or some swollen torrent that from the mountain top goes foaming and thundering by.

In deed, a more desolate road it would be difficult to find anywhere. On either side grey rocks and patches of moor tower up into the B sky, to form summits that are very frequently draped in deep im penetrable mists. Amid all there reigns a certain massive grandeur. Out of the towering mountains and the leaping waters — out of the mist veil and the desolation, there is born the sublime ; and no visitor ever went away from Donnan without a confession of some sort that the whole was grand. Just opposite the village, about half-a-mile away, there lies a small island called the Maoil. Upon it may still be seen the ruins of an ancient keep, where, doubtless, in the long past ages some Viking or Saxon chieftain held himself impregnable from the invasion of kindred spirits. Now the walls have crumbled down into heaps of ruin, all save one, that still, like an unvan quished Titan of the past, rears itself against the storm.

If walls had tongues, as they are sometimes credited with having ears, how many a tale of conflict, of scheming, of love might be poured forth here, — of the going and coming of the galleys, with a thousand tales on board of each. But to-day, in this nineteenth century, as you look across the expanse of water from the village of Donnan there is nothing to catch your eye save this island-ruin, and, it may be, some fishermen's boats rolling lazily on the tide. On this island is the burying-ground of the district — a rough spot to the right of the old keep, with irregular mounds and many undressed stones of curiously carved devices and primitive letter ing. The whole churchyard is half hidden among rank herbage. As an armorial-bearing it graces the little rock sanctuary, and speaks of the dead past.

It is one of the few links, too, that con nect it with the present ; for remorselessly and regularly enough a sombre line of boats comes across the water, amid wail of pipes, to lay in this spot till the resurrection some brother or sister of mankind. The village of Donnan is connected with the world at large by IN THE SILENT LAND. 3 means of a steamer which calls in weekly — every Friday it is — and often remains for the better part of an hour. Friday, therefore, is always an eventful day, and a busy one for the inhabitants. Then strangers come into the place ; then they go away. From the steamer's deck the passengers admire the mountains, and examine critically enough, and often with rude comment, the faces of the villagers. On their part the inhabitants curiously inspect, from the little stone pierhead, the various passengers who are on board ; and being destitute of the advantages of a superior education, they are content to do this silently without much personal criticism of any sort.

There is a certain interchange of cargo between shore and steamer, accompanied by much shouting of ferrymen and crew. Then the steamer slowly turns, her long line of smoke goes down the firth, she disappears round the far headland — going out seaward — and the event of the week is over. The village of Donnan sinks back into its accustomed tranquillity. In the height of summer a few visitors occasionally come to the district, and these, as a rule, lodge in the village. This holiday harvest, such as it is, never at most exceeds three months ; for the birds of passage are all short stayed, — a painter or sporting fisher, wanderers from the beaten tourist track. About three miles distant from the village there lay, at the time of which we write, the Parish Church, embosomed in the midst of the hills, and just by the side of the desolate highway that led down to the coast and to Donnan.

A strange, long, barn-like building it was, with a double row of square windows on either side, and on the gable top a dilapidated belfrey, that seemed hardly equal to the task of maintaining the bell. Above the other gable was conspicuous a cross of stone, monumental, perhaps, of the old religion that died here, as elsewhere, before the advance of reforming zealots. The church lay in a deep hollow, and, but for the porous quality of the soil, would certainly have been half submerged in water times without number. As it was, the walls were damp and disfigured in many places by green slimy-looking patches. The view here was simply a circular basin of moorland and rock, save at one point, where the road cut onwards through a narrow defile. In that direction lay the manse. A walk of twenty minutes brought one thither, and, singularly enough, the visitor was sure to be agreeably disappointed.

The immediate surround ings of the manse were not only picturesque, but richly beautiful. The country suddenly underwent a change, and there sprang up a veritable oasis in the desert. The hillsides for a space lost their bleak character, the elegant native birch flourishing thickly, and clothing the savage rock in delicate greenery. The manse, a handsome enough building, half ancient, half modern, commanded this view ; while, directly in front, there towered up into the very clouds three enormous mountain bluffs, known as the Three Brothers of Donnan. Round these hoary giants circled legends— legends innumerable as the storms that swept over them — legends of birth, of marriage, of death, of failure and success, of joy and despair. The combing mists that came sweeping down from their summits, the snow wreaths that whitened them, the spectral lights that flitted uncer tainly across their brows at midnight, were all ominous of future events.

A rhyme, translated from the vernacular of the district, is proof of this, — " When elf-lights flit o'er the Brothers three, Then exchange no token, for vows shall be broken, Although they be fairly and fondly spoken, For there's storm in the cloud and moan in the sea." The life of Donnan, in common with that of all the Western Highlands, is wholly governed by superstition, and by that form of IN THE SILENT LAND. 5 it which possesses a certain charm and wild beauty, called by Goethe " the poetry of life." Here, at least, superstition seems to be in harmony with Nature. In no more fitting cradle could this natural child of the imagination be laid at birth — in no more fostering nursery and climate could it develop into a giant. Within sight of the manse lay the shooting lodge of Hamra. Along with many other lodges, it was the property of Lord Tredmorton, who passed most of his time in England.

His emoluments were considerably augmented by the rents of shooting tenants. The lodge of Hamra had for many years been tenanted by an elderly gentleman, Sir William Brown, who came thither every autumn for a few months. He lived very quietly indeed — not as a recluse, but devoid of any display either in his society or person. Need we be surprised that by many of the people in that country he was held in considerable distrust in consequence of an authentic knowledge that on more than one occasion he had been seen scanning a newspaper on Sabbath afternoons. Donnan and the countryside said little, but they held up their hands in pious horror. For the expression of certain conditions of mind no Avords are adequate. The crofters of Hamra were sparsely scattered over the hillsides : a. few of them were on the mountain brow.

These were all a poorer class than the crofters of Donnan ; for, being quite five miles distant from the sea, very few of them endeavoured to com bine fishing with agriculture. It is strange how the limpet exists upon the bare rock. There is not much more about the district worthy of record. After the one little tract of wooded beauty, the whole becomes perfectly rugged again. From the base of the Three Brothers of Donnan, away over their beetling crests, onwards for miles, there is nothing but rock and moor, cliff and precipice. The very road loses itself in a bridle-path and in a solitude, which for perfectly savage grandeur no imagination of a Dore ever excelled. It was not by any means a common thing for travellers to pass through this mountain range even in the long, bright days of summer.

In winter it was an impossibility to do so. Amid these recesses the hard-hunted deer found many an inviolable sanctuary. From Donnan to Hamra was a world to itself. The rest was out of it.

Chapter II. Concerning

A TELEGRAM. The black marble clock in the manse parlour of Donnan had just chimed out the hour of one. It was early spring, and a flood of bright, cold sunshine poured through the windows. Within, all was cheerful, from the fire that blazed in the grate to the comfortably laid little dinner table, with its two decanters of wine and grotesquely-moulded Norwegian bottle, which contained "the wine of the north countree." Without, everything looked radiant but cold. The trees were sparkling in their dazzling armour of frost, and the Brothers of Donnan were billowy white domes of snow. In the lobby an elderly gentleman was examining, with apparent interest, a barometer. He tapped on it with considerable force, muttering to himself the while, "Won't last. Too bright for the season — far too bright."

Then he passed into the parlour. He was a man of rather more than medium height, slightly in clining to be rotund in figure. His grey hair, whiskers, and moustache set off a face singularly handsome, while the keen grey eyes and massive forehead gave token of intellectual force. If any physiognomist desired severely to criticise, he might possibly discover in the firmly set mouth a shade too much of determina tion ; but in conversation the kindly smile and true sincerity of tone redeemed all this, and instinctively drew forth the regard of the listener. This was Alexander Macleod, minister of the parish of Donnan, a man of fifty years or thereby, who stood high in public estimation, and was accorded more respect than ever fell to the lot of Highland proprietor. Not, indeed, that hollow and necessary respect which is so often observable, begotten more as the result of custom than of sincerity, and elicited not spon taneously but by effort.

For even those stray visitors who came that way, with perhaps no very high preconceived opinion of the Highland pastor in general, were surprised beyond measure at the dignified presence and refined intelligence that guided things spiritual in the parish of Donnan. Mr. Macleod was essentially a gentleman in the best sense of that word. As the third of his race in direct succession who had been minister here, he knew the family history and most intimate matters relating to his people. In this self-same manse his grandfather — whose name was still remembered — his father, whose memory the older inhabitants still venerated, had lived long and useful lives, and, serving their day and generation with honour, now lay in the island-churchyard amid the requiems of the sea. It was about twenty-five years before the date of this narrative that Mr. Macleod had entered this charge, and during these years nothing had occurred to render him less worthy than his ancestors, or to shake in any way that confidence which his people ever reposed in him.

Though sometimes even to them a little arbi trary, they well recognised behind all the sincere friend. Espe cially in time of trouble, when assistance and sympathy were most needed, did he step in as the true man. And most of these poor cottages of Donnan and Hamra knew that he had at one time and another brought light into the midst of their darkness, and dis closed sunshine behind the cloud. Not long after Mr. Macleod had entered the parish, he brought thither a young wife, an English lady from one of the Midland counties. Some years after their marriage she died, leaving be hind her two children, a boy and girl, and in her husband's heart a deeper desolation and a greater sorrow than any mere observer could ever have guessed at. Of external emotion he betrayed but little. Yet he would still grow pale and silent at thought of the •days of terrible loneliness that succeeded her death —at the ques tions which the little children then put to him about her return, and their pitiful clamouring for one whom they should see no more.

Just over the dining-room mantelpiece hung that mother's portrait — not a very artistic piece of work, a picture painted in oil by a third-rate artist, but it was the dearest treasure in that house; and often for whole minutes together would the father stand gazing at it, and buried in silent thought. His eyes, people said, had a cold, grey look in them. Somehow it was not so when he looked up there. Though one could not readily know it, that wife of his youth was for ever with him ; but he had hardly spoken of her all these years. Silent through the shadowy past memory ever ran, Lifting each shroud that Time had cast O'er buried hopes." Mr. Macleod went into the little parlour now, and rang the bell. The housekeeper, a middle-aged woman, and sister of one of the Hamra crofters, appeared after a time.

" Where are the children, Ann ? " he asked ; " I think it is now dinner time." " Indeed, sir," said Ann, " I could not say where they are. Miss Nellie went out riding nearly two hours ago, and Mr. John ■went off with a fishing-rod soon after breakfast." " Off with a fishing-rod to-day, Ann ! Why, he will be frozen. Are the hill lochs open ? " " Oh yes ; the hill lochs are not frozen at all. He got fish there yesterday. But indeed I am sure, sir, he will be late. Will I put in your dinner?" " Oh no, never mind, Ann ; I'll just wait till they come." This was a very common occurrence. When John went out fishing, he took full advantage of the legitimate license of a fisher, and lost all reckoning of time. The small rivers and burns of this district teem with trout, and in the earlier and brighter days of his ministry, Mr. Macleod had often cast his line in stream and loch.

It was one of the few recreations, singularly enough, that the parishioners did not consider sacrilegious for a minister to indulge in. Shooting was quite another thing, but there could be no harm in fishing. Thus with the most perfect nicety some people are capable of drawing the most subtle distinctions. The minister of Donnan waited for dinner, and the little marble clock repeated its monotonous tale. John Macleod, eager over the filling of a basket, loitered by the banks of one of the many lochs that lay embosomed in the uplands. One might have heard his voice long before his person was visible, rolling out in an inter rupted sort of fashion some snatch of song ; it might have been a student-chorus or a Highland coronach. We say it might have been either of these, for, whatever the composition, the singer in this case regulated the measure by no rule other than the manipu lations which his fishing-rod demanded.

Now the singing was rapid, now it was slow, and often supplanted altogether by the whirr of the fishing-reel. John Macleod was stalwart and broad-chested, with a face not perhaps handsome, but singularly kind and honest ; a cheery ring in his voice, and little more than twenty years of his life gone by. Wherever he went he made hosts of friends for himself. People said he was always ready to do a good turn to anybody, and he had certainly never been known to do anything mean. Many in that parish expressed regret that he had not chosen the same pro fession as his father. " He might have been here when the old man was away," they said, "and kept up the line." In the High lands of Scotland the "keeping up of a line" in this fashion is reckoned almost a filial duty. Thus it happened that though John Macleod was universally liked, a few of the extreme critics regarded his life so far as a sort of failure.

He had not " gone in for " the Church, but had chosen the profession of medicine. In this fashion he had " broken the line " — destroyed that continuity of race to which the parish was long accustomed ; and we need not wonder if now and again the remark was made, " Poor foolish lad to forsake the Church ; it must have been a great blow to his poor father." As a fact, however, this was not the case. His father had never sought to influence him in any way, and when he chose medicine as his profession, was rather glad than otherwise. His medical course he had already completed, and was now waiting on for a foreign appointment, which, though secured, he could not enter on for several months, as he had not yet attained to the necessary age of twenty-one. Of this delay he was more than glad, as it gave him an opportunity of staying in the old home with his father and sister — that home which, throughout all his college days, his heart had ever gone back to.

These three were bound up in one another. The very circumstances of upbringing had gone far towards this, and each silently dreaded the very naming of the day of separation. They strove to forget the coming shadow ; they never even spoke of it, yet for all this its presence often interposed. And whether he who was to depart, carrying with him so many recollections, or they who were to be left at home, with no change of accompanying circumstances to engross their thoughts, were most to be compassionated, it were indeed difficult to determine. So in the heart of each there would keep creeping up at intervals a feeling of solitariness, and a strange fore boding of the coming days — a condition of things which most people feel at certain periods of their lives. Yet one, out of love for the other, put all this out of sight, and by noexternal sign ever gave token of those silent thoughts.

For this is one of the fondest deceits of love, and of all deceits the only one that is lovable. Suddenly the young man paused, pulled out his watch, and with an exclamation of surprise proceeded to take his rod to pieces. He sat down on a boulder of stone, strapping up his basket and getting things comfortably settled for his walk home wards. His face looked a trifle sad as he proceeded with his work, and his thoughts shaped themselves into disjointed exclama tions. "Not much more of this," he said — "not much more." He was gazing at the water and mechanically shouldering his basket. "Aye, poor old soul," he went on ; "I wish I could stay; it will be so dull ; and Nell, dear little Nell." The tears came into his eyes. He was thinking of his father and sister, and we need not judge him weak or trifling or childish on that account, but rather the reverse of all this ; for there is a strength that is perfected in weakness — a weakness that is more honourable than strength.

" Dear little Nell " — he sprang from off the rock, and with long, hasty strides struck away through the frost-gemmed heather in the direction of Hamra and the manse. Down the face of the hill there came hurrying, as if on business intent, an elderly man, one of the Hamra crofters. With this class excessive energy in locomotion was a quality almost unknown; and so when John Macleod saw the haste of the man, he instinc tively recognised that something unusual must have happened, nor was he surprised to hear himself hailed from afar. " Mr. John," roared the man — " Mr. John ! Have you heard the sad news ? I got it myself just now from the Hamra postman. It was a telegram." "What has happened, M'Varish?" asked John. "Sir William Brown is dead. He died yesterday of heart disease in London. That's what was in the telegram."

" Dear me ! I am very sorry to hear that," said John. " My father will be so sorry too : we all liked him so much. I am sure the people of Hamra will miss him, M'Varish." The old crofter had now come up with John, and stood shaking his head solemnly, and sighing a great deal more than appeared to be absolutely necessary. He looked the embodiment of pre tended feeling rather than of real sentiment, and about his face there lurked that saintly air which men can only borrow from the devil. " Oh, yes, yes ! it is a sad thing for the likes of him to die, Mr.. John. Oh, yes ! it is sad, sad." " Death is always sad, M'Varish. It is so most of all to those who are left behind." John did not seek to notice the current of this man's argument, which uniformly aimed at that self-righteous ness so cheaply bought by the depreciating of others.

But M'Varish was not to be turned aside. "Ah ! yes ; but Mr. John, when a man is taken unprepared, is it not sad for himself too ? " John spoke up angrily. " Look here, M'Varish," he said, "how do you make out that Sir William died in that condition ? For my own part I think you are quite wrong." " Mr. John," said M'Varish, " I know well what I am speaking of. Have I not myself seen him reading a newspaper on Sabbath days, and on many a Sabbath afternoon walking up and down the Donnan road like a heathen, when he might be better employed. Yes, I know well what I am speaking of, and do not need to be told." "Some mirrors, M'Varish," went on John, "are so deformed, so much off the straight line themselves, you know, that all objects, however perfect, are misrepresented by them. The fault lies with the mirror."

"I know nothing of mirrors or such vanities," said M'Varish; and his appearance in this respect certainly did not give him the lie. " I know nothing of mirrors, but I know a good deal about Sir William." "And even though you do," said John, as he impatiently moved away, "it is good to be charitable, M'Varish. There is only one person in this matter whom you should neglect : that is yourself. Perhaps in this way you may find that Sir William and many more are after the fashion of the most common soil, where sometimes there is a vein of gold that is not seen." M'Varish was many paces off by this time, but he paused to shout back a response. What he said was, " I know well, Mr. John what I am speaking of, and do not need to be told." " What a bull-dog for obstinacy," thought John to himself, as he hurried onwards over the moor.

As for M'Varish his thoughts ran this way, " What a good man I am : I never read newspapers on Sabbath : I never walk out on that holy day." Then he recollected that he must hasten his steps to arrive at an illicit still amid the mountains before the hour of three o'clock to give timely notice of the near approach of some gaugers. So it appears that with some men there are sins legitimate, as also other sins that are illegitimate ; and happy is he who with infinite wisdom can discriminate between the two classes. M'Varish was one of a strange, though not uncommon type, — not a fanatic alone, nor yet a hypocrite, nor thorough-paced rascal, but a "strange mingling of them all." He was one of those individuals who regard religion as the most serviceable of all human tools, and who occasionally using it in a masterly human fashion are at length impressed by a certain superstitious regard for it — reckon it a sort of talisman, and themselves masters of its art, and this naturally begets in them a far more lively interest in what they call "the religious life of others" than in their own.

Being destitute of education, as in the case of M'Varish, such men are only qualified to act as critics of the commoner walks of life ; but being educated, they take up a higher standpoint in the scale of criticism, and constituting themselves censors of thought as well as of action become admir ably adapted for heresy-hunting, worship-purifying, and the like. Reaching the brow of the hill John descended by way of the crofters' huts to the manse. How miserable these houses looked! How damp and slimy and tumble-down ! The doors in many cases without hinge or lock ; the thatch torn ; and over all an absolute comfortlessness and squalor that would not have found a too formidable rival in any of the worst houses of Spitalfields. And the almost unprotected windows, while admitting very little light, must have greatly exceeded their duty in the introduction of wind and snow.

It would be well that those who have a title to possession, whencesoever derived, should also strive with their whole heart to have an equal title to philanthropy — to that philanthropy which consists, not in the giving of ideal sums for ideal and far away purposes, but in that truest form of charity which ever begins at home. Humanity — a consideration for our fellowmen — is the one thing here that is divine, and which lies in the possession of man. When it is crushed out by selfishness — that leprosy of all ages— the bloom and the fragrance pass from the flower. Could Lord Tredmorton have realised the poverty and excessive misery that contributed with infinite difficulty and pain those few grimy bank notes to his already surfeited capital — those few grimy bank notes that represented the very life blood of men — that yet withal would not have proved sufficient for the meanest decoration of my lord's dinner table — could he have known these things he might possibly have blushed at that dinner table for very shame.