Chapter Twenty One.
Glasgow and Grief—A Pleasant Meadow—Thunderstorm at Chryston—Strange Effects—That Terrible Twelfth of August—En Route for Perth and the Grampians.
“O rain! you will but take your flight,
Though you should come again to-morrow,
And bring with you both pain and sorrow;
Though stomach should ache and knees should swell,
I’ll nothing speak of you but well;
But only now, for this one day,
Do go, dear rain! do go away.”
Coleridge.
In Scotland there are far fewer cosy wee inns with stabling attached to them than there are in England; there is therefore greater difficulty in finding a comfortable place in which to bivouac of a night. In towns there are, of course, hotels in abundance; but if we elected to make use of these, then farewell peace and quiet, and farewell all the romance and charm of a gipsy life.
It was disheartening on arriving at the village of Muirhead to find only a little lassie in charge of the one inn of the place, and to be told there was no stabling to be had. And this village was our last hope ’twixt here and Glasgow. But luckily—there always has been a sweet little cherub sitting up aloft somewhere who turned the tide in times of trouble—luckily a cyclist arrived at the hostelry door. He was naturally polite to me, a brother cyclist.
“Let us ride over to Chryston,” he said; “I believe I can get you a place there.”
A spin on the tricycle always freshens me up after a long day’s drive, and, though I was sorry to leave the poor horses a whole hour on the road, I mounted, and off we tooled. Arrived at the farm where I now lie, we found that Mr B— was not at home, he had gone miles away with the cart. But nothing is impossible to the cyclist, and in twenty minutes we had overtaken him, and obtained leave to stable at the farm and draw into his field.
A quiet and delightful meadow it is, quite at the back of the little village of Chryston, and on the brow of a hill overlooking a great range of valley with mountains beyond.
The sky to-night is glorious to behold. In the east a full round moon is struggling through a sea of cumulus clouds. Over yonder the glare of a great furnace lights up a quarter of the sky, the flashing gleams on the clouds reminding one of tropical wild-fire. But the sky is all clear overhead, and in the northern horizon over the mountains is the Aurora Borealis. Strange that after so hot a day we should see those northern lights.
But here comes Hurricane Bob.
Bob says, as plainly as you please, “Come, master, and give me my dinner.”
Whether it be on account of the intense heat, or that Hurricane Bob is, like a good Mohammedan, keeping the feast of the Ramadan, I know not, but one thing is certain—he eats nothing ’twixt sunrise and sunset.
Glasgow: Glasgow and grief. I now feel the full force of the cruelty that kept my letters back. My cousins, Dr McLennan and his wife, came by train to Chryston this Saturday forenoon, and together we all rode (seven miles) into Glasgow in the Wanderer. We were very, very happy, but on our arrival at my cousins’ house—which I might well call home—behold! the copy of a telegram containing news I ought to have had a week before!
My father was dying!
Then I said he must now be gone. How dreadful the thought, and I not to know. He waiting and watching for me, and I never to come!
Next morning I hurried off to Aberdeen. The train goes no farther on Sunday, but I was in time to catch the mail gig that starts from near the very door of my father’s house, and returns in the evening.
The mail man knew me well, but during all that weary sixteen-mile drive I never had courage to ask him how the old man my father was. I dreaded the reply.
Arrived at my destination, I sprang from the car and rushed to the house, to find my dear father—better. And some days afterwards—thank God for all His mercies—I bade him good-bye as he sat by the fire.
No quieter meadow was ever I in than that at Chryston, so I determined to spend a whole week here and write up the arrears of my literary work, which had drifted sadly to leeward. Except the clergyman of the place, and a few of the neighbouring gentry, hardly any one ever came near the Wanderer.
If an author could not work in a place like this, inspired by lovely scenery and sunny weather, inhaling health at every breath, I should pity and despise him.
I never tired of the view from the Wanderer’s windows, that wondrous valley, with its fertile farms and its smiling villas, and the great Campsie range of hills beyond. Sometimes those hills were covered with a blue haze, which made them seem very far away; but on other days, days of warmth and sunshine, they stood out clear and close to us; we could see the green on their sides and the brown heath above it, and to the left the top of distant Ben Ledi was often visible.
Thunderstorm at Chryston.
It had been a sultry, cloudy day, but the banks of cumulus looked very unsettled, rolling and tossing about for no apparent reason, for the wind was almost nil.
Early in the afternoon we, from our elevated position, could see the storm brewing—gathering and thickening and darkening all over Glasgow, and to both the north and south-west of us, where the sky presented a marvellous sight.
The thunder had been muttering for hours before, but towards four pm the black clouds gathered thick and fast, and trooped speedily along over the Campsie Hills. When right opposite to us, all of a sudden the squall came down. The trees bent before its fury, the caravan rocked wildly, and we had barely time to place a pole under the lee-side before the tempest burst upon us in all its fury.
Everything around us now was all a smother of mist. It reminded me of a white squall in the Indian Ocean. The rain came down in torrents, mingled with hail. It rattled loudly on the roof and hard and harsh against the panes, but not so loud as the pealing thunder.
The lightning was bright, vivid, incessant. The mirrors, the crystal lamps, the coloured glasses seemed to scatter the flashes in all directions; the whole inside of the Wanderer was like a transformation scene at a pantomime.
It was beautiful but dangerous.
I opened the door to look out, and noticed the row of ash-trees near by, sturdy though they were, bending like fishing-rods before the strength of the blast, while the field was covered with twiglets and small branches.
But the squall soon blew over, and the clouds rolled by, the thunder ceased or went growling away beyond the hills, and presently the sun shone out and began to dry the fields.
By the twelfth day of August—sacred to the Scottish sportsman—I had made up my literary leeway and got well to windward of editors and printers. I was once more happy.
That Terrible Twelfth of August.
We were to start on the twelfth of August for the north, en route for the distant capital of the Scottish Highlands—Inverness.
What is more, we were going to make a day of it, for my brave little Highland cousin Bella (Mrs McLennan) and her not less spirited friend Mrs C were to go a-gipsying and journey with me from Chryston to Stirling.
It was all nicely arranged days beforehand. We promised ourselves sunshine and music and general joy, with much conversation about the dear old days of long ago. And we were to have a dinner al fresco on the green sward after the manner of your true Romany Rye.
Alas for our hopes of happiness! The rain began at early morn. And such rain! I never wish to see the like again. The sky reminded me of some of Doré’s pictures of the Flood.
During one vivid blink of sunshine the downpour of rain looked like glass rods, so thick and strong was it.
In less than two hours the beautiful meadow that erst was so hard and firm was a veritable Slough of Despond. This was misfortune Number 1. Misfortune Number 2 lay in the fact that the busman did not meet the train the ladies were coming by, so for two long Scotch miles they had to paddle on as best they could through pelting rain and blackest mud.
Nor had the ladies come empty-handed, for between them they carried a large parrot-cage, a parcel, and a pie. (Polly had been spending a week in Glasgow, and was now returning.)
It was a pie of huge dimensions, of varied contents, and of curious workmanship—nay, but curious workwomanship—for had not my cousin designed it, and built it, and furnished it with her own fair fingers? It was a genuine, palpable, edible proof of feminine forethought.
Not, however, all the rain that ever fell, or all the wind that ever blew, could damp the courage of my cousin. Against all odds they came up smiling, the Highland lass and her English friend—the thistle and the rose.
But the rain got worse: it came down in bucketfuls, in torrents, in whole water. It was a spate.
Then came misfortune Number 3, for the wheels of the Wanderer began to sink deep in the miry meadow. We must draw on to the road forthwith, so Corn-flower and Pea-blossom were got out and put-to.
But woe is me! they could not start or move her. They plunged and pawed, and pawed and plunged in vain—the Wanderer refused to budge.
“I’ve a horse,” said Mr R—, quietly, “that I think could move a church, sir.”
“Happy thought!” I said; “let us put him on as a tracer.”
The horse was brought out. I have seldom seen a bigger. He loomed in the rain like a mountain, and appeared to be about nineteen hands high, more or less.
The traces were attached to buckles in our long breeching. Then we attempted to start.
It might now have been all right had the trio pulled together, but this was no part of Pea-blossom’s or Corn-flower’s intention.
They seemed to address that tall horse thus: “Now, old hoss, we’ve had a good try and failed, see what you can do.”
So instead of pulling they hung back.
I am bound to say, however, that the tall horse did his very best. First he gave one wild pull, then a second, then a third and a wilder one, and at that moment everything gave way, and the horse coolly walked off with the trace chains.
It was very provoking, all hopes of enjoyment fled. Hardly could the strawberries and cream that Mrs R brought console us. Here we were stuck in a meadow on the glorious twelfth, of all days, in a slough of despair, in a deluge of rain, and with our harness smashed.
No use lamenting, however. I sent my servant off to Glasgow to get repairs done at once, and obtain hydraulic assistance for the semi-wrecked Wanderer.
About noon there came round a kindly farmer Jackson.
“Men can do it,” he said, after eyeing us for a bit. “There’s nothing like men.”
I had sent the ladies into the farmhouse for warmth, and was in the saloon by myself, when suddenly the caravan gave herself a shake and began to move forward.
In some surprise I opened the door and looked out. Why, surely all the manhood of Chryston was around us, clustering round the wheels, lining the sides, pushing behind and pulling the pole. With a hip! ho! and away we go!
“Hurrah, lads, hurrah!”
“Bravo, boys, bravo!”
In less time than it takes me to tell it, the great caravan was hoisted through that meadow and run high and dry into the farmer’s courtyard.
To offer these men money would have been to insult them—they were Scotch. Nor can a kindness like this be measured by coin. I offered them liquid refreshment, however, but out of all who helped me I do not think that half-a-dozen partook.
All honour to the manly feelings of the good folks of Chryston.
But our day’s enjoyment was marred and we were left lamenting.
August 13th. We are off.
We are gone, over bank, bush, and scaur. And happy we feel, on this bright, bracing morning, to be once more on the road again with our backs to old England, our faces to the north.
Click, click—click, click! Why, there positively does seem music in the very horses’ feet. They seem happy as well as ourselves. Happy and fresh for, says my gentle Jehu, “They are pulling, sir, fit to drag the very arms out of ye.”
“Never mind, John,” I reply, “the Highland hills are ahead of us, and the heather hills, my Jehu. Knowest thou this song, John?”
“‘O! glorious is the sea, wi’ its heaving tide,
And bonnie are the plains in their simmer pride;
But the sea wi’ its tide, and the plains wi’ their rills,
Are no half so dear as my ain heather hills.
I may heedless look on the silvery sea,
I may tentless muse on the flowery lee,
But my heart wi’ a nameless rapture thrills
When I gaze on the cliffs o’ my ain heather hills.
Then hurrah, hurrah, for the heather hills,
Where the bonnie thistle waves to the sweet bluebells,
And the wild mountain floods heave their crests to the clouds,
Then foam down the steeps o’ my ain heather hills.’”
No wonder the rattling chorus brought half-dressed innocent cottage children to their doors to wave naked arms and shout as we passed, or that their mothers smiled to us, and fathers doffed their bonnets, and wished us “good speed.”
But summer has gone from nature if not from our hearts. All in a week the change has come, and many-tinted autumn was ushered in with wild and stormy winds, with rain and floods and rattling thunder.
Not as a lamb has autumn entered, but as a lion roaring; as a king or a hero in a pantomime, with blue and red fire and grand effects of all kinds.
There is a strong breeze blowing, but it is an invigorating one, and now, at eight o’clock on this morning, the sun is shining brightly enough, whatever it may do later on.
What a grand day for the moors! It will quite make up for the loss of yesterday, when doubtless there were more drams than dead grouse about.
In Glasgow, days ago, I noticed that the poulterers’ windows were decorated with blooming heather in anticipation of the twelfth.
I saw yesterday afternoon some “lads in kilts”—Saxons, by the shape of their legs. But I do not hold with Professor Blackie, that if you see a gentleman in Highland garb “he must either be an Englishman or a fool.”
For I know that our merriest of professors, best of Greek scholars, and most enthusiastic of Scotchmen, would himself wear the kilt if there was the slightest possibility of keeping his stockings up!