Souls of passage ..

Contents

CHAPTER. PAGE.

I. PROVOST ROBERT MACKENZIE i

II. FLORA DUNBRACK 20

Chapter I. Provost Robert Mackenzie

EVERY great city has a pronounced individual ity, a character which is its own, and which ex presses its peculiar life with unmistakable power and eloquence. Manchester is a big market-place ; its whole atmosphere is that of money making. Oxford and St. Andrews exhale a stately, schol arly, ecclesiastical element. Edinburgh is an epic in stone ; as soon as we enter its precincts, its ro mance goes to our hearts like wine ; and every one who has been in Glasgow feels that this city is the palpable incarnation in gray granite of the Low land Scotch character — of its theology, its pa triotism, and its enterprise.

To this trinity of the religious, commercial, and national spirit Glasgow owes its special character ; and in its provost, Robert Mackenzie, these three qualities were well mingled. Certainly on the first day of the week the religious element dominated him; and he then put his provostship behind his eldership ; but for six days, commerce and patriot ism had their full dues, and there were also many hours in which the three qualities were so subtly blended that they became one. And in such hours Robert Mackenzie was at his very best.

Personally, he had a strongly marked coun tenance, a commanding stature, a proud port and an authoritative manner. The inner man in his case had fashioned its bodily semblance with ex traordinary power and precision ; and as he stood among his bailies glorifying their city and its evident great destiny, they were sure they had done well in selecting him for their leader.

"We have made the river that made the city!" he cried, " and this great Glasgow which we have builded is the monument to our adventurous faith in God and man." And this recognition of the Almighty's right to share in their honor and high emprise was at once unanimously applauded; for though as Glasgow bailies they were proud men, they did not forget that Glasgow was a city of mortals — though doubtless mortals of a very superior order.

Patriotism is not so easily expressed as piety; it requires some hours of health-drinking and song-singing to illustrate properly this national quality; for though the Thistle has worshippers all over the world, nowhere do Scotsmen hail it with such songs of praise, or pour out in its honor such libations of toddy as in this wonderful city of the Clyde. So that it was growing toward ten o'clock when Provost Mackenzie and his friend Bailie Brodie stepped out of their handsome din ing-room into the wet, dirty streets. They were shrouded in yellow vapor, yet still in touch with a sloppy crowd that walked steadily onward with out heeding their surroundings.

"There are no loungers in Glasgow city," said the provost with an air of satisfaction ; "we have none of our own, and we have nothing to attract them from other places."

"They would get short quarter while you rule St. Mungo's city," answered Brodie ; and then his voice became suddenly soft and glad, and he added, "Oh, man Robert, who would have thought of this day, when we two laddies slept to gether in Maggie Stark's garret ?"

"I thought of it, Jamie. It was aye in my head ; but for all that I looked for you to be provost at this time ; for you are a born favorite, Jamie, and you might have had the city and the ruling of it for a word, if folk had thought you wanted it."

"I was better known and better judged," Brodie answered. "How would I guide a sedurant of proud, stiff-necked bailies? No, no! I leave ex altations and counsellings and rulings to other men. The high hills to the harts, Robert. I love the valleys."

The provost made no answer. Those few words, "the high hills to the harts," had suddenly sent him backward to his boyhood. The Glasgow nightmare of iron and coal and fog, of gray houses like tombs, and human beings like phantoms, all vanished away. He saw in their place the old village of Morandaroch in its solitary beauty of sea and land ; the high, heathery hills around, and the harts moving over them in a long, swinging trot ; and the big stag of a herd lying in the midst of his comrades, his yellow body glistening in the sun. He saw the little lochs set like jewels in the moorlands, and the sounds through which

"by night and day The great sea water found its way."

He saw the guillemots sailing home in whitebreasted pairs; and the little Highland cattle hurrying along the beach, to luxuriate upon the seaweed, and the vision was speechless.

Brodie, however, did not trouble his friend for an answer. He understood that some unusual thought "possessed" him ; and he was not a woman to take offence at silence, or to ask troublesome questions concerning it. They spoke no more, and when they reached the handsome house in which Mackenzie dwelt, they parted at the gate with a hand grip which explained nothing, but which satisfied both. Mackenzie had his latch-key and he entered his home without observation. All was dark and silent, but a little band of light com ing from under his chamber door brought a smile to his lips. "Marian is waiting for me at any rate," and with the thought he opened the door, and Marian stood up to meet him. She had a pleasant face, with a fine open-air color in her cheeks ; and in her manner and speech the unmis takable local stamp. As a matter of duty she had been reading her Bible, but when her husband entered she closed the book and said with a laugh :

"My certie ! provost, but you keep decent hours. Alan was saying it would be midnight ere you got through singing 'Scots Wha Hae' and the like of it."

"Marian, I can keep elder's hours,* if I am pro vost, and I would be glad if Alan did the same."

"He was home so early to-night that I be to ask him for pure wonderment, 'Is that you, Alan ?' and he said, 'As far as I know it's myself, mother.' He is a mortal queer lad whiles. Then he got into a terrivee with his Sister Jessie about the young minister of St. John's, and the way they argued about him was just incredible."

"And he got the better of her doubtless ?"

"Him! He could as easily have got the better of the Bass Rock. Jessie is not a babe in the Word. She knows all it means, and all that it

*Half past ten.

does not mean. I was fairly moidered between them and just at their merciment."

"What has our Jessie to do with the young minister at St. John's ? Is not the minister in her own kirk good enough for her ?"

"It seems not. This St. John's minister is a young man fairly burning to show his light to the world. He talks to Jessie about Dr. Chalmers and ragged schools, and all sorts of societies for help ing the poor to live without working, and Jessie thinks he is a very apostle. I can see well she is set on marrying him, and advising him, and so forth. As she sits sewing, the very thoughts flit o'er her face and settle round her mouth. Whiles she smiles the least bit of a smile, and then I know well she has made up her mind what the young man ought to do and will have to do. And my thought is that he might as well buy the wedding ring. He is coming here two or three nights every week, and I am not liking him any the bet ter for it."

"Well, Marian," answered the provost, "if Jessie has made up her mind to marry the min ister she will take her will, and we may as well learn to thole the man. You know it is not pos sible to affront a minister. And I can tell you that other folk are as hard set as we are ; there is a divinity lad after little Annie Brodie, and as far as I can see the black coats have their fingers in every one's pie. But, Marian, you may still your heart with this thought — Jessie will do no harm to her self."

"Alan is not liking him at all." "What has he said against Alan?" "Nothing very bad. He does not think Alan is orthodox. When Jessie said her brother was a good young man and would be glad to help in the new kirk work, the minister answered with a queer drawing in of his lips, 'No doubt, no doubt ; but he deviates.' And Alan was fairly mad at the word, and said he was proud of his 'deviations' — mocking the minister and not right to do so, of course — and that it was gey likely he would de viate a little more, and the like of that. And then Jessie laying down the law, and the Gospel, too — but what will you, Robert ; for, as the rhyme says :

" 'There's nane exempt from worldly cares, And few from some domestic jars ; And whiles we're in, and whiles we're out, Kissing and quarrelling turn about.' "

"That is just the way, Marian."

"And the observe you made about disapproving of a minister is quite true. Forbye, Jessie is think ing heaven and earth of him, and we might disap prove till we were both of us black in the face, and she would only be astonished at our blindness, and maybe put up a bit prayer in our behalf. And what could we do or say then? A cross word is easily given back, but a word or two of prayer is not always handy."

"You may let Jessie guide herself. She will not go a step out of the way of the godly and the prudent. It is our dear lad Alan I am troubled at my heart for. He is so good and so bad. Whiles he has more divinity than any D.D. in the Glasgow pulpits, and then again you would think the very spirit of doubt and rank impiety had been given dominion over him for a season. He is needing something we cannot give him."

"He is needing no earthly good thing. Why are you troubling yourself about Alan? We'll say he is not all he should be. What of that ? I would like you to mention to me a man who is! Every lad that has the world and flesh to fight needs enough of the devil in him to keep the devil out of him."

"Marian, a shadow of the bygone came over me to-night, and I saw as if I was in a dwam* the Highland hills and the great North Sea ; and I am believing that a year up yonder way would be good for the lad. He has too much of the world and of its men and women. It might be a kind of salvation to let him match himself with the men of the mountains and the fishers on the sea ; with the harts on the hills and the dumb beasts that *Trance or second sight.

have a sense of their own, and a very fine sense in its light and way. It is forty years since my dog Brian died at Morandaroch, and this night the very creature himself seemed to be padding at my side. You will be forced to say that love which can keep the grip of you for forty years is wcrth the having; for I would give a thousand pounds this night to have the honest beast at my elbow."

"Well, provost, Alan can have a dog, or two dogs, right here in Glasgow itself — if you think there is salvation in a dog's love. Keep me, Robert! What are you havering about? If you had named the love of some good woman I could well believe you — but dogs and the like of them creatures ! Perfect nonsense ! And I am not for Alan going to the Highlands. Goodness only knows what or who he will foregather with on the mountains and on the water. There's women folk, too, wherever you send him, and I'm think ing, if you will be honest with yourself and with me, that it is Flora Dunbrack you are feared for ; and that you are for sending Alan to the High lands out of her way — the smatchet! — the saucy little cutty that she is !"

"Whist! whist! wife! There is not a mite of harm in the bonnie creature. She is just a little wild heart, that has had too much of her own way, and so is ill to guide in the way of other io Souls of Passage

people. Forbye, she does not care a pinhead for Alan Mackenzie. Not her ! She is aye measuring him by some soldier or woodsman and finding him totally and altogether wanting."

"It sets her to find Alan Mackenzie wanting! Her ! with her bit fortune of three hundred a year ! What will she be expecting — a Highland lord or a Lowland earl ? I think, provost, we had better be sleeping than talking nonsense at this hour of the night — I might say of the morning."

"I told you, Marian, that I had a kind of dwam or backsight as I was coming home ; and it has put sleep far from me, and set some things in such clearness before my soul that all the glory and honor of this day is just as a whiff of smoke."

"It was a great day for you, Robert, and a happy, proud day for me."

"I know that, wife ; but when we are on the top most peaks of joy or prosperity we are often made to feel that their foundation is deep down in some abyss of sorrow or care ; and to-night I looked for a moment into one which made my soul tremble, for in it I saw as it were the shadow of our dear Alan."

"Robert ! Robert ! What are you saying? Now you have sent the sleep far from me, and you be to tell me all you fear and mean. The lad has no outstanding vices that I know of."

"Nor yet any outstanding virtues. I wouldn't mind the vices if he had the virtues to keep them in check. He is so many-sided and so manyminded. Of Jessie we know everything. All that Jessie might do she does. There is nothing want ing and nothing over. But with Alan there is al ways something over. You think he has said his say, and that he means what he says, and then at the last he will out with a few words that leaves all uncertain and unfinished — and you don't know where you have him."

"I am sure there are few young men more re ligious. He is a very Pharisee about the ordi nances and the Sabbath day."

"Yes," answered the father wearily. "Alan is of the religious temperament. But he has not a single conviction that could stand a strain. Jessie would go to the stake for her creed without a word. Alan would argue the question until he was uncertain about every creed ; and he can per suade most people of most things, and himself of almost anything. I heard him arguing with Mat thew Laird about Calvinism the other night at the Thistle. He started out with an extravagant praise of the dogma, of the fine men it had bred, and the great deeds it had done ; and when the talk was over Alan's last word was, 'Well, Matthew, if Calvinism is what you say it is I think my opinion ought to have been asked ere I was sent into the world on any such like terms,' You see,

Marian, he had sailed quite round the question, and he went off whistling 'The Laird o' Cockpen.' What will you say to religion of that kind ?"

"I say nothing at all. God is love, and I build my faith on that creed. Where do mothers get their love but from Him ? and I think, Robert, it would be more wise-like and kind-like in you sometimes to wink a? well as to see."

"I see one thing clearly : Alan must have other surroundings, and as soon as I came to this con viction the way was opened wide for him. For a week ago I had a letter from Peter McDuff, of Morandaroch, and he tells me that the old castle of the Dunbracks is for sale, and at a bargain past believing. Colonel MacLeod, of the Indian Ser vice, bought it six years ago, and now he is sick of the place, and wants to go back to the heat and sun of Calcutta. Very well ; Dunbrack is only two miles from Morandaroch, and he has made great improvements, and nothing asked for them. I am in a great mind to buy it. McDuff says it is a fine estate going for a song."

"What would you do with an estate in the Highlands? You a Glasgow merchant! Thae proud Highlanders would give you scorn for your friendship."

"I am as good as any of them. If a poor gentle man has to make money in trading, that is not his fault. They will ask whose son I am, and when they hear I am Roderick Mackenzie's son, they will lift their bonnets to me at once. But I was not thinking of going to Dunbrack. It is to be for you and for the children as a summer home, and I may say that few Glasgow ladies will be able to even you in this respect."

"But it would be a poor estate and a poor house wanting yourself. I would rather bide where I could see you. It is maybe just a habit with me to like your face and your company, but that is my failing, and there is no estate in Highlands or Lowlands that could make up for that pleasure if I had to want it."

"Your words are sweet, Marian, and I am far from seeking to be rid of your face and company. I thought of our poor cousin, Thrift Athole; she will look after the young things, and you need not be too long away at any time. Forbye, I might make occasion to run up there myself now and then."

"My certie! Elder Orr's wife would have to sing her song about Alderswood a key or two lower. If she can write herself ' Mistress Orr, Alderswood House' — I would then be — what would I be, Robert?"

"Mistress Mackenzie, Dunbrack Castle, Morandaroch, Rosshire."

"I would just put the whole of that on my card, provost."

"And Alan would, in a way, own the hills, and the deer, and the birds, and the little bay with the fishing boats coming and going, and the blue lochs where the trout lie hid ; and he would be up on the hills, and away on the sea water, and so the smur of the market-place and the spirit of the Glasgow planestones would be blown off his young soul, and I have faith to believe that he would be — in a way — made o'er again."

"He suits me well as he is. I don't want him changed. Why would I? God made him, and He knows every slip and fall the lad will have be fore he walks in the right way without a stumble. I trust him with God."

"If it was only in matters between him and God, that would be sufficient ; but the lad is as slippery and uncertain about business as he is about re ligion. And that will not do. Men won't put up with it. His ideas about very important obliga tions are, to say the least, often loose-ended. I want to see if a different life will make a different man of him, and whether you believe me or not, I will say this — a wife like Flora is just what he needs. She is strong where he is weak. She is wise where he is foolish. She is clever where he has not an ounce of common sense."

"And she has a temper that blazes like a pine knot. Alan with his good nature would be at her merciment. What do you say to that?"

"I say that Alan has his own temper, and a very bad one it is at times. I have seen him neither to hold nor to bind. Patient enough with women, of course, but if there is any kind of temper to be afraid of it is the anger of a patient man. Alan will bear and bear, and then in a moment — just for nothing at all — say or do what no one will bear ; and then the mischief and all to pay. Flora has a hot temper, but she has it bitted and bridled, and ever she does give it headway she will be understanding herself the why and the where fore."

"I would like to know, once for all, what for you are so set up with that lassie ? There must be something behind what you have told me, and how do I know but that it is the lassie's mother. I can tell you it is not a thing any woman likes to have a full-grown girl dropped into her home; a girl, too, that has not a thing in common with any one of us. Her thoughts and ways are that out landish that the ladies who come calling look at her in wonderment; and if the men do go daft about her beauty, I think that is little to her credit."

"I hope, Marian, you will not count it to her blame ; for what will you say then about your own beauty, which bothered the men not a little ere you chose me from among the lave of your lovers. And well you know there is no woman behind

Flora; no woman but yourself ever troubled the heart of Robert Mackenzie."

"Then tell me why Colonel Dunbrack sent her to you, as if he had a kind of right to send her — not one 'If you please/ or 'Will you, for the sake of God, take care of my child?' but just, 'Dear Robert, I send you my little girl.' What for did he expect you to take charge of his little girl ?"

"I will tell you, Marian. Angus Dunbrack — Flora's father — was for many a year heart of my heart, and soul of my soul. We were constantly together ; we hunted and fished together, we read together, we ate and slept together, I think we mostly dreamed the same dreams. Talk of the love of brothers, it was not to be named with our love ; and when at last Angus went to the army, I felt as if one half of me had died and gone away forever. Twice over he saved my life ; once when I was drowning, and once when I was lost cross ing Ben Trodhu. My own kin had given up the search, but Flora's father would not give it up, and at last he found me and my dog Brian starv ing together. The dog had laid himself down to die with me, his head close to my face, and I re member this moment how he tried to comfort me as long as he had the strength. Well, Angus went to Canada with his regiment, and poor Brian died soon after; but I thank God I was able to sit by him and comfort and help him till I saw his big, tender eyes grow dark in death. Poor Brian! Now you will be understanding why I would give a thousand pounds to have had him at my elbow this night. For I think he would have known of the glory and honor that had come to me, and been glad of it," and the provost's voice trembled, and he put his hand for a moment before his eyes, for they were full of tears — those ancient tears, whose source is in the youth of memory, and which only something subtle and sudden can surprise.

"You should have spoke of these things before, Robert. I am sorry you were not more trusty with me."

"I am sorry myself, Marian. I will tell you why I did not. When I was twenty-one years old my Uncle Roderick — God rest his soul — gave me the five hundred pounds which was all my father could leave me, and I fancied — maybe it was only fancy — that he thought he had done his full duty and would be glad to be rid of me. So, one day after a few words I did not like, I turned my back on Morandaroch, and I vowed to myself never to let a thought of it come between me and my fu ture. I tried to put it out of my mind, and I never even named my life there to Jamie Brodie, though we have been very close friends from the first day of my Glasgow life. When I asked your hand I told your father that I was of a good High land family, and he said, 'Let that be ; you have a good name and a good business, and that is more to the point. I am not asking after your forbears, I am asking after yourself.' And as the years went on I forgot Angus, but only in the same way that we forget the dead whom yet we love. I did not speak of him, I did not write to him, but he kept his place in my heart and memory, and no other man has ever, or will ever, take what is his. So when I got those few pitiful lines written on his death-bed, and I knew that he had not forgot me, my heart went out to the child he loved, and for his sake I loved her, and syne for her own sake, for she is well able to win her own love, if only folks will be a little kind and just to her."

"I had been kinder to her if you had been freer with me, Robert. I feel a deal different to the lassie now. For it is not to be denied we owe a big debt of love to her ; and though we may pay a debt of siller with siller, a debt of love must be paid in kind or go unblessed."

"And you will be remembering, Marian, what the Scriptures say about entertaining strangers."

"I am minding it, provost ; but I am not expect ing anything so extraordinar as that Flora Dunbrack will turn out to be an angel."

The provost rose with a sigh and went to the window and looked up to the blue lift full of stars. The watch was just calling "Half -past twelve, and a fine, starlight morning," and he listened until the man's voice was lost in the empty street. Then he said:

"I have had a long day, wife, and the best part of it has been the end of it. There is nothing now between us but love, for I have shared the last thought and fear and hope with you. And I am thankful this night to the Giver of all good gifts that in the height of my prosperity He thought of me, and sent me a back-glimpse of life to sober me, and that I was helped to share with you the care anent our boy, that has been troubling my heart for a long time. My dear Marian! 'I wouldna gie my ain wife for any wife I see.' Now we be to ask His blessing, and then rest in its merciful shadow."

But long after, when all his physical senses were fast shut in deep sleep, the wife, wakeful over many new thoughts, heard the unconscious man murmuring in the far-off, hollow voice of the dreamer :

" On high Benmore green mosses grow, And heath bells bud in deep Glencoe."

Chapter II. Flora Dunbrack

IT was really spring in spite of the showers and the chill wind, for the sunshine was coming into Flora's room as though the sun had risen for her alone. She was sitting in it, singing and sewing, but mostly singing — a lovely little woman, fresh and sweet as a spray of apple blossom on the day of its birth. Lazily her hands drew the thread through the cloth, keeping a kind of time and motion to the haunting melody of an old Border song:

" Some say that I love young Polmood,

And some say he loves not me; But I think I'm a match for the best of his blood, Though I had not a ewe on the Logan Lee."

She laughed gaily to herself at this assertion, and went over the last two lines without a stitch to keep them company. Then she continued :

" For wooers I have many braw men,

Booted and spurr'd, as any may see;