THE SEARCH
iss Hume, Grace's aunt, left the management of Kirklands entirely in the hands of her business agent. Mr. Graham met the tenants, gathered the rents, arranged the leases, and directed the improvements without even a nominal interference on her part. And certainly he conscientiously performed these duties with a view to his client's interests. It may be wondered that Miss Hume did not take a more personal interest in her tenants, but various things had contributed to this state of matters. Indeed, she was now so infirm that it would have been difficult for her to take any active interest in things around her, especially as it had not been the habit of her earlier years to do so.
It was her younger sister, Grace's mother, who used to know all the dwellers in the valley so well that her white pony could calculate the distance to the pleasant farmyard at which he would get his next mouthful of crisp corn; or the muirland cottage, with its delicious bit of turf, where he would presently graze, as he waited for his young mistress, while she talked to the inmates. But if the little girl with her white pony could have come back again to Kirklands, they would have missed many a familiar face, and searched in vain for many a cottage. The pleasant little thatched dwellings, with velvety tufts of moss studding the roof, and pretty creepers climbing till they mingled with the brown thatch, telling of the inmates' loving fingers, were all swept away now, and in the place that once knew them, stretched trim drills of turnips, fenced by grim stone walls, to which time had not yet given a moss-covered beauty.
Mr. Graham had thought it wise for his client's interests to remove those little "crofts," and merge their kailyards into productive fields; so the dwellers in the greensward cottages had to wander townwards to seek shelter and work in city courts and alleys. The land was now divided into a few farms, on which stood imposing-looking houses, with knockers and latch-keys to the doors, where the little girl and the white pony would never have ventured to ask admittance, or cared to gain it--where "nobody wanted nothin' from nobody," old Adam, the gardener, had assured Margery, when she made anxious inquiries concerning the prospect of Grace's search, and who hoped that this circumstantial information might persuade her young mistress to abandon it.
The prophecy that it was "a fule's errand" rang unpleasantly in Grace's ear, as she crossed the park and climbed the rustic stiles which led to the high road. It was true she knew that during the last three years there had been many a "clearance" at Kirklands, for she remembered having overheard Mr. Graham congratulating her aunt on the larger returns owing to these improvements. But surely, she thought, there might still be found some little cottages like those to which she heard her mamma was so fond of going when she was a girl. Walter and she used certainly, she remembered, often to see children with bare, dust-stained feet on the road, when they happened to go beyond the grounds on a fishing expedition, or down with their aunt through her lands; but her brother had been an all-sufficient playmate, and Grace's interest in the peasant children did not extend beyond a glance of curiosity. But now how gladly would she gather a little company of them to tell them that old sweet story, which had come to her own heart with such new strange sweetness, during these winter days, though she had heard it ever since she could remember. Grace hurried eagerly along the high road, looking at every turn for traces of any lowly wayside dwellings. There used to be a little clump of cottages here, she thought, as she stopped at a bend of the road where there were traces of recent demolitions, and a great field of green corn was evidently going to reclaim the waste place, and presently swallow it up. Behind where the vanished cottages had stood there stretched a glade of birch-trees, with their low twisted stems rising from little knolls of turf so mossy and steep, that the drills of turnips and potatoes could not possibly be ranged there without destroying their symmetry, even though the crooked birch-trees were to be swept away.
Grace wandered among the budding trees, and through the soft springy turf that was growing green again in spite of the bitter spring winds, but she found no little native lurking among the birches, and was disappointed to come to the other side of the wood much more quickly than she expected, without the détour being of any practical use.
The turf sloped away to a little stream that went singing cheerily over sparkling pebbles, bubbling and foaming round the base of grey lichened rocks, that reared their heads above the water, as if in angry remonstrance at their daring to interfere with its progress. On the opposite bank there stretched a bit of muirland pasture, studded with little knolls of heather, growing green, in preparation for its richer autumn tints. The pale spring sunlight began to grow more mellow in its light at this afternoon hour; it glinted on the little gurgling stream, lighted up the feathery birch glade, and lay in golden patches on the opposite bank, where Grace noticed some cattle begin to gather on the heathery knolls, as if they had come to enjoy the last hour of bright sunshine. Perhaps some little cottages may be sheltered behind those hillocks, Grace thought; and she began to examine how the grey rocks lay among the water, and whether she could possibly find dry footing across the stream. Presently she came upon a smooth row of stones, that were evidently used as a thoroughfare. She had already begun to cross them, keeping her eye cautiously fixed on the stepping-stones as she went along, when she was startled by a voice which sounded close beside her. On glancing round she saw on the opposite bank a boy standing with a huge twisted cudgel in his hand, brandishing it in a warlike attitude. He seemed to have suddenly appeared round one of the hillocks, and was now shouting excitedly, in his rough northern dialect, as he waved his stick:
"Hold back, mem; hold back, I tell ye. Blackie is in one o' his ill moods the day, and he's no safe. Dinna come a foot farther."
Grace stood bewildered, balancing herself on the stepping-stones; the apparition was so sudden that it almost took away her breath, and the commands were so peremptory that she did not dare to disregard them by going forward; but it seemed very hard to beat an ignominious retreat, for here seemed to be just what she was in search of—a boy as neglected-looking as any that were to be seen in the courts and alleys of Edinburgh; of the very type which old Adam declared there was not one to be found in all the lands of Kirklands. His head was bare, and his flaxen hair so bleached by the sun that it looked quite white against his bronzed face. He looked at Grace with a grave interest in his large blue eyes, as if he would like to know a little more; but he still brandished his cudgel before her, and shouted resolutely:
"Hold back, or Blackie will be at ye."
"But who is Blackie?" asked Grace, with a gasp, looking furtively round in the direction of the birch wood, in case the said Blackie might be approaching from behind.
"Who's Blackie!" said the boy, repeating the question, as if to hold up to ridicule the absurd ignorance which it implied. "Do ye no ken that Blackie is Gowrie's bull—the ill-natertest bull in a' the country-side?"
"And what have you to do with Blackie?" asked Grace, glancing across to the hillocks, where some cattle grazed inoffensively, in search of the formidable animal.
"I herd him—I'm Gowrie's herd-laddie. They're all terrible easy-managed beasts but him, and he's full o' ill tricks. He can't bear woman-folks," added the boy, with a slight mischievous twinkle in his eye; for he felt more at his ease now, having assured himself that Blackie was much too intent on some sweet blades of grass to give any trouble at that moment.
"Gowrie! that's the old farm down in the hollow there, isn't it? And how long have you been herding?" asked Grace, who still stood on the stepping-stones, and pursued the conversation with the noisy little stream babbling round her.
"I was hired to Gowrie two year come Marti'mas, and afore that I herded some sheep on the hill yonder. We had a hut all to oursels. I slept wi' them a' night, and liked them terrible weel, a hantle better than the cattle," and his eye wandered regretfully to a bleak mountain slope, which had evidently pleasant associations for the little herd-boy.
"Did you ever go to school?" asked Grace, anxious to introduce her subject, for she thought she would like this boy for a scholar.
"Ay, did I once, when I was a wee laddie. I was in the 'Third Primer,' and could read pretty big words," and he fumbled in his jacket-pocket for the collection of dog-eared leaves which represented his store of learning.
"Of course you can't go to school now on week days, when you have to watch the cows; but perhaps you go to Sunday-school?" Grace asked; and will it make her desire to do good appear very narrow and small, if it must be confessed that she hoped to hear that he did not go to any? Her mind was soon set at rest, however, for he presently replied:
"The school at the kirk, ye mean? No; granny's dreadful deaf, and we don't go to the kirk. I belong to Gowrie a' the week, but I'm granny's on Sabbath; there's aye a deal to do, brakin' sticks and mendin' up things, ye see."
"And you really don't go to a Sunday-school?" exclaimed Grace, hardly able to restrain her satisfaction at this piece of information. "But, by-the-by, I have never asked your name. I should like to hear it, because I hope we are going to be friends."
"They call me Geordie Baxter," he replied, as he ran to check the wanderings of one of the cows, while Grace stood watching him, as she pondered how she might best frame an invitation asking him to be her scholar. He seemed so manly and independent, though he was so young; and, somehow, it was all so different from how she had planned her finding of scholars. She had been looking for a cottage where the tattered children might be crawling about the doorstep, making mudpies and quarrelling with each other; and then she thought she would knock at the door, after she had spoken to them for a little, and ask their mother if she might have them to teach on Sunday. But this boy, ignorant and neglected as he seemed to be, had certainly a manly dignity which made Grace's invitations more difficult than she expected; though, after all, he could only spell words of one syllable, and he went neither to school nor to church. Surely he was the sort of scholar she had been in search of. So when he returned to his former position opposite the stepping-stones, after having admonished the straying cow—
"Well, Geordie, I am going to ask you if you will come to Kirklands, where I live, on Sunday afternoons; and since you do not go to any school, I can read a little to you, and perhaps help you to learn something?" said Grace, not venturing to be more explicit on what she wished to teach. "Do you think you would like to come?"
"Ay, would I," he replied, eagerly. "I'm terrible anxious to learn to read the long words without spellin' them." And then he stopped and looked hesitatingly at Grace. "Would ye take Jean, I wonder?" he said, coming a few steps on the stones in his eagerness. "She's my sister, and a good bit littler than me, and she can't read any, but I'm thinkin' she could learn," he added, in a sanguine tone.
"Oh yes, certainly; I shall be so happy if you will bring your sister," replied Grace, looking radiant, for she had; ust been thinking that though Geordie was certainly a very valuable unit, he could hardly, in his own person, make the "Sunday class" on which she had set her heart.
"But I thought ye couldn't bear poor folk at Kirklands," said Geordie, reflectively, glancing at Grace, after he had pondered over the invitation. "Granny's aye frightened they will be takin' our housie from us, as they have done from so many puir folk;" and then the boy stopped suddenly, and a deep red flush rose under his bronzed cheek as he remembered that he must be speaking to one of those same "Kirklands folk."
"Oh, your grandmother needn't be afraid of that. I am sure my aunt would not wish to take away her home," replied Grace, hurriedly, also flushing with vexation, and resolving that she would certainly listen with more interest, if she happened to be present at the next interview, to Mr. Graham's narratives concerning the improvements, seeing that they seemed to involve the improving away of the natives off the face of the country.
Just then the sound of a horn came across the heather, and Geordie started off, saying, "There's Gowrie's horn sounding; I must away and gather home the kye." And he darted off across the hillocks in search of his scattered charges, giving a succession of whoops and shrieks as he brandished his cudgel and whirled about in the discharge of his duty, quite ignoring Grace, who still stood on the stepping-stones, feeling rather sorry that the interview had terminated so abruptly, for she remembered a great many questions she would like to have asked.
Presently Geordie, by dint of his exertions, managed to arrange the cattle, with the formidable Blackie in front, in quite an orderly procession, and he now prepared to move towards the farm, whose white gables were visible from the pasture. He never looked back at Grace, or gave any parting sign of recognition of her presence, and she began to fear that perhaps after all he might forget about her invitation and fail to appear on Sunday.
"You won't forget to come to Kirklands on Sunday afternoon, Geordie?" she called after him, trying to raise her voice above the noisy little stream.
"Didna I say that I would come and bring Jean? and I aye keep my trysts," he shouted back again, with a look of indignant astonishment that she should have imagined him capable of forgetting or failing to keep his promise; and then he trudged away cheerily, swinging his stick, more full of the idea of this "tryst" than Grace could guess, though his mind dwelt chiefly on the thought of what a grand thing it would be for little Jean to get a chance of learning to read. He was painfully conscious that he had signally failed in his attempts to teach her, and he was the only teacher she had ever had.
In this little, unkempt, sun-bleached herd-boy there dwelt a very tender, chivalrous heart, and on his little sister Jean all his wealth, of affection had as yet been bestowed. Never did faithful knight serve his lady-love more devotedly than Geordie had this little brown maiden, since her earliest babyhood.
They were orphans, and ever since they could remember their home had been with their grandmother, a frail, dreamy old woman, so deaf that the most active and varied gesticulation was the only means of conveying to her the remotest idea of what one wished to say. Geordie, indeed, was the only person sufficiently careless of his lungs to attempt the medium of speech, and then his conversation was pitched in the same key as when he performed his herding functions.
To the little Jean, Geordie had been playmate and protector in one, her absolute slave from the time she sat on her old grandmother's knee, and, tiring of that position, lisped out, "Deordie, Deordie," holding out her little brown hands so that he might take her, and then they would sit together on the earthen floor of the cottage, and the gipsy locks would intermingle with Geordie's flaxen hair, which yielded meekly to as rough treatment from the little brown fingers as ever hapless terrier of the nursery was called on to undergo. But Geordie's sun-bleached locks had always been at her service, and his head and hands too; though it was not much that the little herd-boy had been able to do for his sister. Often as he lay on the heather, watching his cows, he smiled with delight as he thought of the time when he should be promoted into a farm servant, with wages enough to send Jean to school, and to buy her a pretty print dress, all dotted with blue stars, like the one Mistress Gowrie wore. As yet all his earnings had gone to pay board to his grandmother, and for present necessities in the shape of shoes and corduroys. He had in one of his pockets a little chamois bag, containing a few shillings, which he always carried about with him; and it was one of his recreations to spread them on one of the flat, grey stones and count the silver pieces as they glittered in the sun. He knew well what he meant to do with them when the pile grew large enough; but its growth was a very slow one, and required much self-denial on Geordie's part, seeing that the component parts of each shilling were generally gathered in a stray penny now and then, which he earned by holding a market-going farmer's cob; and if, by a rare chance, a sixpence happened to be the unexpected result of one such service, then Geordie felt that he was really getting rich, and would soon be able to buy what he had wished for so long. It was not anything for himself, or even for Jean, as might have been expected. Somebody had once told him that if his grandmother only had an ear-trumpet she would be able to hear people when they spoke to her. Geordie had the vaguest idea of what such an instrument might be like, but decided that probably it bore some resemblance in size or sound to the horn that summoned his cows home; and having ascertained how much money it would cost, he resolved that he would buy one for his granny whenever he could save the sum.
The boy's heart was full of tender pity for the old deaf woman, with her weird helpless ways, at whose side he had grown since his infancy; though she could hardly have been said to "bring him up," for Granny Baxter had been shiftless and unlovable when she was in possession of her faculties, and her character had not improved under her trying infirmities. Her grandson, however, always treated her with a tender patience which no querulousness of the old woman could weary. Not so little Jean. Only once she could remember her brother looking very grave and grieved, and it was one day when she had refused to do something that the old woman wanted, and put her in a white heat of passion by her rebellion. Having escaped beyond the reach of her poor granny's tottering feet, and, finding her way to the field where Geordie was herding, she began to narrate her story in triumph, when her brother's grave silence made her feel how naughty she had been. After that day little Jean always tried to "mind" granny more, though she never attained to the same unwearied service as Geordie.
That Jean's education was being sadly neglected her brother felt painfully, and he had made various efforts to teach her the little he knew himself; but the knowledge contained in the "Third Primer" barely sufficed for teaching purposes, and Geordie found, moreover, that the little Jean was by no means an apt scholar. Indeed, the most hopeless confusion continued to prevail in her small mind concerning the letters of the alphabet, notwithstanding all his efforts. The natural history lessons, however, had been a greater success; she had learnt from Geordie the names of most trees and flowers that grew wild in the valley, and knew the difference between a wagtail and a wren, which some people who know their alphabet do not. Geordie sometimes thought that it might be nice for Jean to go to the kirk, for it was from Jean's point of view that he looked at most things in life. But then there was the insuperable difficulty about Sunday clothes, so the idea had always been given up after due consideration each time it presented itself to his mind, and the church-going was reserved for that golden period when Jean would be clothed in the blue-starred print frock, and he should have a suit of Sunday clothes. Perhaps, with the encouragement of the ear-trumpet, even frail granny might be conducted to church, Geordie thought, hopefully, for he knew that she had the essentials of church-going, as they presented themselves to his mind, stowed away in an ancient chest-of-drawers where she kept her valuables.
But in the interval, and while these happy days of good wages and schooling for Jean and Sunday clothes still lay in the distance, this invitation to go to the house of Kirklands to be taught on Sunday afternoon was very delightful indeed, Geordie thought, as he trudged home with dust-stained feet, carrying his shoes slung across his shoulders, to pay an evening visit to his granny, eager to tell Jean about the interview with the young lady and of the invitation. He knew the news would be welcome to his grandmother also, for it had been one of her standing grievances ever since he could remember that next rent day Mr. Graham would be sure to give her notice to quit. And, indeed, if the truth must be told, it was owing to Geordie's own useful and reliable qualities that the little household had not long ago been told to move on, and to make way for more money-making tenants. Farmer Gowrie was one of the oldest residents on the estate, and he had frequently, as he used daily to inform Granny Baxter, put in a good word for her with the agent, and begged him to let the little cottage stand during the old woman's lifetime; for where could he get a boy like Geordie at the same money, as he remarked to his wife, so handy, so careful, so fearless of Blackie, "the ill-natertest bull in all the country-side," who, under his guidance, was meek as a lamb.
But notwithstanding Gowrie's assurances that their home was safe, Geordie knew that his grandmother would be very much pleased to know, if he could make her understand the fact, that he had, that afternoon, talked with a lady from the "big hoose" itself. She seemed kind and "pleasant-spoken," and not at all the terrible ogre that Geordie always imagined the lady of Kirklands to be. As the rent day came round, and he went to the inn-parlour where the agent sat to receive the rents, he used to lay the money on the table and then turn away quickly with a beating heart, in case granny's oft-repeated prophecy should prove true, and the dreaded notice to quit should really be coming at last. But instead of any such terrible communication, after he had stood the penetrating glance of the bald-headed factor, a kindly nod used generally to follow, and presently Geordie was galloping home at the top of his speed to assure his grandmother that there was no word of "a flittin'" this Martinmas. And now he felt that their home was more secure than ever, for had not the lady said that she was sure nobody wanted to turn them out of it?
Geordie's chief source of delight during his walk home was the thought of what a pleasant outing the walk to Kirklands would be for Jean, for there were many things within the lodge gates that she had heard of and would like to see. Perhaps they might get a glimpse of the walled-in garden as they passed, which Geordie had heard of from his master, who was a friend of old Adam the gardener, and had been sometimes invited by him to take a turn through his domain. But the happiest thought of all was, that, perhaps, Jean might get more interested in her alphabet when the young lady taught her. He resolved that he must not forget to take the "Third Primer" with him, for it was possible that the young lady might not exactly understand what they needed to be taught; for, after all, she did not look so very old, he pondered, as he compared her appearance with Mistress Gowrie's, the one grown specimen of the female sex, except his grandmother, who made up his small world.
