Chapter Eleven.
For Auld Lang Syne.
“We twa have paddled in the burn
Frae mornin’ sun till dine.
But seas between us broad hae rolled
Since the days o’ auld lang syne.”
Burns.
Scene: Landscape, seascape, and cloudscape.
A more lovely view than that which met the eye of a stranger, who had seated himself on Cotago Cliff this evening, it was never surely the lot of mortal man to behold. It was on the northern shores of South America, and many miles to the eastward of Venezuela Gulf.
Far down beneath him lay the white villas and flat-roofed houses of a town embosomed in foliage, which looked unnaturally green against their snowy walls. To the right, and more immediately below the spot where the stranger sat under the shade of trees, that towered far up into the sky, was a long, low, solitary-looking beach, with the waves breaking on it with a soft musical sighing sound; it was as if the great ocean were sinking to slumber, and this was the sound of his breathing.
The sun was low down in the west, in a purple haze, which his beams could hardly pierce, but all above was a glory which is indescribable, the larger clouds silver-edged, the smaller clouds encircled with radiant golden light, with higher up flakes and streaks of crimson. And all this beauty of colouring was reflected from the sea itself, and gave a tinge even to the wavelets that rippled on the silver sands.
It was very quiet and still up here where the stranger sat. The birds had already sought shelter for the night; well they knew that the sunset would be followed by speedy darkness. Sometimes there would be a rustle among the foliage, which the stranger heeded not. He knew it was but some gigantic and harmless lizard, looking for its prey.
“I must be going back to my hotel,” he said to himself at last. He talked half aloud; there was no human ear to listen.
“I must be going home, but what a pity to leave so charming a place! I do not know which to admire the most, the grand towering tree-clad hills, the sea, or the forest around me.
“Hullo!” he added, “yonder round the point comes a little skiff. How quickly and well he rows! He must be a Britisher. No arms of lazy South American ever impelled a boat as he does his. Going to the hotel, I suppose. No, he seems coming straight to the beach beneath me. Hark! a song.”
The rower had drawn in his oars, leaving the little boat to continue its course with the “way” already on her, while he gazed about him. Then, as if impelled to sing by the beauty around him, he trilled forth a verse of a grand old sea song.
“The morn was fair, the sky was clear,
No breath came o’er the sea,
When Mary left her Highland cot
And wandered forth with me.
Though flowers bedecked the mountain side,
And fragrance filled the vale,
By far the sweetest flower there
Was the Rose of Allendale.”
Then there was silence once again. The rower rowed more slowly now, but soon he beached his boat, and drew it up, and hid it by drawing it in among the rocks.
The stranger soon afterwards rose to go.
He had not proceeded many yards along the hillside, when, on rounding a gigantic cactus bush, and close beside it, he stood face to face with the oarsman.
The former lifted his hat to bow, but instead of replacing it on his head he dashed it on the ground, and springing forward, seized the other by the hand.
“Archie! Archie McCrane!” he cried; “is it possible you do not know me, that you have forgotten Kenneth McAlpine?”
Poor Archie! for a moment or two he could not speak.
“Man!” he said at last, in deep, musical Doric; “is it possible it is you, Kennie?”
The tears were blinding him, both hearts were full, and they said no more for many seconds, merely standing there under the cactus tree holding each other’s hands.
“God has heard my prayer,” said Kenneth at last.
“And mine.
“But how you have altered, Kenneth! How you must have suffered to make you look so old!”
“You forget I am old, twenty-one next birthday; and you are only a year less. But what wind blew you here? I thought, Archie, you had settled down as an engineer on shore.”
“Your letters roused a roving spirit in me, Kenneth. I determined to see the world. I took the first appointment I could get. On a Frenchman. I haven’t had much luck. We have been wrecked at Domingo, and I came here last night in a boat. But come, tell us your own adventures. I have all your letters by heart, but I must hear more; I must hear everything from your own mouth, my dear brown old man.”
Kenneth was brown; there was no mistake about that, very brown, and very tall and manly-looking, and the moustache he wore set off his beauty very much. No, he had not cultivated his moustache. It had cultivated itself.
“Come down to the hotel,” said Archie. “I am not poor. We saved everything. It was a most unromantic shipwreck.”
“No,” replied Kenneth, “not to the hotel to-night. Come up the mountain with me to my cottage.”
“Up the mountain?”
“Yes, my lad,” said Kenneth, smiling. “Up the mountain. Haven’t forgotten how to climb a hill, have you, I say, Archie, boy? for, as brown as I look, I am an invalid.”
“What!” cried Archie, in some alarm. “Nothing serious, I sincerely hope.”
“Nothing, old man, nothing. But when they left me here six weeks ago, I thought that no power could have saved me. I had yellow-Jack. That’s all. I could not have lived in the hotel. Good as it is, it is too low. But come; old Señor Gasco waits supper for me.”
Up and up they struggled, arm in arm. Kenneth knew every foot of the pathway through the forest; it was well he did, for night had quite fallen over sea and land, and the stars were glinting above them ere they reached a kind of tableland, and presently stood in front of the rose-covered verandah of a beautiful cottage.
The French windows were open, and they entered sans cérémonie. It was a lofty, large room, furnished with almost Oriental splendour, with brackets, ottomans, and suspended lamps, that shed a soft light over everything around.
And here were books, and even musical instruments galore, among the latter a flute. It was not the flute Kenneth used to play in Glen Alva, and up among the mountains, while herding his sheep; it was a far better one, but the sight of it brought back old times to Archie’s memory.
Kenneth had left him for a few minutes.
Archie sank down upon an ottoman with the flute in his hand, and when Kenneth returned he found his friend in dreamland apparently.
But with a sigh Archie arose and followed Kenneth to an inner room.
“Señor Gasco,” said the latter, “this is Archie McCrane, the friend of my boyhood, of whom you have so often heard me speak.
“Archie, this gentleman has saved my life. He is a kind of a hermit. Aren’t you, mon ami?”
“No, no, no,” cried Señor Gasco, laughing. “Only I love pure, fresh, cool air and quiet; I cannot get these in the town beneath, so I live here among my books.”
He was a tall, gentlemanly-looking Spaniard, of some forty years or over, and spoke beautiful English, though with a slightly foreign intonation.
A supper was spread here that a king might have sat down and enjoyed.
Two tall black servants, dressed in snow-white linen, waited at the table. They were exceedingly polite, but they had rather larger mouths and considerably thicker lips than suited Archie’s notions of beauty.
Out into the verandah again after supper, seated in rocking-chairs; the cool mountain air, so delicious and refreshing, was laden with the perfume wafted from a thousand flowers. There were the stars up in heaven’s blue, and myriad stars, the fire-flies, that danced everywhere among the trees and bushes. Archie said they put him in mind of dead candles.
“And now for your story, Kenneth.”
“It is a long one, but I must make it very brief. You know most of it, dear Archie, so why should I repeat it?”
“Because,” said Archie, “I do so love to hear you speak. Your voice is not changed if your face is, and when I sit here in this semi-darkness, and listen to you, man, I think we are both bits of boys again, wandering through the bonnie blooming heather that clothes the hills above Glen Alva.”
“Now you have done it,” cried Kenneth, laughing.
“Done what?” said Archie.
“Why, you have to tell the first story. If you hadn’t mentioned home, if you hadn’t spoken about the hills and the heather, I would have told my tale first.”
“But—” said Archie.
“Not a single excuse, my boy. I am home-sick now. Answer a few questions, and I’ll let you off.”
“Well, go on,” said Archie; “ask away.”
“My dear, dear mother! Have you seen her grave lately?”
“It was the last spot I visited when I went to the clachan,” replied Archie sadly.
“Heigho!” sighed Kenneth. “And I was all ready to go home. We were lying at the Cape, if you remember, when your letter arrived. Yes, and I left my ship, I threw up a good appointment on receipt of the sad intelligence; and Archie, dear lad, I shall go back to Scotland when I make my fortune—not before, and that may be never.”
“Do not speak like that.”
“But I must and will. How changed everything must be from the time I kept the sheep among the hills. And how do the clachan, the glen, and the hills look now?”
“The clachan is but little changed. Mr Steve did not tear down the village and church, as he first threatened. No, the clachan is the same, but poor Mr Grant has gone.”
“Dead! You did not tell me this in your letter.”
“No, no, not dead. He has got a better living in the city.”
“Yes?”
“Yes, and I went to see them. The Misses Grant keep every letter ever you wrote them, and they do long, I can tell you, for the return of the wanderer.”
“Bless their dear hearts!”
“I went over to the wee village by the sea and saw Duncan Reed.”
“Is he changed?”
“Not in the very least. Looks hardier than ever.”
“And your father and mother you have already said are well?”
“Yes, but father doesn’t like town life. How he would love the old days to come back again; how he would love to rove once again over the hills gun on shoulder and dog at his heel!”
“He is not very old; he may yet have his wish.”
“I fear not.”
“Well?”
“Well, the glens and hills all around are planted with trees. This was done as soon as Mr Steve took possession of the estate, and before poor old Chief McGregor died.”
“He is dead, then?”
“Yes. I would have told you, but I wanted to make my letters to you as bright as possible.”
“So the dear old man is dead. Heigho! And the estate planted. You did not even tell me that.”
“No, and for the same reason. But the trees are getting quite tall already. Most of the higher parts of the glens are covered with Scotch firs and spruces and larches, the lower lands with elm and plane and scrubby oaks. At the risk of being taken as a trespasser, I went all over the estate. I penetrated up to the fairy knoll and saw poor Kooran’s grave. There are young trees all round there now.”
“Archie,” said Kenneth, leaning forward and peering into his companion’s face, “I hope they didn’t interfere with poor Kooran’s grave.”
“No, nor with anything around it.”
“Go on, lad; I’m so pleased.”
“Well, I’ve little more to say. I was not taken prisoner, though I startled the wild deer in all directions.”
“But the grand old hills themselves?”
“Nay, they are not planted. Green in summer and purple and crimson in autumn, there they are the same, and ever will remain.”
There was a pause. Then Kenneth spoke once again.
“Did you ever see Miss Gale since?”
“Only once,” replied Archie, “and Miss Redmond—Jessie—she has grown tall, and oh! Kenneth, so beautiful, but still so child-like and graceful.”
“I can easily believe that, boy. And did she—”
“Yes, dear lad,” said Archie. “She did ask all about you, so kindly. And I gave her your last letter to read. And—”
“And she read it, Archie? Tell me, did she read it?”
“Yes, she read it over and over again.”
“Now, I’ll tell you my own adventures.”
“Begin at the beginning, won’t you? The very beginning, from the day you and I parted.”
“I will.”
But what Kenneth said deserves a chapter to its own account.